Abstract

In this article, I present evidence of a repair morpheme in the variety of Online Written English (OWE) used by a community of World of Warcraft players. This morpheme, represented by the asterisk (*), has no counterpart in spoken English but yet follows discernible rules for use and deployment within the community. While *-repair follows many principles of repair used in spoken English, it has developed natively in an online environment using an extra-alphabetical character which is unique to the online community. The existence of *-repair is one example of how OWE has differentiated itself from spoken varieties of English, and creates questions about the influence of the internet on language forms.

Full Text
Published version (Free)

Talk to us

Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have

Schedule a call