Computer-Mediated Communication

1. Computer Mediated Communicationas a

multifaceted medium
As the analysis of the visibility of various social variables in language will be
carried out on the basis of the language samples of the electronically mediated
communication, it is necessary to devote some space to a general overview of
the history and main features of this new medium. To begin with, it is important
to indicate that the Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) or, as some pre-
fer to extend it somewhat in order to include the analysis of various forms of
discourse (cf. Herring 2001) – Computer-Mediated Discourse, has not received a
final classification in terms of its linguistic features. In its early phases, when
CMC was more limited in its scope and hence more uniform, linguists attempted
to describe it by means of a joint term, as e.g., a communication channel (Crys-
tal 2001, Danet 2001, Stockwell 2002, Atton 2004, Dorleijn and Nortier 2009), a
genre (Duszak 2006), a set of registers (Biber and Conrad 2009). At present,
when the use of electronic devices in the process of communication has grown
rapidly and beyond measure, it seems virtually impossible to assign one set of
features to this variety of language. Defining CMC/CMD is not an easy task, as
it may encompass anything from statistical analysis programmes, financial mod-
elling programmes (cf. Santoro 1995), through processes shaping media for a
variety of purposes (cf. December 1997) to “communication that takes place be-
tween human beings via the instrumentality of computers” (Herring 1996: 1),
the last definition being the most relevant for the discussion of the electronic
variety of English presented in this book. As Grzenia (2006) stresses, CMC is
primarily an interactive type of communication, and as such it changes dynami-
cally depending on the users, its purpose and the medium.109 A notion which is
often evoked in the discussion of CMC is that of register, outlined briefly in sec-

109 Grzenia (2006: 17) believes that the term computer-mediated communication may rap-
idly become anachronistic, as we are at present observing only the initial stage of direct
communication of a global outreach, and there is no reason to assume that computers
will retain their present form in the future.
tion 1.6., with its three elements postulated by Halliday (1978), i.e., that of field
(topic), tenor (the relationship between the interlocutors) and mode (channel).
The notion of register appears to be of primary importance for the analysis of
various manifestations of CMC, as the medium allows for a discussion of an un-
limited variety of topics, has its unique aspects as a mode (to be discussed be-
low) and its categories and classification may in fact depend quite a lot on the
relationship between the interactants. Hence the possible differences to be found
in the language of, e.g., chat as opposed to a business email, as it is rather likely
that chat will be used by close friends, and very seldom by the superior and the
subordinate, whereas a business email will require a much more formal and offi-
cial kind of language than, e.g., an email to a close friend (cf. Biber and Conrad
2009). It is therefore obvious that, in view of the resultant variety and fluctua-
tion of CMC registers, and subsequently also styles as their internal variation
(cf. Joos 1959, Wardhaugh 1992), the description of CMC will need to take a
wide range of options into account.
The analysis of the growing variety of CMC texts has led to a number of dif-
ferent classificatory approaches. Grzenia (2006) suggests the most basic descrip-
tion into four categories depending on the type of involvement of the human and
non-human participants, i.e., the computer. Thus, the categories would be person
to person (e.g. chat, email), person to computer (e.g., online games), computer to
person (e.g., various communiqués concerning the system updates of pro-
grammes, online questionnaires), and computer to computer (sending or ex-
changing internal electronic data). In our further discussion we will focus pri-
marily on the first option, the person to person one, as this is the one where the
individuality of the users, and notably their gender, age or nationality will leave
a mark on the actual text produced by them, unlike a formalised code-like com-
munication between, e.g., two computers. In his comparison of the electronic
medium to the other generally available ones such as the press, radio and TV,
Grzenia (2006: 21) points out rather dramatic differences between the former
and the latter type. They stem from, e.g. the fact that unlike most others, Internet
and other CMC media have both a local and global range (the others being pri-
marily local and regional), and the number of users are limited mainly by the
language, but only in part (which is of greatest relevance to the use of English as
the main Internet language, cf. Graddol 2006). Unlike the other three media, in
whose case the sender is institutional, in electronic communication it is both in-
stitutional and individual with, again contrary to the other three, a very high lev-
el of addressees’ activity and input. At the same time this implies that, contrary
to the press, radio and TV, where there is a marked inequality of roles of those
involved, the Internet is characterised by a high equality of the roles of the users
and their interchangeability in the act of communication. Finally, the projected
recipient in electronic communication is both the group and the individual,
whereas the remaining three types of media are addressed to a group of recipi-
ents. Thus, this short summary of features characterising the four media demon-
strates without difficulty why a more precise categorisation of various manifes-
tations of the Internet communication types has so far proved difficult or practi-
cally impossible, at the same time it also illustrates the unique character of
Computer Mediated Communication.
As said in section 1.7, some linguists (cf. Stockwell 2002, cf. Crystal
2001/2006, Dorleijn and Nortier 2009) distinguish not two but up to four chan-
nels of communiation in the modern era – apart from speech and writing sign
language is added as an alternative mode, making use of a distinct code
(Deumert 2000b), and, most recently, the electronic communication. As regards
the latter, linguists’ agreement to its recognition as a new medium or lack of it
will have a bearing upon the classification of registers and genres110 found on
the Internet. Most linguists will be rather cautious and suggest that, for instance,
email, along with other Internet text variants, such as blog, chat, discussion fo-
rum, etc. represent new facets of traditional genres (cf. Duszak 2006, Grzenia
2006, Rejter 2009, Dura 2009). It remains unquestionable, however, that alt-
hough some of the genres found in the Internet may be simply a variation on
some previously used traditional ones, as e.g., email, which is described as a va-
riant of the traditionally written letter (cf. Rejter 2009, Biber and Conrad
2009),111 the on-line dictionary which is an electronic version of a traditional
one (cf. Żmigrodzki 2008, Nowakowska 2009),112 or else a weblog as a variant
of a memoir (cf. Sikora 2009, Zając, Rakocy, Nowak 2009), the channel of
communication used to transmit these new developments, i.e., the Internet, has
left an indelible mark on their character, making them what they otherwise
would not have become, either in the written or the spoken medium. Moreover,
it has also led to the development of entirely new varieties of texts which could

110 The present analysis follows Biber and Conrad’s (2009: 15-16) interpretation of register
and genre. They view them as “different approaches or perspectives for analysing text
varieties, not as different kinds of texts or different varieties.” While in the case of gen-
res the focus is put on “linguistic characteristics that are used to structure complete
texts,” (e.g., the formal features of blogs), the analysis of registers concentrates on typi-
cal linguistic features in excerpts from various text varieties and links them “functional-
ly to the situational context of the variety” (e.g., a business vs. an informal email).
111 However, some guides concerning email writing from a decade ago (e.g., Morris 2000,
cf. Sikora 2009: 250) do encourage its users to abandon the formality and terms of ad-
dress typically expected in the traditional business email communication.
112 Nowakowska (2009: 139) additionally divides electronic dictionaries into those which
constitute an electronic version of the hard copy edition and those which have been cre-
ated on the basis of primarily electronic data and extended by the original book content.
not possibly exist outside the Internet, e.g. chats (cf. Grzenia 2006). Also
electronic mail, extensively discussed in many analyses (cf. Dąbrowska 2000,
2002, Crystal 2001/2006, Baron 2008, Sikora 2009) appears to fill in the space
between speech and writing, sharing features of both. It has to be reiterated after
Wilbur (1996: 6, cf. Crystal 2006: 9), however, that “whatever else Internet cul-
ture may be, it is still largely a text-based affair,” as speech has indeed a margi-
nal presence in CMC, represented mainly by songs, video clips, films (cf.
Crystal 2006), to which one may also add word pronunciation offered by some
dictionaries as well as the Skype and Internet telephone services.113 However, it
is worth pointing out that when they applied Biber’s (1988) scales to the analy-
sis of CMC data, Collot and Belmore (1996, after Dorleijn and Nortier 2009:
129) found no extreme scores in most of them, which would indeed corroborate
the fact that CMC occupies a position between speech and writing, after all, alt-
hough indeed, on the overt expression of persuasion and abstract vs. non-
abstract information the scores obtained were the same as for written texts,
which would support Crystal’s (2006) view that CMC retains more features of
the written language. This conclusion can be supported by Yates’s (1996) fin-
ding that in terms of lexical density CMC data resemble those of the written lan-
guage data. Discourse analysts, on the other hand, point out that in the case of
Internet communication it is hard to draw a line between discourse and text, as
in that medium one gradually shifts into the other (cf. Ulicka 2009, Witosz
2009), much as the role of the author of the text gets redefined and diminished in
CMC, while at the same time the role of the recipient becomes much more acti-
ve and responsible for the final text meaning. For the above-mentioned reasons,
therefore, CMC or, more broadly, CMD, needs to be treated as a new, distinct
level of investigation and language use, unique in its multi-level and hybridised
character. It will, therefore, be worth overviewing how this new medium of ex-
pression has evolved and the existence of what varieties of genres and registers
it has launched into being.

