19.

Micro-linguistic structural features of

computer-mediated communication
Markus Bieswanger

1. Introduction

Ever since linguists started attending to computer-mediated communication

(CMC) in the mid-1980s, they have been interested in its linguistic characteristics.
A number of micro-linguistic structural features have been identified in the media
as well as in scholarly linguistic literature as especially “characteristic” of lan-
guage use in CMC. In the sense of this chapter, CMC includes all modes1 of “text-
based human-human interaction mediated by networked computers or mobile tel-
ephony” (Herring 2007: 1), such as email, Internet Relay Chat, online discussion
forums, instant messaging, text messaging, and weblogs. This chapter focuses on
micro-linguistic structural features below the syntactic level, often involving or-
thography and typography, which have been suggested to exist for CMC as a
whole, for individual technologically and socially determined modes of CMC, and
for CMC – or CMC modes – in different languages.
The influence of medium variables, or “the deterministic influence of the com-
puter medium on language use” (Herring 2001: 614), was often overstated in the
early days of CMC research and sometimes still is. However, there is no doubt
that the absence of several communication channels, such as the auditory and the
gestural, in text-based CMC is a force that has shaped certain of its linguistic fea-
tures. As early as 1984, Kiesler, Siegel, and McGuire claimed that the lack of con-
text cues in text-only CMC was responsible for differences between CMC and
non-mediated communication (see also Baron 1984; Crystal 2001; Danet 2001;
Ferrara, Brunner, and Whittemore 1991; Werry 1996). Technological factors such
as the limited screen size of computers and mobile phones, the awkwardness of in-
putting text messages via a mobile phone keypad, and the distinction between syn-
chronous and asynchronous CMC have also been identified as influencing the
structural properties of language use in CMC (Crystal 2001; Herring 2001; Werry
1996).
Murray (1988: 11) was among the first to list characteristic features of com-
puter-mediated language, which she calls “conventions”, attributing them to the re-
duced number of channels in CMC:
Since CmC can not make use of all the channels of communication, conventions are de-
veloping to represent paralinguistic cues. These include expressives such as used in
comic strips (e.g., “humpf”), multiple vowels to represent intonation contours (e.g.,
“sooooo”), multiple punctuation marks (e.g., “well how did things go yesterday????”),

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464 Markus Bieswanger

use of asterisks for stress (e.g., “please call – we’ve *got* to discuss”), and, more re-
cently, icons (e.g., “>:(”, which shows a sad face when rotated ninety degrees).

Since then, collections of characteristic or distinctive micro-linguistic CMC fea-

tures have been influential in shaping research on computer-mediated language
use. Danet (2001: 17) proposed a list of nine “common features of digital writing” –
multiple punctuation, eccentric spelling, capital letters, asterisks for emphasis,
written out laughter, descriptions of action, “smiley” icons, abbreviations, and the
use of all lower case – that has been the basis for other studies (e.g., Nishimura
2007). Werry (1996: 53) provides a comparable list of “characteristic properties”
of Internet Relay Chat; Crystal (2001: 17, 24–93) presents a similar set of features
that he claims are characteristic of “Netspeak” (for a discussion of this term, see
section 2.1), and Baron (2008: 151) identifies “emoticons, abbreviations, and ac-
ronyms” as “the standard landmarks” in CMC studies. Moreover, Danet and Her-
ring (2007b: 27) report that “[c]onsiderable evidence has accumulated that distinc-
tive CMC features recur in languages besides English, for example, abbreviations,
emoticons, and conversational usage”.
This chapter discusses the characteristics and the pragmatics of use of four cat-
egories of common micro-linguistic features that have been identified in the
scholarly CMC literature, keeping in mind that the occurrence of these phenomena
varies according to the language and script used, the mode of CMC employed, the
context of the interaction, and other use- and user-related factors:

1) Emoticons
2) Non-standard spelling and creative use of writing systems
3) Abbreviation
4) Non-standard punctuation

The chapter is organized as follows: Section 2 provides a review of recent and

seminal literature on micro-linguistic structural features of CMC. Section 3 ad-
dresses individual features, including a discussion of the role of technological
mediation for each feature. Section 4 concludes the chapter with an outlook on fu-
ture linguistic and pragmatic research concerning micro-linguistic structural fea-
tures of CMC.

2. Relevant literature

The linguistic and pragmatic literature devoted to micro-linguistic features of

CMC and their use can be categorized according to different approaches and foci,
which appear in various combinations. A number of works focus on linguistic fea-
tures of individual CMC modes or genres, whereas some universalizing attempts
aim to provide a comprehensive overview of the characteristic features of some

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 Micro-linguistic structural features of computer-mediated communication 465

kind of “Internet language”. A further distinction can be made between works fo-
cusing on CMC in one language and studies or edited volumes that deal with CMC
in more than one language.

