This study promotes replication research as a methodological approach that is needed in order to compare earlier and more recent analyses of digital discourse. When much of the existing research was conducted, the primary means of communication included the use of a computer keyboard, (presumably) less bandwidth, and fewer devices. However, with an increase of the range of device types, the study of diacritics deserves another look within the Digital Media landscape. The present study examines the variable use of diacritics in synchronous (i.e., real-time) French chat discourse. We have replicated a study with different data sets from the same chat corpus, which is composed of data from a European chat server. We have also compared the data from the 2008 half of the corpus to data from the same chat channels collected in 2016 (just over 60,000 words in each half of the corpus, which included a total of 7,569 tokens that were coded). Our analysis of the 2008 corpus showed that one main finding was not the same as ours (from a different part of the 2008 corpus). Moreover, a diachronic analysis (2008 vs. 2016) revealed reversed trends between the two age-based channels (i.e., 20s vs. 50s).

本研究将复制研究推广为一种方法论方法，以便比较早期和最近对数字话语的分析。在进行大部分现有研究时，主要的通信方式包括使用计算机键盘、（可能）更少的带宽和更少的设备。然而，随着设备类型范围的增加，变音符号的研究值得在数字媒体领域重新审视。本研究检查了在同步（即实时）法语聊天话语中变音符号的可变使用。我们使用来自同一聊天语料库的不同数据集复制了一项研究，该语料库由来自欧洲聊天服务器的数据组成。我们还将 2008 年一半语料库的数据与 2016 年收集的相同聊天频道的数据（刚刚超过 60 个，语料库的每一半有 000 个单词，其中包括总共 7,569 个已编码的标记）。我们对 2008 年语料库的分析表明，一个主要发现与我们的不同（来自 2008 年语料库的不同部分）。此外，历时分析（2008 年与 2016 年）揭示了两个基于年龄的渠道（即 20 多岁与 50 多岁）之间的相反趋势。