2. History and development of CMC

The origins of CMC go back to the 1970s, and in particular 1971, when the first,
a military based computer network, called ARPANET, was developed for inter-
nal communication (cf. Baron 2008), though Thurlow at al. (2004: 14) in fact
take its roots even earlier to the 1960s, when the exchange of prototype emails
took place. This was soon followed (at the turn of the 1970s and 80s) by the

113 As Crystal (2006: 16) says, the use of interactive voice dialogue is becoming increas-
ingly available in computer-mediated telephony.
formation of USENET, a non military network, which was also followed by the
development of discussion groups (ibid.). In the 1980s ARPANET turned into a
state-funded Internet, whereas the 1990s saw the development of the World Wi-
de Web (ibid.), and the 1990s were the period when the growing popularity of
the medium really started (cf. Thurlow et al. 2004). The first Internet search en-
gine, established in the 1990s was Gopher, while Google search had its begin-
nings in 1998 (ibid.). In the meantime, various new genres of the CMC kept
appearing, creating a complex set of options (cf. Grzenia 2006). Following Ba-
ron’s (2008: 14) overview we can list the main developments in their order of
appearance: email, computer conferencing, Multi-User Dungeons, newsgroups,
listservs, Instant Messaging (IM), Internet Relay Chat (IRC), text messaging
(mobile forms), ICQ Instant Messaging, blog, Second Life, MySpace, Facebook
and Youtube. Linguists most often approach the discussion of CMC communi-
cation by dividing the available options into the synchronous and asynchronous
type of communication. The former takes place at the same time, much like
face-to-face communication, except that it is more interface-to-interface, and the
fact that the participants of communication do not have eye contact does affect
the communication process (cf. Grzenia 2006: 65), while the latter allows for a
passage of time between the message and the response to it,114 although as Ba-
ron (2008) claims, the distinction between the two is not to be treated as dicho-
tomy, but very much as a continuum. Within these two types Baron (ibid., cf.
Crystal 2006) distinguishes between one-to-one and one-to-many types, respec-
tively, while Grzenia (2006: 51) discusses the communicative environment on
the Internet in terms of the size of the groups of participants, describing them as,
respectively, unlimited (in the case of the hypertext), small groups, usually con-
sisting of two persons (email), relatively small thematically focused and contact
maintaining groups, consisting of between a few dozen to a few hundred mem-
bers (listservs and discussion forums), and small groups not interested in main-
taining permanent contact ranging between a few to a few dozen (chats). Lingu-
ists approach the classification of the Internet types of communication in a vari-
ety of ways, thereby suggesting a varying number of genres. While Crystal
(2006, 2011) enumerates seven basic types of Internet situations, as he calls
them, following their distinct language characteristics, Baron (2008) lists eleven
types, whereas Grzenia (2008: 153) has as many as thirteen genres along with

114 Crystal (2006: 3, cf. Crystal 2011) observes that “the rhythm of an Internet interaction is
very much slower than that found in a speech situation, and disallows some of conversa-
tion’s most salient properties. With e-mails and asynchronous chatgroups, a response to
a stimulus may take anything from seconds to months, the rhythm of the exchange very
much depending on such factors as the recipient’s computer (…), the user’s personality
and habits (…), and the circumstances of the interlocutors.”
five types of hybridised texts, as e-book, e-zines, electronic newspaper, Internet
portal and WWW, which, as not directly relevant to the present discussion, will
only be listed here. This implies different criteria of taxonomy and a greater fle-
xibility in the assignment of certain communicative behaviours in the case of
some linguists than others. I will follow Baron’s categories as a background to
this presentation, comparing them to and adding, wherever possible, the types
suggested by other scholars, as her classification, based on the systematic divisi-
on into the above asynchronous vs. synchronous, and then respectively one-to-
one and one-to-many types appears to be the most convincing and ordered
proposition.

3. Asynchoronous mode
As far as the asynchronous category is concerned, the list becomes somewhat
long. In Baron’s classification we can distinguish the following items: email and
text messaging via mobile phone (one-to-one) and newsgroups, liservs, blogs,
MySpace, Facebook115 and Youtube (one-to-many). In this case Crystal
(2001/2006) classifies the above more generally into emails and blogging, to
which he adds World Wide Web, what is more, he also distinguishes an asyn-
chronous type of chatgroups here, viz. listservs (mailing lists), newsgroups and
bulletin boards. Thus, as can be seen, the outcome in the two taxonomies is si-
milar, yet in Crystal’s case he sees a greater affinity between various asynchro-
nous as well as synchronous group messages. The listing of WWW, whose
“many functions include encyclopedic reference, archiving, cataloguing, ‘Yel-
low Pages’ listing, advertising, self-publishing, games, news reporting, creative
writing, and commercial transactions of all kinds, with movies and other types
of entertainment becoming increasingly available” (Crystal 2006: 14) together
with the other types appears somewhat surprising, as clearly WWW, a hypertext,
in fact includes some of the aforementioned genres. Therefore, as Crystal him-
self admits, the language of WWW becomes very hard to describe due to its pa-
tent incoherence. In the case of asynchronous genres Grzenia’s (2006) group
make-up becomes much more detailed and covers a variety of text types, most
likely generally ignored by scholars as a possible source of message communi-
cation. Thus, beside email (in the case of which Grzenia additionally distinguis-
hes between the private and the public type), blog, and electronic bulletins he