2.1. Universalizing versus mode-focused approaches

2.1.1. “Internet language” and “Netspeak”

For the past two decades, the mass media have tended to stereotype, overgeneral-
ize, and exaggerate characteristics of computer-mediated language use (Androut-
sopoulos 2006; Thurlow 2006). The resulting stereotypes and overgeneralizations
have to a certain extent been reinforced by the early academic work of what An-
droutsopoulos (2006: 420) calls the “‘first wave’ of linguistic CMC studies” in the
1990s (see also Herring 2007). Some CMC-focused work of this period postulated
something like an “Internet language” or “electronic language” (Collot and Bel-
more 1996; Crystal 2001; Haase, Huber, Krumeich, and Rehm 1997). Crystal
(2001,2 2004a) called this variety “Netspeak” – later supplemented by the term
“Textspeak” to refer to the language of texting (Crystal 2004b) – based on the
Orwellian terms “Newspeak” and “Oldspeak” introduced in the novel 1984, and
used in analogy to the terms “Seaspeak” and “Airspeak”. According to Crystal
(2001: 18), “[t]here is a widely held intuition that some sort of Netspeak exists – a
type of language displaying features that are unique to the Internet […]”. He sub-
divides Netspeak into mode-bound varieties such as the “language of e-mail” (94)
and the “language of chatgroups” (129). Crystal further claims that Netspeak is
not limited to English, as opposed to terms such as “Netlish”, which “is plainly
derived from ‘English’” (2001: 17).
A number of linguists have since challenged the existence of Netspeak and
Textspeak. Dürscheid (2004) calls Netspeak a myth and argues that it is impossible
to make universal claims about language use in CMC (see also Schlobinski 2001;
Stein 2003; Thurlow 2006). Similarly, Herring (2007: 3) asserts that CMC re-
searchers should not lump “all CMC into a single type” and criticizes Crystal’s
concept of Netspeak “as an emergent, global variety of online language” as being
an overgeneralization. Dürscheid’s and Herring’s views are in line with observa-
tions by Runkehl, Schlobinski, and Siever (1998), who argue that statements con-
cerning the language of CMC or the language of the Internet do not reflect the lin-
guistic reality. Such overgeneralization ignores quantitative and qualitative
variation across different modes of CMC and CMC in different languages, as well
as user and use-related variation within individual CMC modes (Androutsopoulos
2003; Bieswanger and Intemann 2011; Hård af Segerstad 2002; Herring and Ze-
lenkauskaite 2008, 2009).
The extent of linguistic variation within CMC modes and in CMC in different
languages has also cast doubt on whether there really are mode-bound varieties,

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466 Markus Bieswanger

such as a language of texting, a language of email, and a language of chatgroups

(Crystal 2001, 2004b). Androutsopoulos (2006: 420) considers it “empirically
questionable whether in fact anything like a ‘language of e-mails’ exists”, and
Bieswanger and Intemann (2011) assert that there is no such thing as a language of
online discussion forums. Several studies addressing the differences among texting
practices in different languages, for different purposes, and/or by different sociol-
inguistic groups – for example, the work of Anis (2007) on neography in French
texting, a contrastive study of private texting in English and German conducted
by Bieswanger (2007), and a study of Italian iTV SMS by Herring and Zelenkaus-
kaite (2008, 2009) – have shown that there is no universal language of texting
or “Textspeak”. Rather, the findings reveal considerable variation in language use
in texting related to the language the SMS are written in, the purpose of the mess-
ages, the intention of the writers, and sociolinguistic factors such as user gender
and age.

