Linguistic Features in Synchronous Internet Communication

Linguistic Features in Synchronous Internet Communication Submitted to: Dr. Judy Ho ENG 202 March 15, 2010 STUDENT NO: 1191557, 1104944 MAJOR: BACEE YEAR: 2 Abstract Instant Messaging (IM) is becoming an increasingly favorite channel of co-occurrent internet communication oddly among teenagers (Huang, 2008; Berglund, 2009; Crystal, 2006, p.248). The manifestations of IM clients such as ICQ, MSN, Facebook chat, has given rise to a peculiar structure of lecture communication in the internet community -Computer-mediated communication (CMC) (Crystal, 2006). It is of affair to see how participants of these electronic chat conversations flush toilet generalise each other, considering that they atomic number 18 so unintelligible and diametric from face-to-face communication (Holmer, 2008). This paper examines the distinctive linguistic features in CMC texts that are extracted from Windows Live Messenger (WLM). Based on an more or less 800-word corp us of inst messages, collected from an undergraduate school-age child whose premier(prenominal) language is Cantonese and second language is English, this study investigates three nearly prevalent linguistic features in synchronous CMC and justifies their existence in accordance to the Hong Kong context. TABLE OF CONTENTS Page.No INTRODUCTION DATA ingathering RESULTS & ANALYSIS