115 However, as Blattner and Fiori (2009, after Pérez-Sabater 2012: 83) point out, Facebook
is a “tool that goes beyond synchronous and asynchronous technologies,” as users may
add to or edit information that is already available online, they can also access many
synchronous and asynchronus genres through this medium.
lists the thread in the discussion forum and the newsgroup/listserv as well as the
electronic questionnaire, the website catalogue, the commentary, the visitor log,
the footer and the signature. As mentioned above, he does enumerate some addi-
tional genres, including the WWW site, the e-zine, the electronic newspaper, the
e-book and the web portal, yet, contrary to Crystal he does point to the supra-
generic and hybrid character of those.
As can be seen, the classification of the genres is quite difficult because of
the lack of clarity about the criteria to follow in the selection as well as the mu-
tual dependence and permeation between the genres and the status of each. The
decision needs to be made as to which categories are indeed made use of by the
Internet users for passing on information or interaction with another person and
which are simply communicating, as indeed any sign communicates, whether
intentionally or not. Lastly, the difficulty lies in the fact that some new types of
Internet uses are invented every few years which might potentially, due to the
means they offer, be the source of reconstruction of the whole categorisation.
Crystal (2006: 10) himself points out that “[t]wo of these [seven situations] were
hardly in evidence when the first edition of this book [i.e. 2001] was being writ-
ten. A lot can happen in five years.” He also admits that the seven types that he
has listed are not mutually exclusive, and that there can be found sites where all
these elements are combined into one, or in which one is used within some other
one, as discussion groups within various websites or attachments to emails (cf.
Crystal 2006: 15). To quote Naughton (1999: 271), “the protocols which govern
it [the Net] leave the course of the evolution open,” which is why there needs to
be flexibility in the approach to the Internet communication offer and readiness
to restructure its content in the context of the new options having been added.
As not all of the above-mentioned situations or genres will be of equal rele-
vance to our further discussion, only some of the rich number of options will be
discussed in greater detail below in order to further expand the list of varieties of
language discussed in this chapter. The first to look at, due to its chronologically
primary place and universality of use, will be electronic mail.
Email, as said above, represents the asynchronous mode of CMC, although,
as Baron (2008) rightly observes, with the modern technological advances the
message, which initially sometimes even took days to reach the addressee allow
for the email to reach its destination at the other end of the globe in minutes or
even seconds, so an almost instantaneous response is quite possible. Email is a
modern equivalent of the letter, a technology which, to quote Baron (2008: 15)
“is now an indispensable part of modern work and play, love and war,” although
one cannot equate the two, as the genre has evolved significantly in the electron-
ic domain (cf. Morris 2000, Grzenia 2006, Sikora 2009). While the letter fol-
lowed some more strictly defined rules concerning the obligatory elements of
the genre,116 the advancement of electronic communication for personal purpos-
es has changed users’ attitude towards its register. At the very start email began
to be perceived as a very democratic medium, transplanting the western modes
of first-naming onto the other cultures whose language observed different rules
(cf. Crystal 2001, Dąbrowska 2000, 2010a, Grzenia 2006). It was therefore easy
to flout other precepts of letter writing too – email authors began to change or
altogether omit the email openings and forms of address (cf. Gains 1998) and
failed to sign the message at the end (cf. Dąbrowska 2000, 2010a). The tradi-
tional rules of politeness assuming the use of questions to find out about the ad-
dressee’s well being and the closing formula containing wishes and greetings
were also quite frequently omitted, much as was the subject of the message, alt-
hough currently, with a huge number of spam messages sent daily, this element
of email has become quite important (cf. Crystal 2006: 102). Indeed, most email
users, particularly the younger generation, tend to shun the use of formality in
emails, to the point of being impolite, as they often forget that the written medi-
um does not offer the same contextual information as the oral communication,
especially with eye contact (cf. Grzenia 2006, Dąbrowska 2007b, Kowalski
2009). As Beard (2004: 46) observes, “there are times when it is quite hard to
know how to start an email, if you are writing to someone who has more power
than you. Over-formality can appear sycophantic, overfamiliarity rude.” How-
ever, as he admits (ibid.) “although it is possible to say that emails are usually
less formal than written letters, you still have to get the pragmatics right in this
mode of communication.” Thus, after the initial enthusiasm for equality (cf.
Morris 2000)117 most users began to sense the difference between sending an
email to a close friend and to their superior, to someone they knew, and to a
stranger, which has made the description of this nowadays a very diverse type of
text quite a challenge (cf. Baron 2008).
Grzenia (2006) classifies email as a monologic type of communication, on
the grounds that a given email is written by one person, while Crystal (2001, cf.
Beard 2004: 48) describes it as a dialogic type of communication, arguing that
emails constitute part of an exchange of communication in the way that tradi-
tional letters did not. Linguists acknowledge the difficulty in discussing emails
on the grounds that, on the one hand, as their structure is fairly simple and fixed,

116 Cf. e.g., Alexander (1969), Deakin (1976) or Sinielnikoff and Prechitko (1993).
117 Crystal (2006: 82) draws attention to an important change of direction that has taken
place since the time when traditional prescriptivism rated writing over speech and for-
mality over informality as compared to the present day, when Internet manuals do the
opposite, which, however, as he points out, is still prescriptivism. “And it is a worrying
kind of prescriptivism because it is doing precisely what the old grammars did –
reducing the potential richness and versatility of a medium of communication.”
following the obligatory slots the user must fill in as well as observing its model
in the traditional letter, there remain a number of questions concerning the pur-
pose of email as a medium of communication and related to it the kind of lan-
guage that should be used in it (ibid.). The language of email is certainly not like
that of traditional letters, as already mentioned above, in that it leans far more
towards the type of expression more typical of the spoken medium in terms of
its informality, the use of ellipsis, single word expressions, emotionality, etc.,
hence it can be said to assume a hybrid character between the two (cf.
Dąbrowska 2000, 2002, Crystal 2006, 2011, Sikora 2009), yet, as Beard (2004:
48) rightly observes, although the language in an email sounds more like speech,
if the author was to say the same thing instead of writing it, the message would
have actually sounded quite different (e.g., it would not be as condensed as
email usually is and would not touch as many topics in a short stretch of time as
emails often do). The difficulty with email language analysis is also naturally
linked with the fact that emails themselves fall into various subtypes – Grzenia
(2006: 159), for instance, lists three categories, i.e., a private email, semi-private
and non-public ones (involving more than two persons of an equal status, but
concerning private life) and finally public ones (with more participants).
At this point it becomes clear that the boundary between an email and an-
other category of asynchoronous CMC type, i.e., the listserv, is quite fluid.
Listservs, developed in 1986 (Baron 2008) are a descendant of mailing lists used
particularly at workplaces to disseminate messages among employees. They
may be moderated or unmoderated, and in practice, although the first message is
sent by a moderator or the initiator of a given event, etc., later each member of
the list may respond to it and take the group communication forward. Such a
form, however, is also possible in private settings, among groups of friends who,
for instance, use it in order to fix a meeting date or spread their news to the oth-
ers, without having to write the same or similar message to each friend separate-
ly. In this case they indeed can be regarded more as semi-private emails (the dif-
ference between such emails and listservs then lies purely in the work- or private
context, which might result in a slightly more formalised variety of language
used in the former). Additionally, Grzenia (2006) lists the signature as a separate
genre, although he acknowledges the fact that it may and most often is embed-
ded in the structure of the email, much like music, clips or photos in the form of
links.
A separate form that Baron (2008) enumerates as an example of the asyn-
chronous mode is a newsgroup, which Grzenia (2006) lists together with a simi-
lar genre, i.e., the discussion forum. Both types of communication make use of
similar tools, i.e., they contribute to the current subject of discussion by adding
posts, which in turn is done by means of filling in forms similar to those used for
sending email messages. However, newsgroups are an older form which was
developed on USENET still when only text tools were available. Newsgroups
tend to focus on more specific subjects, which leads to a variety of forms of the
language used depending on the topic, and therefore indirectly also on the type
of users.118 Discussion forums, according to Grzenia (2006), are more loosely
formed groups of users available on various WWW portals which can often be
accessed without logging in or needing to have an email account. Both news-
groups and discussion forums are internally divided into threads initiated by in-
dividual members of the group/forum and focusing on particular subjects related
to the main topic of the group.
Blog, an abbreviated form of the expression web log, is one of the more re-
cent Internet inventions (cf. Crystal 2006, Baron 2008) which has gained popu-
larity with remarkable speed, especially since the introduction of easy-to-use
special software tools. The term used by Barger in 1997 referred to a list of In-
ternet links that the Internet user creating the list wanted to share with others (cf.
Baron 2008). Although blog clearly has taken its roots in the diary or a memoir,
there are some obvious differences between the two, primarily the fact that blog
authors allow their readers to comment on what they write (cf. Grzenia 2006),
and blogs are often used not only to simply share opinions or impressions about
some issue (social events, food, sports, etc.) but also as a tool for self-
presentation and gaining popularity, e.g., by politicians (cf. Cheung 2000, Thur-
low et al. 2004, Gumkowska 2009; Zając, Rakocy, Nowak 2009; Vonau 2012).
As pointed out by Thurlow at al. (2004: 193), such web pages are both inter-
personal and mass communication. What is important about them is that they
constitute a means of social interaction. “Even if it’s not immediate or obvious
interaction, the people creating personal homepages are in communication with
their audience – however big or small” (Thurlow et al. 2004: 193). At this point
it needs to be mentioned that web authors may choose to hide their real person-
ality and write under a nickname, in which case the authors of comments will
never know who their recipient is (cf. Zając, Rakocy, Nowak 2009, cf. Huffaker
and Calvert 2005), as a result of which the character of the language of the
comments may become very informal, even offensive and full of slang. At the
same time, as studies of blog have shown, a frequent motive inspiring blog own-
ers is to establish and maintain links with society. Blogs, due to their subjects
and the degree of disclosure of the author’s identity, may be divided into a num-