2.1.2. Mode-focused approaches

Studies focusing on language use in individual modes of CMC have also had a long
tradition within the relatively young field of CMC research, reflecting the fact that
“CMC is not homogeneous” (Herring 1996: 3). Following the use of the term
“mode” for different types of CMC by Murray (1988), and reflecting Herring’s
(2007: 3) definition of mode as a “CMC system [together with] the social and cul-
tural practices that have arisen around [its] use”, many linguistic CMC studies
have since concentrated on the identification of the micro-linguistic features of in-
dividual modes of CMC. The studies mentioned in this subsection focus fully or
partly on the description of micro-linguistic structural properties of either one
CMC mode or a limited number of CMC modes, as well as addressing the prag-
matic motivation for the use of certain features. They represent a selection of semi-
nal and recent mode-focused linguistic CMC research, exemplified by literature on
Internet Relay Chat, text messaging, and online discussion forums.
Internet Relay Chat (IRC) is one of the most-researched modes of CMC. Werry
(1996) characterized linguistic properties of French and English IRC, and Danet
(2001) dedicated an entire chapter of her book Cyberpl@y to the playfulness of
writing in IRC. Moreover, Danet, Ruedenberg-Wright, and Rosenbaum-Tamari
(1997) included a section on the use of emoticons in chat, and del-Teso-Craviotto
(2006) addressed, among other things, features such as emoticons and acronyms in
Spanish and English dating chats. Works completely or partly devoted to micro-
linguistic features of chat communication in languages other than English include
Anis (1999b) for French, Aschwanden (2001), Beißwenger (2001, 2007), and
Bader (2002) for German, Hård af Segerstad (2002) for Swedish, Kotilainen3
(2002) for Finnish, and Shirai (2006) and Katsuno and Yano (2007) for Japanese.
(On language use in chat, see also Paolillo and Zelenkauskaite, this volume).

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 Micro-linguistic structural features of computer-mediated communication 467

The structural characteristics of text messages in different languages have also

received considerable attention from linguists in recent years. Schlobinski et al.
(2001) present the results of a pilot study on texting in German, Androutsopoulos
and Schmidt (2002) analyze linguistic features of German text messages, Döring
(2002) concentrates on shortenings in texting in German, and Bieswanger (2010,
2011) addresses aspects of gendered typography in German SMS. Schlobinski and
Watanabe (2003) contrastively analyze the use of emoticons in text messages
written in German and Japanese, and Bieswanger (2007) compares the overall
frequency of abbreviations and the frequency of certain types of shortenings in
German and English texting in a corpus-based study. Thurlow and Brown (2003)
analyze text messages in English for features such as non-standard orthography,
and Anis (2007) addresses a range of micro-linguistic features of texting in French,
which he subsumes under the term “neography”. Hård af Segerstad (2002) is con-
cerned with language use in Swedish SMS, Kasesniemi (2003) with text messag-
ing in Finnish, and Ling (2005) with Norwegian texting. Pietrini (2001) focuses on
non-standard spelling in Italian text messaging, and Herring and Zelenkauskaite
(2008, 2009) investigate gender-related typographic variability in SMS posted to
Italian interactive television programs. Deumert and Masinyana (2008) compare
the linguistic properties of text messages in English and isiXhosa in South Africa,
including shortening and non-standard spelling. (On the linguistics of SMS, see
also Thurlow and Poff, this volume.)
Until recently, online discussion forums and related modes such as discussion
groups and bulletin board systems (BBS) attracted less discussion of micro-lin-
guistic features than did IRC or SMS (Bieswanger and Intemann 2011). However,
Waseleski (2006) analyses gender variation in the use of exclamation points in
postings to two English-language electronic discussion groups, and Bieswanger
and Intemann (2011) study use- and user-related variation in 10 linguistic and
interactional features commonly associated with language use in online dis-
cussion forums. In the volume edited by Danet and Herring (2007a), Su (2007: 64)
“examines creative uses of writing systems in college affiliated Electronic Bulletin
Board Systems” in Taiwan, and Tseliga (2007: 116) dedicates one section of her
chapter to a “corpus-based analysis of Greek vs. Greeklish postings to public dis-
cussion lists”, including features such as emoticons, non-standard punctuation, and
non-standard capitalization. In the same volume, Nishimura (2007) investigates
the use of micro-linguistic features, for example shortenings, emoticons, and non-
standard and creative spelling, in contributions to Japanese BBS and compares
“features of messages written by Japanese CMC users with their English counter-
parts” (167). (On language use in online discussion forums, see also Gruber, this
volume.)

