Abstract
The purpose of this study was to investigate the linguistic forms, which commonly constitute meanings in the digital environment. The data were sampled from 200 Bachelor of Science (BS) students (who had Urdu as their primary language of communication and English as one of the academic languages or the most prestigious second language) of five universities situated in Lahore, Pakistan. The procedure for analysis was conceived within much related theoretical work on text analysis. The study reveals that cyber-language is organized through patterns of use, which can be broadly classified into minimal linguistic forms constituting a meaning-making resource. In addition, the expression of syntactic mood, and discourse roles the participants technically assume tend to contribute to the theory of meaning in the digital environment. It is hoped that the study would make some contribution to the growing literature on multilingual computer-mediated communication (CMC).
Highlights
Computer-mediated communication (CMC) is proliferating in the lives of most people today
This study pursued a descriptive approach to analyze the linguistic repertoire of Urdu/English bilinguals to explain how CMC works
While mapping out minimal linguistic forms, we found unique configurations which were rich in their semantic manifestation
Summary
Computer-mediated communication (CMC) is proliferating in the lives of most people today. Communication theorists (Baron, 2008; Crystal, 2001, 2006; Herring, 1996; Thurlow, Lengel, & Tomic, 2004) have been investing considerable time to investigate the emergence of digital meaning. This scenario seems to be shaping if not determining many aspects of our real life, as has been argued by Turkle (2011). The virtual self has attracted much attention only in recent years This transformation manifests an evolution of meaning-making self, which is expressed through such mediated communication
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