118 On the other hand, a frequent outcome of such a group existence is a formation of a vir-
tual community or else a community of practice (cf. Eckert and McConnell-Ginet 1992,
Seidlhofer 2006, Dąbrowska 2011, cf. section 3.1) with its characteristic language and
code of behviour.
ber of types. Herring et al. (2004) have distinguished five of them, i.e. 1) filters
(the classical type of blogs consisting of lists of links to other websites), 2)
memoirs and diaries, which pass on private information about the author’s life
and his/her opinions, 3) knowledge-logs – sites whose main focus is to share
specialised knowledge, 4) mixed types, combining the diary and the filter char-
acter, and 5) other, e.g. blogs containing examples of the author’s artistic and/or
creative work (cf. Gumkowska 2009: 240). Blogs may also be divided in terms
of their topic, the tools used and their purpose (e.g., news blogs, blogs on books,
videoblogs/vlogs, photoblogs, etc.), which shows the complexity of the genre
(ibid.) and which, according to studies (cf. Santini 2006, cf. Gumkowska 2009)
makes blog one of the more ambiguous or even difficult web genres.
The last but one of the asynchronous modes of the Internet communication
listed by Baron (2008) is the social networking service (cf. Zając, Rakocy,
Nowak 2009). This genre is the newest of all, as the beginnings of Facebook, the
best known example of social networks, go back to 2004, its predecessor,
Friendster, to 2002, and YouTube – 2005 (Baron 2008), while the most recent
development is that of Google+, which dates back only to June 2011, it is there-
fore not surprising that very little has been written about this category to date,
however, its popularity is constantly growing.119 Baron (ibid.) points out that
one of the basic criteria of social networking description is that of membership
of the social network services. Some sites, as e.g., Facebook or Google+ or
Nasza Klasa (and earlier Grono) in Poland have remained networks with a re-
stricted community of users whose membership requires registering and provid-
ing personal data (although, contrary to its original policy, nowadays Facebook
allows its users to keep their real name undisclosed, there may also be public
profiles next to the private ones which are devoted to different public personae,
e.g. actors, writers, etc.), others like YouTube are open to anyone.
Among the above-mentioned networks Facebook has no doubt remained the
major player, despite the heavy competition put up by Google+. Indeed, the
founders of Google+ call Facebook the social network of the past
(http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57556344-93/the-crazy-truth-google-can-
thrive-alongside-facebook/), and the two giants have been competing heavily on
the market. However, Casey Newton, the author of the quoted article (ibid.)
claims that although its founders aspire “to make Google+ the social network
where you go to wish your friends a happy birthday. That's a long way off,”
which indirectly points to the constant popularity of Facebook (with its billion

119 Crystal (2011: 10) claims that in 2011 as many as 170 social network forums were rec-
orded online.
users)120 as a place for social interaction, which is why some more comments
will be offered with regard to this social network below. Most certainly one of
the key purposes of establishing one’s personal profile on such a platform fulfils
the major needs of their owners – those of establishing and maintaining personal
ties but also creating one’s own image (cf. Crystal 2011) through what one puts
up on one’s own wall, as well as, additionally, by means of photos, links and
comments on their contacts’ profile status update. The outcome is also shaped
by the way one decides to formulate one’s message (i.e., the level of vocabulary,
spelling conventions, the use of emoticons – cf. Dąbrowska 2011cd, 2012acd) –
in other words, Facebook allows one to project on others “who one wants to be
rather than who one really is” (Baron 2008: 85, cf. Crystal 2011). Additionally,
as Baron (ibid.) claims, a possible reason for a person using Facebook’s wall in
order to write a personal message rather than see someone in person, much like
using a text message instead of making a call, is that of saving, managing and
controlling their time. Much like some others, Facebook is a complex medium
making use of other registers and genres (cf. Blattner and Fiori 2009, Crystal
2011, Pérez-Sabater 2012) – apart from one’s own wall one can also leave a
message on another person’s wall, which will then be public, i.e., shared by all
those who all linked with that person (unless the post author sets his/her privacy
settings differently) or like his/her posts, one may send them a private message,
which then largely replicates the features of email, though, as practice shows,
they tend to be much shorter, precisely because they are not emails by their sta-
tus; one may also poke another person in order to let them know they are re-
membered or to indicate personal interest and attraction. Last but not least, there
is also an Instant Messaging facility available on Facebook, which is in fact in-
tegrated with private messages.121 Linguistic studies of social networks are
therefore sparse due to their novelty as well as complexity of their character (cf.
Pérez-Stabater 2012). Blattner and Fiori (2009) have studied Facebook as a plat-
form used to enhance learning, while Pérez-Sabater (2012) has researched the
use of the opening and closing formulas used on Facebook university sites in
terms of their level of formality, an aspect which will also be considered in
Chapter Six. The majority of study data concern the sociological side of social
netwoking, e.g., the fact that Facebook is more often visited by women than

120 According to comScore Media Metrix (in: Baron 2008: 83) “in 2006 Facebook was the
seventh most popular site on the entire web with respect to total page views.” According
to "Facebook Reports First Quarter 2013 Results" (retrieved on 2 May 2013) this social
network has at present 1,110 milion of users.
121 As Crystal (2006: 259) states, “[t]he various established media elements are already
becoming increasingly integrated, in a frame of reference neatly captured by the phrase
streaming media.”
men, that women are more prone to discuss more serious subjects on the public
profile, etc., some data also corroborate earlier findings concerning Instant Mes-
saging (Baron 2008). The question of social ties created by means of social net-
works, their character and strength is also being investigated (cf. Hay-
thornthwaite 1998, Wellman and Haythornthwaite 2002, Ellison et al. 2007) as
well as their interaction with offline life (cf. Baym 1998, 2000). Indeed, as will
be demonstrated by my subsequent analysis, which is predominantly based on
Facebook data, there are some significant differences to be observed in terms of
gender, age and cultural background detected through the Facebook medium,
what is more, Facebook also proves to be an interesting source of data for the
analysis of the concept of the community of practice (cf. Dąbrowska 2011d, cf.
Trousdale 2010), despite earlier prophetic voices announcing that “computer
networks only isolate us from one another rather than bring us together” (Stoll
1995: 58, cf. also Thurlow et al. 2004).
The final example of the asynchronous mode to be introduced briefly here is
text messaging. Grzenia (2006) does not discuss this register at all, however,
Crystal (2002, 2006, 2008), Baron (2008) as well as Biber and Conrad (2009)
do. The difference in this interpretation comes from the fact that text messages
are not strictly generated by the Internet, unlike the aforementioned services.122
Yet it is certainly a Computer-Mediated Communication tool, though, since mo-
bile phones are small computers, which additionally nowadays mostly offer an
opportunity to send images and films as well as access to the Internet. Text mes-
sages, also known as SMS (for Short Message Service), originally just a bit of
free bandwith left over after the GSM system designed to transmit voice signals
from one phone to another, launched on the general market in 1992 (cf. Crystal
2008, Biber and Conrad 2009) were gradually turned into a means of communi-
cation in its own right and a very profitable business for the company too, gain-
ing popularity among teenagers and young adults (cf. Baron 2008), though now-
adays even senior persons do not shun this service either. As Baron (ibid.) found
out, the status of text messages varied from culture to culture, as e.g., texting
was less popular in the US than calls from a mobile phone, probably due to the
large number of talking minutes the users had, yet in Japan, for instance, the
proportions were reversed.123 The most frequent reason to text, as has been es-