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468 Markus Bieswanger

2.2. Works addressing CMC in one language vs. more than one language
2.2.1. Works addressing CMC in one language
Much of the available scholarly literature on language use in CMC is based on
studies that address CMC in one language only. Particularly in the early days of
linguistic CMC research, scholarly works on CMC written in English often meant
research on CMC in English, often without stating explicitly that English-based
CMC was the focus of attention. For example, Danet et al.’s (1997) study of writ-
ing, play, and performance on IRC does not state in the title, the abstract, or the in-
troductory section that the study is only about English. Danet and Herring (2007b:
5) remark that “[m]ost researchers publishing in English venues have generalized
about the language of computer-mediated communication, whereas in fact they
were describing computer-mediated English, sometimes in a single CMC mode”.
They rightfully complain that much of the CMC research published in English
does not do justice to the fact that the majority of Internet users are not native
speakers of English and that “hundreds of millions of people are already partici-
pating online today in languages other than English, in some form of nonnative
English, or in a mixture of languages, and this trend is projected for the years to
come” (Danet and Herring 2007b: 4).
Although Su (2007) claimed that there is a “relative lack of research on com-
puter-mediated communication (CMC) in non-English-based Internet environ-
ments”, in fact there is a substantial and growing body of research on language use
in non-English-based CMC, much of it published in languages other than English
(see Schlobinski 2001; Stein 2003). For example, the collection of articles in
French edited by Anis (1999a) focuses on language use in French CMC, Swedish
CMC is addressed in Josephson (1997) and Hård af Segerstad (2002), and German
CMC is featured in several volumes: Weingarten (1997), Kallmeyer (2000), Beiß-
wenger (2001), Siever, Schlobinski, and Runkehl (2005), Schlobinski (2006), and
Androutsopoulos, Runkehl, Schlobinski, and Siever 2006).
Unlike many of the studies investigating language use in English-based CMC,
most works on non-English-based CMC published in English explicitly indicate
the language they focus on in the title, such as Anis’ (2007) article “Neography:
Unconventional spelling in French SMS text messages” and Hård af Segerstad’s
(2005) study “Language use in Swedish mobile text messaging” (see also Herring
and Zelenkauskaite 2008; Ling 2005; Nishimura 2007, Siebenhaar 2006; Su 2007;
Tseliga 2007; Yang 2007). However, CMC research has reached a point where par-
ticularly authors publishing in English need to indicate clearly whether they are
“describing computer-mediated English” (Danet and Herring 2007b: 5), whether
they are investigating language use in CMC or modes of CMC in a language or par-
ticular languages other than English, or whether they are attempting to make more
universal claims as to patterns of language use in CMC in all languages.

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 Micro-linguistic structural features of computer-mediated communication 469

2.2.2. Works addressing CMC in more than one language

While the majority of linguistic and pragmatic CMC research focuses on language
use in one language, there are also volumes and individual studies that deal with
CMC in more than one language. Danet and Herring (2007a) include chapters on
language use in several modes of CMC in a range of languages and language var-
ieties, and the German-language volume edited by Schlobinski and Siever (2005)
concentrates on language use in weblogs in nine different languages. While many
studies focusing on a language other than English take the available literature on
language use in English CMC as a point of reference (e.g., Anis 2007; Nishimura
2007), relatively few individual studies explicitly compare language use in CMC
in more than one language. Recent studies of this kind include, for example, Bies-
wanger (2007), del-Teso-Craviotto (2006), Schlobinski and Watanabe (2003), and
Zelenkauskaite and Herring (2006).

3. Micro-linguistic features of CMC

Researchers have come to appreciate that the occurrence of “characteristic” micro-

linguistic CMC features depends on a number of factors. On the one hand, techno-
logical mediation significantly influences language use in CMC and has led CMC
researchers to distinguish technologically-defined modes, which have in common
that they are all text-based. On the other hand, scholarly research on CMC has
shown that language use in CMC is also shaped by use- and user-related factors –
such as the purpose of the communication, the intention of the writers, and the so-
ciolinguistic backgrounds of the users – and by the language and script used. Both
sets of factors have been considered in research on individual micro-linguistic
features, four major types of which are discussed in this section: emoticons, non-
standard spelling and creative use of writing systems, abbreviation, and non-stan-
dard punctuation.

3.1. Emoticons
The text-based nature of CMC and the resulting paucity of paralinguistic and non-
linguistic cues are generally considered to be the main reasons for the development
of so-called emoticons (Crystal 2001; Danet 2001; Danet et al. 1997; Döring 2003;
Murray 1988; Raymond 1994; Runkehl et al. 1998; Schmitz 2004; Siever 2006;
Witmer and Katzman 1997). As all textual modes of CMC share the lack of certain
channels of communication, it does not come as a surprise that emoticons are a fea-
ture that is “shared across modes” (Danet and Herring 2007b: 12; see also Hård af
Segerstad 2002: 261) and that “recur[s] in languages besides English” (Danet and
Herring 2007b: 27). Emoticons are thus among the micro-level phenomena which

