Linguistic studies of computer-mediated communication

Abstract

The article presents an overview of the work of Russian and foreign authors concerning the phenomenon of computer-mediated communication in linguistic perspective. We describe the features of the digital communication channel that can infl uence different levels of language, with special attention to the studies focusing on vocabulary, morphology, syntax, and punctuation of texts generated during Internet communication. We consider specific quantitative studies of these levels of language and note the special lability of the lexical level. We also demonstrate the mixed nature of borrowing morphological, syntactic, and punctuation features from spoken and written language and highlight the role of the linguistic economy principle at each level. The paper gives a detailed description of the corpus studies by I. Karpov and A. Bodomo, and also draws on the material from the Russian National Corpus. In addition, the works dealing with the issues of speech patterns of communication and code-switching are described. Further, we address the problem of inheritance of features of spoken and written language by computer-mediated communication: we show how many elements are borrowed and transformed at different levels and explain which extralinguistic factors can influence those changes. Special attention is paid to such constructions as well-wishes and appeals, as well as their functioning in various Internet spaces (e-mail, messengers, social media, forums). The final part of the article summarizes the results, concludes about the intermediate position of computer-mediated communication between oral and written communication, and discusses the prospects for studying Internet communication using quantitative methods.