122 It has to be reiterated after Crystal (2008: 7), however, that surprisingly little infor-
mation can be found on the language of text messages. Indeed, “[p]sychologists,
sociologists, health specialists, journalists and educators have plenty to say; but hardly
any reports provide details of what exactly happens to language when people create
texts.”
123 Biber and Conrad (2009: 200) observe that many texters in their study showed a prefer-
ence for texting over phone calls due to the greater sense of privacy that texting provid-
tablished, appears to be to arrange a meeting, followed by sharing news, killing
time while travelling, keeping in touch and asking advice (ibid. :145).124 Crystal
(2002) notes a rapid change in the language use that the text message technology
has introduced almost instantenously. The small size of the screen and the key-
pad as well as the limited number of characters (at least in the classical phone
models) one could use (up to 160) “motivated the evolution of an even more ab-
breviated language than emerged in chatgroups and virtual worlds” (Crystal
2002: 141). Although users do have the predictive word program, T9 for short
(cf. Baron 2008: 17), they have developed a variety of methods to shorten the
words and thereby the length of a whole message, e.g. CU l8r (‘see you later’)
or BRB (‘be right back’).125 However, it has been proved that the tendency and
ability to shorten words in text messages is in fact culturally conditioned (cf.
Ling and Pedersen 2005, Dąbrowska 2011d).126 Although text message technol-
ogy, due to the flouting of the spelling rules, has been quite heavily blamed for
impoverishing the users’, especially the children’s, ability to spell correctly, re-
searchers have demonstrated that there has been no direct negative impact on the
ability to spell properly (cf. Thurlow 2006, Crystal 2008). On the contrary, some
studies have proved that the more abbreviations a child used, the higher their
score in reading and vocabulary was in tests (Plester et al. 2008, 2009). It has
been claimed that in order to flout the spelling of a word one has to know first

ed, as opposed to speech, which can be overheard. Quite surprisingly, however, some
texters also felt more at ease about showing their text message to a third party than they
would about forwarding an email without its author’s permission.
124 A Mori/Lycos UK survey of September 2000 (in Crystal 2006: 262) demonstrated that
81% of the text message users between the age of 15-24 years used this service in order
to coordinate their social lives, engage in language play, flirt, and send a “thinking of
you message.” Biber and Conrad’s study (2009), on the other hand, enumerated social
organising, staying connected while on the move, information sharing, relationship
maintenance, and business reminders as the main reasons for texting.
125 Thurlow (2003), however, notes that few messages come close to the limit of the num-
ber of characters, and the length of text messages seems to be restricted by other factors,
as e.g., the size of the screen, the difficulty with typing using a small keypad, the greater
immediacy of interaction than e.g. via email (cf. Biber and Conrad 2009).
126 As my study of language economy in text messages (Dąbrowska 2011d) demonstrated,
whereas the messages in English showed a variety of shortening techniques (i.e., clip-
pings and contractions, vowel omission, word-letter substitution, word-number substitu-
tion, non-standard spelling, deletion of pronouns and auxiliaries, and apostrophy dele-
tion), in the messages composed in Polish only clippings and contractions (both of the
more traditional and innovative type) as well as the vowel/sound omission strategy were
detected. The main reason behind such a difference appears to be the lack of inflectional
endings in English, which, unlike the highly inflected Polish, allows for a much greater
flexibility and creativity in language use.
what the original spelling of that word is (cf. Crystal 2008). It has also been
demonstrated that although by being short text messages may affect the length
of school compositions negatively, they in fact consist of more than one sen-
tence more often than instant messages do, what is more, the sentences tend to
be longer than in IM, fuller and self-contained (cf. Baron and Ling 2003). Addi-
tionally, text messaging has even led to a form of text message creativity,
whereby users compose poems or whole texts with the help of the abbreviated
language forms. Moreover, text messages have been found to be an important
marker of a speech community and a means of maintaining contact with others
in the busy modern world, which is a valuable asset in the modern era of human
contact becoming more and more superficial.

4. Synchronous mode
The other of the two main subtypes of CMC is the synchronous mode, i.e., one
in which the participants interact at the same (i.e., real) time. Its manifestations
are Instant Messaging (one-to-one) as well as chat, Computer Conferencing,
MUDs and Second Life (one-to-many). As concerns Instant Message services,
sometimes classified by scholars as a subcategory of chat (cf. Grzenia 2006) or
discussion lists (Adamczyk 2009),127 first introduced at some American univer-
sities to a limited group of people in 1980s, they became very popular in the
1990s along with the introduction of the ICQ service (Crystal 2006, Baron
2008). At this point a range of Internet portals and services offer the IM option,
e.g., MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, Google Talk, and in Poland, e.g.,
Gadu-Gadu (gg), tlen, jabber, etc., there is also a possibility of sending instant
messages within other types of CMC situations, as e.g. Facebook or various dis-
cussion forums. At the moment IM services allow users not only to interact via
sending messages but also create buddy lists with people’s personal data as well
as away messages when someone is currently not online (cf. Crystal 2006).
Crystal (2006: 248) points out that with the help of IM “[i] It is possible to view
images, send files, play games, share web links, include content streamed from
the Web, play sounds, send text messages to mobile phones, and (using the ap-
propriate audio equipment (…) switch to telephone communication.” As IM is a
one-to-one service, instant messages tend to remind of emails in their character
(yet much shorter) in that they are sent to a specific well known person. At the
same time, though, one may be holding more than one conversation with differ-
ent persons simultaneously, which accounts for one’s less careful use of lan-

127 Biber and Conrad (2009: 209) define IM as an “electronic register in which participants
are online at the same time, typing messages sent directly to each other.”
guage, shorter messages, numerous spelling mistakes (and even maintaining
right to them – cf. Adamczyk 2007) as well as the constant need to control the
content of the messages to various people.
Instant messages are essentially instances of private communication, they
are therefore hardly studied for lack of access to the sufficient amount of data.
Following the study of her students’ IM messages Baron (2008) concluded that
when sending an IM message one often cuts up one’s message into smaller
units, which Chafe (1994, 2001) calls intonation units.128 In speech they tend to
be separated from each other by rising and falling voice contour as well as paus-
es, and since these options are not available in writing, users reflect them by cut-
ting their message up into smaller chunks. Another very characteristic feature of
instant messages is the use of contractions129 (Baron 2008: 60). As regards the
typical CMC fashion for using abbreviations and acronyms, their number in fact
turned out surprising low (31 abbreviations and 90 acronyms out of 11,718
words) (Baron 2008: 59), which proves that in the fast typing and speedy turn
taking that IM imposes the use of creative language elements is in fact limited.
Also the occurrence of mistakes is not so common (there were only 171 misspelt
words out of 11,718 in Baron’s analysis), and these most often involved the
omission of the apostrophe (naturally, in English), what is more, there were fre-
quent instances of self-correction in the interaction. The average length of IM
conversations which the students in the study held was 24 minutes per one, alt-
hough here considerable individual differences were observed, with some ex-
changes going for over an hour (Baron 2008: 58).
As said above, for Grzenia (2006) IM is a subcase of the chat communica-
tion, a public type of synchronous exchange, and one which involves more than
two participants. Originally a form of public IM for a group of participants cre-
ated in the 1980s, the real chat came into being in 1988 along with the emer-
gence of the so called IRC (Internet Relay Chat) (cf. Baron 2008: 22). In chat
participants enter a channel (as in IRC) or a room (as in AOL) which is specifi-
cally designated for a particular topic of discussion (cf. Werry 1996). Unlike the
IM, in the case of chat, much as in some discussion forums, the users assume a
new name, or a nick, under which they participate in the chats, which allows
them to modify their typical behaviour and appear as a very different person
who is capable of challenging the norms of public interaction. As Turkle (1995,