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470 Markus Bieswanger

are most “characteristic” of language use in CMC, although their actual shape and
frequency of use differ according to a number of factors. As smiley face icons pre-
date the Internet, and emoticons can now also be found in “snail-mail” letters and
postcards (Östman 2004; Runkehl et al. 1998), it seems more appropriate to clas-
sify them as “characteristic” than to call them “a unique feature of the electronic
language register” (Tseliga 2007: 121; see also Herring 1996) or an “exclusively
digital phenomenon” (Tseliga 2007: 126).
The term “emoticon” is most likely a blend of the nouns “emotion” and “icon”
(Oxford English Dictionary Online 2008), and it is defined as “[a] representation of
a facial expression formed by a short sequence of keyboard characters (usually to
be viewed sideways) […] to convey the sender’s feelings or intended tone” (Ox-
ford English Dictionary Online 2008). Emoticons are also known as “smileys”,
“smiley icons”, or “smiley faces” (Crystal 2001; Danet 2001; Danet and Herring
2007b; Haase et al. 1997; Runkehl et al. 1998; Wolf 2000). Godin (1993) and San-
derson (1993) present early collections of emoticons. Today, some of the clusters
of typographic symbols referred to as emoticons do not represent facial ex-
pressions (Dresner and Hering 2010); for example, many contemporary online dis-
cussion forums offer a selection of symbols, such as or (Bieswanger and
Intemann 2011). It should also be noted that much of the current CMC software
automatically transforms typed sequences such as :) ‘smile’ and :( ‘frown’ into
graphical icons, in this case into the icons K and M respectively, so that emoticons
no longer necessarily have to be read sideways.
In contrast to traditional “Western-style ‘smileys’” (Danet and Herring 2007b:
13), defined as in the quote from the Oxford English Dictionary Online above, “kao-
moji” or “Japanese-style emoticons” (Katsuno and Yano 2007; see also Nishimura
2007; Shirai 2006; Siever 2006), which are also called “Asian style” emoticons
(Lee 2007: 203) or “[v]ertical emoticons” (Lee 2007: 205), have never had to be
read sideways (Nishimura 2007; Shirai 2006). For example, (^_^), (^ ^), (^^), and
(^o^) are among the many different vertical emoticons representing a smile (Kat-
suno and Yano 2007; Schlobinski and Watanabe 2003). Lee (2007: 205) reports that
both Western-style and Asian-style emoticons occur in instant messaging and email
communication in Hong Kong, noting that “[v]ertical emoticons are more common
in Hong Kong CMC than are horizontal ones”. Palfreyman and Al Khalil (2007)
give an example of the use of vertical emoticons in instant messaging in Arabic.
From the point of view of pragmatics and speech act theory, it has recently
been argued that emoticons do not only convey emotions but in fact have multiple
functions, including to “indicate the illocutionary force of the text to which they
are attached” (Dresner and Herring 2010: 250). Dresner and Herring identify
“three ways in which emoticons function: 1) as emotion indicators, mapped di-
rectly onto facial expression; 2) as indicators of non-emotional meanings, mapped
conventionally onto facial expressions, and 3) as illocutionary force indicators that
do not map conventionally onto a facial expression” (250).

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 Micro-linguistic structural features of computer-mediated communication 471

Linguistic studies have repeatedly addressed the relationship between the use
of emoticons and sociolinguistic factors, particularly gender, as well as CMC
mode. Witmer and Katzman (1997) found in their study of language use in public
newsgroups and special interest groups that females used more graphic accents
than males. Additionally, they reported that the overall use of graphic accents in
their data was fairly low. Baron (2008: 67) investigated instant messaging com-
munication of American college students and found that “females were far more
likely to use emoticons than males”. In a study of gender-related differences in
emoticon use in online newsgroups, Wolf (2000) also found that females used more
emoticons overall and additionally discovered that males’ use of emoticons was
notably higher in mixed-gender newsgroups than in predominantly male news-
groups. This finding is consistent with the results of Bieswanger and Intemann
(2011), who found that the frequency of emoticons was considerably higher in a
predominantly female forum than in a predominantly male English-language dis-
cussion forum.
Regarding the connection between the use of emoticons and the CMC mode
and/or language employed, studies point to considerable mode-related and lan-
guage-related variation, but more research is necessary before any general con-
clusions can be drawn. There “is a pressing need for systematic cross-linguistic
studies that make use of similar methods in similar contexts involving different
languages” (Danet and Herring 2007b: 28). As regards mode, Lee (2007: 203)
reports that emoticons are “very popular” in Hong Kong CMC, but that in her data
emoticons are much more frequent in instant messaging than in email. In a study of
language use in instant messaging and texting among female American college
students, Baron (2008) found that emoticons were very infrequent in both modes,
making up less than 1 % of all words in each mode. Bieswanger and Intemann
(2011) report that for a corpus of over 82,000 words from three English-based on-
line discussion forums, on average approximately 2 % of the words were emoti-
cons. There are, however, considerable differences across individual discussion
forums in the Bieswanger and Intemann study, with an average of about 0.3 % of
all words being emoticons in one forum and 3.1 % of all words in another. Tseliga’s
(2007: 126) study of four Greek discussion lists and one newsgroup discovered
that “Greeklish users were somewhat more likely to use emoticons” than users of
Greek. Hård af Segerstad (2002: 261) investigated the use of “features character-
istic of CMC” in four different modes, namely email, chat, instant messaging, and
texting, and found that emoticons occurred in each of the modes.
Based on the above review of the available literature on the functions and use
of emoticons in CMC, it seems safe to conclude that emoticons are a characteristic
feature of language use in CMC. However, considerable variation exists related to
the language and script used, the CMC mode employed, the purpose of the inter-
action, and the sociolinguistic backgrounds of the users.

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472 Markus Bieswanger

3.2. Non-standard spelling and creative use of writing systems

The occurrence of non-standard orthographic and typographic forms of various

kinds, or the intentional and unintentional “flouting of orthographic and typo-
graphic norms” (Danet and Herring 2007b: 12), have been frequently claimed to be
characteristic of language use in CMC and in individual CMC modes (Anis 2007;
Crystal 2001; Danet 2001; Hård af Segerstad 2002, Herring 2001; Murray 1988;
Nastri, Peña, and Hancock 2006; Thurlow and Brown 2003; Werry 1996). Non-
standard spellings are easiest to identify, of course, for languages that have “well-
established standard orthographies with undisputed official, institutional status”
(Jaffe 2000: 499) and most difficult for languages that are not traditionally written
down, such as the colloquial variety of Arabic studied by Palfreyman and Al Khalil
(2007). Six of the nine common features of digital writing proposed by Danet
(2001: 17) can be considered non-standard spelling and creative use of writing: ec-
centric spelling, capital letters, asterisks for emphasis, written out laughter, de-
scriptions of action, and the use of all lower case. Some authors have also included
the various spellings that fall into the category “abbreviation” (Danet 2001) as
non-standard CMC orthographic forms (e.g., Murray 1990; Nastri et al. 2006;
Shortis 2001). However, since some kinds of shortenings are also considered char-
acteristic of computer-mediated language, “all lexical forms that are made up by
fewer characters than the full form of a word or a combination of words” (Bies-
wanger 2007: n.p.) will be discussed in a separate subsection (3.3.).
Many potential reasons exists for the occurrence of non-standard spelling and
creative use of writing in CMC, and it is risky to generalize. Although it is not al-
ways easy to decide whether an occurrence of non-standard spelling is intentional
or not, many scholars make a distinction between misspellings, or typos, and other
types of non-standard spelling (Baron 2008; Kessler 2008; Runkehl et al. 1998;
Thurlow and Brown 2003). Herring (2001: 617) is among those CMC researchers
who consider most non-standard forms in CMC to be intentional; she claims that
“although computer-mediated language often contains nonstandard features, only
a relatively small percentage of such features appears to be errors caused by inat-
tention or lack of knowledge of the standard forms […]. The majority are deliber-
ate choices made by users to economize on typing effort, mimic spoken language,
or express themselves creatively”. Werry (1996: 56–57) claims that “the creative
use of capitalization, spelling and punctuation” in English and French IRC is “the
result of a complex set of strategies designed to compensate for the lack of inton-
ation and paralinguistic cues”. Similarly, Nishimura (2007: 174) investigated lan-
guage use in Japanese and English-language BBS communication and concludes
that “CMC users in both languages devise various innovative and unconventional
ways of writing in order to supply prosodic, paralinguistic, phonological, and audi-
tory information through language-specific means”. Herring and Zelenkauskaite
(2009) go beyond the notion that non-standard typography compensates for a lack

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 Micro-linguistic structural features of computer-mediated communication 473

of prosodic cues in their investigation of the functions of the use of non-standard

typography by female and male writers of Italian SMS posted to interactive televi-
sion programs. They find that female writers use more non-standard spellings, and
the authors propose that the underlying motivation is to “symbolize feminine
qualities of emotionality, sociability, and playfulness (childishness)” (26).
In their study of English-language discussion forums, Bieswanger and Inte-
mann (2011) find that most of the micro-linguistic features that have been con-
sidered non-standard spellings in CMC, and that are not a form of abbreviation,
can be grouped into three categories: errors (orthographic or typographic), capital-
ization, and the representation of spoken language. These categories are illustrated
below with examples from their corpus (relevant words are highlighted in boldface
type). First, some of the non-standard spellings found in the corpus appear to be
misspellings of individual words:
(1) I was planing to put it into my photobucket […]
Second, several subcategories related to capitalization were identified, loosely
corresponding to Danet’s (2001) categories “capital letters” and “all lower case”,
but more precisely defined. Capitalization was identified as missing if it was not
used at the beginning of sentences or initially in generally capitalized words
(examples 2 and 3). Additionally, words that are usually not capitalized were
sometimes capitalized sentence-internally (examples 4 and 5); there were some
cases of “camel case”, i.e., word-internal capitalization (example 6); and in some
words all letters were capitalized (example 7), a strategy used for emphasis in
CMC but often considered undesirable “shouting”:
(2) she could also look into some new footwear, something other than boots boots
boooooots!
(3) Flights will operate on wednesdays and sundays using the Primaris 757.
(4) I wonder, Are the JM pilots, flight attendants and maintenance people already
trained to work with B757.
(5) Absolutely Hllarious!
(6) I’ve practically flown on 1/2 the MadDog fleet […]
(7) There is no room (NONE) for error.
Third, a number of examples can be subsumed under the umbrella term “repre-
sentation of spoken language”. This category includes, for example, reduplicated
letters that are plausibly used to “represent drawn-out or expressive intonation”
(Werry 1996: 57; example 2 above and example 8), the representation of non-
speech sounds, such as laughter (example 9), and spoken contractions (example
10):