128 In her study of IM among students Baron (2008: 62) observed significant differences in
terms of breaking the utterances as regards male and female users, with men tending to
divide their utterances into chunks significantly more often.
129 However, only in about 65% of the times would one have used them in speech, contrary
to the 95% of the time when users have reported applying contractions in instant mes-
saging (cf. Baron 2008: 60).
2005: 288) claims, people can completely redefine themselves if they want to,
construct themselves anew through social interaction, take on multiple identities
“cycle through personae, cutting across “real life” distinctions of gender, race,
class and culture” (cf. Swann 2000, Thurlow et al. 2004). Crystal (2006: 12)
points out that most persons join one chatroom at a time, yet there is nothing to
stop them from joining more. An interesting interface between the synchronous
and the asynchronous type of communication is that while the chat participants
take part in a real time communication, they do have a chance to scroll back the
screen in order to see what was being discussed earlier, i.e., much as in the case
of other CMC genres, as newsgroups, listservs, blogs and MUDs, the chat keeps
a public record of what was being said at a given moment (Crystal 2006: 12,
Baron 2008: 23). Once extremely popular, chats, at least in the US, and also, as
it seems, in Poland appear to be losing their 1990s vogue.
Grzenia (2006: 171) points out that as far as turn-taking is concerned, a very
interesting and characteristic feature of chat is the presence of telelogue, as a
variant of a polylogue in which the links between particular ongoing parts of
communication tend to disappear (Ball-Rokeach and Reardon 1988, Voiskoun-
sky 1997, Grzenia 2006), their distorted order being the result of the speed with
which they are delivered by the users’ computers, some more modern and faster,
others slower. On the whole, it has been tested that the direction of chat is un-
predictable, many comments tend to be off-topic (cf. Herring 1999), the arrival
of new chat participants unnoticed and their greetings ignored (cf. Crystal 2006).
The sentences, due to the lag,130 tend to be short and vocabulary simple, as with
numerous participants chat progresses fast (cf. Crystal 2006). The norms of
punctuation are mostly abandoned, e.g., in the case of commas, dots and
apostrophies, on the other hand, the proportion of emotional markers, as e.g.,
exclamation marks, question marks and plentiful smileys are a common feature
of chat interaction (ibid.). Chat’s very characteristic element is that, no doubt
due to the assumptions of nicks and hence a frequent lack of hint as to the partic-
ipant’s gender, a certain users’ subculture is created, with a clear hierarchy
formed by the participants and even wars led by various IRCs groups, called
clans, about the domination in a given chat over the medium (cf. Grzenia 2006:
171). Thus, although the degree to which interpersonal aggression and abuse do
appear in various types of CMC has not been fully investigated (cf. Thurlow at
al. 2004), due to the fact that CMC interaction is not easily regulated and at the

130 Lag is “the time it takes for a sender’s typing to appear on the screens of others” (Crys-
tal 2006: 161). As Crystal points out, lag is of critical importance in the synchronous
mode because “[i]f an intervention is delayed too long it becomes irrelevant, as the con-
versation has moved on,” and due to numerous lags chat interaction becomes very dis-
ruptive.
same time more uninhibited, certain genres, notably chat and discussion groups
as well as comments to Internet journals (cf. Grzenia 2006) are particularly con-
ducive to flaming and other manifestations of verbal aggression (cf. O’Sullivan
and Flanagin 2003).
As regards other types of synchronous communication, computer conferenc-
ing listed by Baron (2008) is included in my overview of CMC forms merely for
the sake of completeness of the presentation, as Baron (2008: 21) herself
acknowledges the fact that the “text-based conferencing has largely been
eclipsed by other communication tools, along with more sophisticated versions
of the traditional telephone conference call.” The technology goes back to 1971
when a scheme called EMISARI was devised to provide a communication tool
for people in the event of an accident or a disaster depriving them of other ways
of contact, as it operated via telephone lines. Nowadays indeed new technolo-
gies, like video conferencing and computer based telephone protocols like
Skype have provided users with cheaper and more effective communication
means, and it is primarily for the sake of exchanging private comments that us-
ers might resort to the text-based options while using the above-mentioned new
technologies.
Finally, the last subtype of the synchronous multi-user online genres are
MUDs/MOOs and Second Life. Although Baron (2008) lists them separately,
due to the fact that both genres are subcategories of complex virtually created
playing games, I have decided to list them together. MUDs, primarily taking
root in the fantasy literature (cf. Grzenia 2006),131 and, MOOs (Multi User Dun-
geons, Object Oriented, structured around objects which are created and ma-
nipulated in the virtual world) a modification of MUDs and their junior by two
decades, are the older versions of online game spaces which originally utilised
primarily graphic tools, with a limited text-based description of situations, ac-
tions and emotions (Baron 2008). Second Life, on the other hand, originally de-
signed in 2003, involves a more multimedia type of approach in which, besides
assuming a game-related identity, participants may do other things, e.g., buy
land, sell real products or even use Second Life to teach a university course,
where the participants might take part in an academic discussion or teaching
practice which might closely recreate a real-life situation or analysed problem
(Crystal 2006, Newitz 2006, Baron 2008). Both in traditional MUDs/MOOs and
Second Life participants assume new identities, devise the whole set-up of the
imaginary world including the race of the protagonists, their shape, size, clothes,

131 The acronym originally comes from Multi-User Dungeons, as a reference to a popular
game “Dungeons and Dragons,” which then got re-phrased to Multi-User Dimensions
(Baron 2008: 21).
weapons, etc. (cf. Crystal 2006), with one player – the Game Master – defining
the game environment, and when interacting, even via chat available in the
games, they do so as the characters they portray. Some games may take hours or
days, others – even years, which adequately relates to the name Second Life and
leads to the creation of some sort of online community, at least in its symbolic or
imagined sense (cf. Anderson 1983, Cherny 1999, Thurlow et al. 2004). Some
users retain their MUD-related identities – often indicated by avatars, through-
out a variety of games. The serious commitment of some players to this activity
has led to the creation of the MUD-related language, much as in the case of the
e-language, but with the prefix MUD, e.g., MUDding (‘playing’), MOOmen,
MOOwomen, MUDster, even MOO-icide in the case of someone who is unhap-
py with the result of the game (Crystal 2006). The size of the groups of partici-
pants varies from several to even a few thousand (cf. Cherny 1999, Crystal
2006), which requires the function of an administrator who overviews the rules
of the game as well netiquette observance (cf. Grzenia 2006), and it is in their
power to newt (‘suspend’) or even toad (‘totally suspend’) a given user for mis-
behaviour (cf. Crystal 2006). Due to the fact that MUDs constitute entirely con-
structed virtual realities which continue to exist, even after their initiator pulls
out, unlike chat, they deserve special treatment in research, as they generate not
only special vocabulary related to the activity but also characteristic linguistic
behaviour unique to the medium and preference for some types of vocabulary
used in the interaction, e.g., some frequently used verbs, abbreviations or gen-
der-neutral pronouns (cf. Cherny 1999). As Crystal (2006: 186) claims,
“[p]robably no other domain within the Internet offers such possibilities for cre-
ative, idiosyncratic, imaginative expression (…).”

5. Language and the Internet

In order to sum up the above section concerning language variation, i.e., the va-
rieties specifically linked, or even developed as a result of the Internet advances,
a number of remarks will be offered with regard to their characteristics as well
as controversies which have arisen in the field of sociolinguistics as concerns the
status of this language variety. As said above, the Internet communication, due
to its at time quite unique features, has been termed by Crystal (2001/2006,
2011) a new medium132 of communication (Stockwell (2002: 7) uses the term in