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474 Markus Bieswanger

(8) That was sooo funny.

(9) Hahahahahahahaha. Amusing.
(10) I dunno the accuracy of this […]

Other recent studies addressing the issue of non-standard spelling and the cre-
ative use of writing in CMC in different languages include Nastri et al. (2006),
Kessler (2008), Anis (2007), and Su (2007). Nastri et al. (2006) found in their
speech act analysis of “away” messages in English instant messaging that “CMC-
based orthography” is very frequently used, with “39 % of away messages contain-
ing some type of CMC orthography”. In her study of instant messaging in Swiss
German and Standard German, Kessler (2008) found that non-standard spelling
and writing were frequently used to imitate spoken language, including via ono-
matopoeic forms, reduplication of letters, and the representation of dialect features
(see also Siebenhaar 2006). The analysis of the data also showed that the com-
munication took place to a large extent in lower case letters only, and that capital
letters were mostly used for emphasis (Kessler 2008). Anis (2007: 97) studied
French texting and developed “a typology of neographic transformations observed
in the French SMS corpus”. In a comparison across modes, Anis (2007: 90) found
that neographic spellings were frequent in synchronous French chat, text messag-
ing, and instant messaging, whereas neography in asynchronous email, newsgroup
postings, and discussion list postings was marginal. Finally, Su (2007: 83–84) in-
vestigated “creative uses of writing” on Taiwanese Bulletin Board Systems (BBS)
and identified “processes of transforming spoken English, Taiwanese, and Taiwan-
ese-accented Mandarin into forms of online language play” that involved, among
other strategies, non-standard mixing of writing systems from different languages.
In short, research has found that various forms of non-standard orthography
and typography as well as creative uses of writing are common in CMC. As with
emoticons, however, there is considerable variation in the use of these forms ac-
cording to the mode of CMC – including (a)synchronicity – the language used, the
writing system(s) available, the purpose and formality of the interactions, the in-
tention of the writers, and the sociolinguistic backgrounds of the users.

3.3. Abbreviation
Abbreviated forms of language have been identified as characteristic of communi-
cation in many modes of CMC and as among the “distinctive CMC features
[which] recur in languages besides English” (Danet and Herring 2007b: 27; see
also Anis 2007; Crystal 2001; Danet 2001; Deumert and Masinyana 2008; Thur-
low and Brown 2003). “Abbreviation” and “shortening” are neutral terms here used
synonymously to refer to all strategies that result in “lexical forms that are made
up by fewer characters than the full form of a word or a combination of words”
(Bieswanger 2007: n.p.). Hård af Segerstad (2002: 71) calls these forms “lexical

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 Micro-linguistic structural features of computer-mediated communication 475