132 In his evaluation of the electronic discourse Crystal (2011: 21) states that “Internet lan-
guage is better seen as writing which has been pulled some way in the direction of
speech rather than as speech which has been written down.” Yet, the application of the
traditional dichotomy between speech and writing is misleading, as the Internet
a more restricted way as a reference to email), while some other linguists have
claimed it is a new variety of language (cf. Żydek-Bednarczuk 2007, Data
2008). As hinted at in some of the above sections, one of the most tangible
markers that the new phenomenon has left a trace on the human communication
of the present era, even of those persons who may themselves be only passively
exposed to this medium of communication, is a new set of vocabulary items de-
scribing certain CMC-related concepts and activities. The best known are the e-
compounds, lexical items based on traditionally used names of activities or no-
tions which, having been modified through the connection with the new medium
or having expanded onto the new territories of electronic interaction, have addi-
tionally attained a new, medium-related variant, best represented in such con-
cepts as e-mail, e-talk, e-discourse, e-learning, e-forum, e-test, e-banking, e-
vote, etc. (cf. Thurlow et al. 2004, Crystal 2001/2006, Rejter 2008, Krakowska
2008), also in Polish e-lud, e-kosmetyka, e-gmina, e-konferencja, e-inicjatywa,
e-biblioteka, etc. (cf. Łukaszewicz 2002, Rejter 2008, Krakowska 2008), beside
new names of activities and technologies, such as portal, wortal, server, online,
hypertext, virtual, real, blogging, etc. (cf. Grzenia 2006, Rejter 2008, Crystal
2011). As indicated above, some of the specific online conventions, e.g., the
aforementioned compounds with MUD- and MOO-, have also led to lexical ex-
pansion (cf. Crystal 2001/2006). Some new functions have resulted in the con-
version of original nouns referring to the concepts into new activities, and thus
new verbs, as e.g. to email someone, to text someone, to blog, facebooking, or
alternatively, verbs have been converted into nouns, as, e.g., likes, etc.133 It
needs to be stressed that although the present analysis concerns variation in Eng-
lish, which may be leaving other languages out of the loop, English, as demon-
strated in the subsequent chapters, has expanded its power onto other national
groups and has often been accepted as a medium of communication also be-
tween persons whose first language is not English. This has to a large extent
been an outcome of the introduction of the Internet and the spread of Internet
communication, which has suddenly made it possible for people living in two
distant parts of the world to interact with each other online. Indeed, as studies
from 2003 (cf. Thurlow et al. 2004) show, as many as 35.6% of the Internet traf-
fic was carried out by means of English, which, considering the use of between
5000-7000 languages in the world (cf. Dirven and Verspoor 1998, Crystal 2000,

language is identical to none of those, “but selectively and adaptively displays

properties of both (...). It does things that neither of the other mediums does.”
133 Crystal (2011: 59) gives quite a rich list of examples of blends formed with the use of
names of new electronic genres or activities, e.g., twaddiction, twissues, twictionary,
twitterholic, blargon, blogosphere, bloggerel, etc.
Nettle and Romaine 2000, Gordon 2005),134 clearly shows the disproportionate
representation of the other tongues and demonstrates the popularity of English
(cf. e.g., Durham 2007, Warschauer et al. 2007). Graddol (2006: 44), however,
flags a gradual decrease of the presence of English materials online,135 even
though English still remains the main language used in CMC. Data for 2010
(Crystal 2011: 79) demonstrate that English continues to occupy the leading po-
sition among other languages, with 496 million users (27.5% of all the Internet
users), yet Chinese is second, with 408 million users (22.6% of all), catching up
very fast, with its rate of occurrence having grown four times as fast as that of
English in the last decade.136
Although many scholars are cautious when it comes to assigning the label of
a new medium to Internet communication following Crystal (2001/2006), they
do observe sometimes quite far-reaching changes which have appeared in the
language triggered largely by the CMC. What some, e.g., Thurlow et al. (2004)
do indicate, is that quite possibly the changes which we are now facing have al-
ready been underway for the past few decades, as language is never static and it
changes over time. Much as the coexistence with the Vikings and the influence
of Scandinavian on English speeded up the process of the reduction of grammat-
ical inflections at the turn of Old and Middle English (cf. Baugh and Cable
2002), so the invention of the computer in the post-war times has fostered the
democratisation of language and relaxation of language norms, which was al-
ready initiated a few decades before (cf. Thurlow et al. 2004). Over the centuries
new social and technological developments have certainly impacted on the char-
acter of human communication and the quality of language used and disseminat-
ed. An obvious example is the introduction of print in the 15th century, which
helped to spread one standard variety across the respective countries due to the
fact that suddenly many readers gained easy access to the same variety of lan-
guage, unlike in the times of manuscripts, which were few and costly (cf. Baugh
and Cable 2002, Fisiak 2005). Another meaningful step was the development of
the press and subsequently audio-visual media, which not only had a similar ef-
fect in terms of spreading one standard variety to the most remote parts of vari-
ous lands, but they also became sources of new and fashionable vocabulary and
popularised certain types of linguistic behaviour, e.g., the use and spread of the
Received Pronunciation thanks to the BBC involvement in Britain (cf. Taitt

134 The majority of the tongues have fewer than 100, 000 speakers (Paolillo 2007).
135 In 1998 85% of the online materials were in English, 72% in 1999, and 68% in 2000
(Graddol 2006: 44).
136 For the discussion of linguistic issues concerning, e.g., writing systems, features of dis-
course, gender, and code-switching, analysed in the context of the use of various lan-
guages on the Internet cf. Danet and Herring, eds. (2007).
1996). By liaising with various political and ideological options and parties they
have also promoted certain points of view, influencing public opinion, which
has become the subject of study in Critical Discourse Analysis (cf. Fairclough
1989, 1995, 2003, Talbot 1992, Matheson 2005).
The influence of the present-day electronic media certainly cannot be lightly
dismissed when it comes to the features of what is often referred to as netspeak
or netlingo. In the first place, although the names imply that electronic dis-
course involves speech, it after all relies heavily on writing (cf. Herring 1996,
Thurlow et al. 2004), due to which, as discussed earlier, however informal the
language used becomes, it always leads to a different formulation of thoughts
and different linguistic means than would be the case in traditional writing (cf.
Biber and Conrad 2009). Whether this in fact results in a separate medium with
idiosyncratic features remains a point of controversy. The modern media do,
however, affect the traditional process of communication in that, first of all, they
blur the up to now fairly clear distinction between the type of audience different
media were trying to address, i.e., whether it was a mass or an interpersonal
communication. The former, the traditional focus of the media, is mostly unilat-
eral, whereas the latter assumes reciprocity largely by means of the same medi-
um (cf. Grzenia 2006). The electronic media not only challenge the hithereto
audience of the audio-visual media in that the sender and the addressee are
mostly present at the same time, unlike in many traditional media broadcasts
which were pre-recorded, but they also confuse the mass and the interpersonal
distinction, as almost every communication participant can be both. Online
newspaper versions elicit comments from the readers, encyclopaedias and dic-
tionaries, so far written by groups of anonymous authors for publishing houses
are now co-authored, as in the case of Wikipedia or Wiktionary, by online users
(cf. Wrycza 2008, Tereszkiewicz 2010, 2012), personal communication in the
form of blogs is at the same time publicly available, etc. (cf. Morris and Ogan
1996, O’Sullivan 2000, Herring et al. 2004). This certainly raises questions
about the boundary between what can and should be discussed in the intimate
and what in the public contexts, while the electronic media practices are leading
to a visible relaxation of social norms. In view of the above, one of the results is
a growing ambiguity as to the authorship and the direction of communication in
the Internet media (cf. Mochola 2008, Grzelka 2009).
As Thurlow et al. (2004: 124) point out, the emphasis in the netspeak is al-
ways on the speed and ease of communication as well as its informality (cf. Her-
ring 1996), as most online genres put the social goals of facilitating and main-
taining social relationships first, although it also at the same time allows for a
greater degree of online aggression (cf. Thurlow et al. 2004). As a result of these
tendencies, many traditional rules of grammar, spelling and punctuation are of-
ten broken or flouted in CMC, what is more, the medium also fosters creativity
in language use in terms of new spelling conventions and new vocabulary (cf.
ibid., Wrycza 2008, Dąbrowska 2011cd). Thurlow et al. (2004: 124) list some of
the most typical features of netspeak, as, e.g., word compounds and blends; ab-
breviations and acronyms; minimal use of capitalisation, punctuation and hy-
phenation, less attention to accurate spelling and avoidance of spelling errors;
less or no use of traditional message openings and closures (cf. Dąbrowska
2000, 2002c, 2004, 2006bc, 2011cd). Due to these modifications, as already
mentioned earlier, some of the genres, notably text messages (cf. Crystal 2008)
have been blamed for negatively affecting the users’, especially school-
children’s abilities to use the language correctly, to spell it properly. Baron
(2008) also mentions that electronic media have generally been put at fault for
impoverishing the richness of language; Ożóg (2001, cf. Data 2009) complains
about the shallowness and superficiality of the language used by the young gen-
eration and the pragmatic approach to politeness. Claims concerning the changes
of social interaction patterns and fostering anti-social behavior as a result of in-
terlocutors being engrossed in the electronic rather than personal communication
have also been voiced (cf. Baron 1984, Hale and Scanlon 1999, Kiesler et al.
1984). More specifically, also the language of the traditional media has changed
by, e.g., introducing more sentence connective in the sentence-initial position in
order to make the style of presentation more engaging to the readers (Cotter
2003, Herring 2004). It has also been suggested that electronic media have
speeded up language change in respect of using and spreading some more non-
standard, so far less often used and less overtly prestigious varieties by making
access to CMC widely available, which in turn has influenced the stylistic varia-
tion and vocabulary choices (cf. Herring 2004). In respect of the language
choice Hinrichs (2006, after Dorleijn and Nortier 2009: 134) has demonstrated
that the unmarked language in daily CMC use is English, a claim which I will
also support by the analysis presented in the further chapters of this book. CMC
communication as supposedly democratic in character has led to the shortening
of distance between participants of communication, which is visible, for exam-
ple, in the resistance to the use of more formalised, traditional forms of address
in email communication as well as in the fostering of some informal, even illog-
ical forms (cf. Dąbrowska 2010a). Some of the above claims have been under-
mined, e.g., the ones concerning spelling (cf. Crystal 2008), yet more systematic
study and a creation of large electronic text corpora is needed before the above
claims concerning the modification of language and language habits are con-
firmed or completely refuted.
6. Computer Mediated Communication as a source
of sociolinguistic data
Computers and the Internet have become an inseparable part of life in the con-
temporary era. They help mediate between people, be it as carriers of factual
information, as tools of phatic communion, or as shapers of social relations
between their users – and very often perform all of these tasks at once. It is hard
to dismiss their role in our lives, so intimately have they become intertwined
with our everyday existence.
Due to the above electronic media have grown to be an invaluable source of
information concerning a variety of human activities and notably, the use of lan-
guage. Not only do they shape the way modern humans communicate, as I have
shown above, but they also convey invaluable information about various aspects
of language use. Thus they constitute an excellent source of material for the stu-
dy of human communication and various aspects of language use, and in ample
quantities, which in the case of sociolinguistic investigation facilitates what is
predominantly a quantitative study (cf. Labov 1972, Trudgill 1974, Wardhaugh
1992, Hudson 1996),137 searching for large numbers of data coming from natural
speech situations in order to draw meaningful conclusions about the use of lan-
guage in social contexts. As Adolphs (2006: 3) observes, for researchers “inte-
rested in the exploration of social phenomena, such as the relationship between
patterns of usage and social context for example, naturally occurring discourse is
required as the basis of any study.” Collecting samples of natural speech, unin-
hibited by artificial experimental conditions has always proved to be a challenge
for sociolinguists, a variety of more or less successful methods have been deve-
loped in order to meet it138 (cf. Labov 1972, Wolfram and Fasold 1974, Spolsky
1998, Adolphs 2006), the time and human resources needed for the collection of
sufficient samples of language being an obvious difficulty to tackle in the first
place. Therefore it is no suprise that linguists have welcomed the development
of the electronic media as a source of easily accessible linguistic data which can
be studied systematically, for, as Burnard (1999, after Adolphs 2006: 2-3) says,
“the digital world so greatly increases access to original unmediated source ma-
terial (or at least simulation thereof).” Although, as Crystal (2011: 3) states, “In-
ternet linguistics is in its infancy,” the new vein of study opens up a wide pletho-
ra of research options – “[w]e can anticipate studies of Internet syntax, morpho-
logy, means of transmission (phonological, graphological, multimedia), seman-
137 For the description of the more ethnographic approach to the study of language in social
contexts see, e.g., Hymes (1974), Eckert (1989).
138 For instance, the “danger of death” question encouraged by Labov (1972, cf. Wolfram
and Fasold 1974) as a part of the sociolinguistic interview.
tics, discourse, pragmatics, sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics and so on” (ibi-
dem.).139
It is obvious that the richness of sources in itself presents methodological
problems too, with such a variety of genres as discussed in the previous sections,
and the character of the language used moving along the speech–writing contin-
uum. The language samples studied are undeniably available mostly in the writ-
ten form, which may be viewed by some as a drawback to the analysis of natu-
rally flowing interaction, especially from the point of view of traditional rese-
arch tools (e.g., Gumperz 1982), as the level of consciousness on the part of the
text producer is unquestionably higher than in the case of speech, and, for in-
stance, removes cases of false starts or hesitations from the data, thereby making
the interaction more orderly (cf. Dorleijn and Nortier 2009). The very fact of
choosing to write in a certain language, register or style, however, in itself con-
stitutes an invaluable source of information about the text author, his/her positi-
on within the complex social context and his/her choices made in the construc-
tion of his/her identity (cf. Turkle 1995, 2005, Rampton 1995, Hinrichs 2006,
Dąbrowska 2011d). What is more, the fact that the data are written means that
they should not be misunderstood or misinterpreted, which is often the case with
transcriptions of oral samples of speech, not to mention the obvious advantage
that there is no need to transcribe electronic data in the first place, which saves
time and makes investigation much more manageable. Dorelijn and Nortier
(2009: 131-133) enumerate various strengths as well as weaknesses of selected
electronic registers and genres, viz. email, chat and discussion forum. For in-
stance, as regards the downsides of each, emails (and, as my own experience
shows, also text messages), as examples of private communication, are hard to
obtain, chat samples, on the other hand, are difficult to store, and the anonymity
of the post authors makes meaningful sociolinguistic conclusions hard to draw.
What is more, the bias towards the phatic side of communication limits the in-
vestigation scope. Finally, the forum posts are, like chat, often anonymous, with
interaction not infrequently limited to just the most active members. The be-
nefits of electronic data, on the other hand, often exceed their weaknesses. And
thus, e.g., the fact that email authors are mostly known allows for a meaningful
analysis of the social relationships and the authors’ position in the social net-
works, what is more, the variation within the email genre constitutes a rich
source of varied data, much as are the forum posts concerning a variety of sub-

139 As regards the field of corpus linguistics, where access to electronic data should prove
particularly beneficial, Adolphs (2006: 4) enumerates the following fields of study: text
analysis for the sake of facilitating literary interpretation, study of lexical items as an
investigation of ideology encoding, exploration of data for teaching applications, and
studies of naturally occurring discourse.
jects, in which case also some information about the age and gender, etc., of the
users can be drawn from the character of the forum and the information unwit-
tingly revealed. Both the forum and chat posts convey precious samples of in-
formal language, most coveted by sociolinguists. Both forum and chat samples
are also easily accessible, and to a large extent open to manipulation in terms of
topics, language forms, etc.; last but not least, chat shows a high level of simila-
rity to naturally occurring conversation. The above information clearly indicates,
therefore, that meaningful sociolinguistic analysis can be carried out on the basis
of electronic texts, an aspect which is further explored in the subsequent chap-
ters of this book. In order to expand on the analytical resources the medium of
the social network, new and hence not featuring in extensive sociolinguistic stu-
dies so far, has been chosen as the source of data for the present study, following
some earlier investigations of its language (cf. Dąbrowska 2011c, 2012acd). The
social network, and specifically Facebook, shares a number of advantages with
the electronic registers, notably those of large quantities of easily accessible da-
ta, a considerable degree of informality in the language, the possibility of mani-
pulating the subjects in order to explore various aspects of language use and, and
which is an asset not encountered in the forum or chat, access to social informa-
tion about post authors through their profile data. These aspects, in my view,
make the social network a particularly valuable source of information about the
use of language in a variety of contexts, especially those more private ones, so
far much harder to access in sufficient amounts, and, as the subsequent chapters
will demonstrate, especially telling as regards the variation connected with the
use of the English language, the main subject of the analysis.