reductions”, and Herring and Zelenkauskaite (2008: 82–84) refer to them as “dele-
tions”. Many types of shortenings occur in CMC, for example, initialisms4 such as
lol for ‘laughing out loud’, vowel deletion as in ovr for English ‘over’ or tjrs for
French ‘toujours’ (‘always’), contractions as in don’t for English ‘do not’, and
letter/number homophones such as b for English ‘be’ or 2 for English ‘to’ or ‘too’,
also known as rebus writing (Anis 2007; Baron 2000; Bieswanger 2007; Crystal
2001; Hård af Segerstad 2002; Herring, in press; Kessler 2008; Schlobinski et al.
2001; Werry 1996).
Crystal (2001: 84) writes that “[t]he various types of abbreviation found in Net-
speak have been one of its most remarked features”; for texting, he claims that
“[t]he challenge of the small screen size and its limited character space (about 160
characters), as well as the small keypad, has motivated the evolution of an even
more abbreviated language than emerged in chatgroups and virtual worlds” (229).
Thurlow and Brown (2003, n.p.) expected such a result in their study of English
texting, as “[h]eavily abbreviated language is of course also a generic feature of in-
teractive CMC niches like IRC’s online chat and ICQ’s instant messaging”. They
were surprised, however, to find that shortenings made up less than 20 % of the
content of the messages in their data, casting some doubt on Crystal’s broad claim.
Deumert and Masinyana (2008: 125) give a similar figure of approximately 20 % in
their study of text messaging in South Africa in English and mixed English-isi-
Xhosa messages for “abbreviations, phonological approximations, and non-stan-
dard spellings”.
In a contrastive study of English and German private texting, Bieswanger
(2007) found that the overall number of shortenings used in the German data was
even lower than in the English corpus. His quantitative analysis found an average
of 5.57 shortenings per text message in the English data, as compared to only 0.86
shortenings per message in the German corpus. The frequency of shortenings in the
German data is so low that it calls into question whether shortenings are in fact a
“characteristic” feature of German texting. Kessler’s (2008) study of German in-
stant messaging yielded a similar result: Only 742 of the 45,729 words in her data
were abbreviated forms, i.e., less than 2 % (Kessler 2008). Herring and Zelenkaus-
kaite (2008) adopted the shortening types from Bieswanger (2007) in their study of
Italian iTV SMS – except for the type “contractions”, “because the Italian language
does not have contractions” (84) – and found that the overall frequency of short-
enings was 1.79 per message for female senders and 1.18 for male senders, i.e., the
average number for both genders is markedly lower than the average of 5.57 short-
enings per text message in the English data in Bieswanger (2007). Finally, Deu-
mert and Masinyana (2008: 140) note that “[t]he isiXhosa [text] messages in our
corpus differ markedly from the writers’ English-language messages in that they
contain almost no abbreviated material”. The above findings demonstrate that fea-
tures of language use characteristic of English-language CMC are not always char-
acteristic of CMC in general when viewed from a cross-linguistic perspective.

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476 Markus Bieswanger

When we examine the breakdown of different types of shortenings in texting in

different languages, a similar picture emerges. For example, Crystal (2001: 84)
claims that “[a]cronyms are so common [in Netspeak] that they regularly receive
critical comment”. He provides a list of over 100 shortenings used in Netspeak
conversations, which consists almost exclusively of initialisms. However, quanti-
tative analyses such as thoseof Bieswanger (2007), Herring and Zelenkauskaite
(2008), and Baron (2008) show that initialisms are rare in the data from all the lan-
guages investigated. Surprisingly, they are particularly rare in Baron’s (2008) Eng-
lish data: She found only eight initialisms in 191 text messages written by under-
graduates at the University of Michigan, or 0.04 initialisms per message. Similarly,
the English corpus in Bieswanger (2007) contains only 0.03 initialisms per mess-
age (as compared to 0.13 initialisms per message in his German corpus, which is
closer to the rates reported for female and male users in Herring and Zelenkaus-
kaite’s [2008] Italian iTV SMS corpus: 0.10 and 0.11 initialisms per text message,
respectively). The frequency of the other types of shortenings investigated in these
studies – clippings, letter/number homophones, and phonetic spellings – also
varies considerably across the English, the German, and the Italian data. For
example, the English data show the highest and the German data the lowest number
of shortenings per message for each of the types.
In summary, studies have found considerable language-related variation con-
cerning the overall frequency of shortenings and the types of shortenings used in
CMC. English seems to be among the languages that invite the most extensive use
of shortenings in CMC, but even there, empirical studies find that shortenings are
less frequent than has often been suggested. It also must be kept in mind that many
of the abbreviations used are not unique to CMC and “were already in use before
the advent of computers” (Danet 2001: 18). Nonetheless, abbreviations are used
deliberately in CMC, for example, to “economize on typing effort” (Herring 2001:
617; see also Nastri et al. 2006); to speed up typing, particularly in synchronous
CMC (Nishimura 2007; Werry 1996); and to play with language, show creativity,
and “indicate familiarity and intimacy between users” (Lee 2007: 201). The use of
abbreviations in CMC thus reflects technological and social motivations, as well as
the Gricean (1975) maxims of manner – particularly the demand for brevity – and
of quantity.

3.4. Non-standard punctuation

Many studies have identified non-standard punctuation as another “characteristic”
feature of language use in CMC. Various types of non-standard punctuation, along
a continuum from complete absence of punctuation all the way to multiple and
exaggerated use of punctuation, have been reported (Baron 2008; Crystal 2001;
Danet 2001; Hård af Segerstad 2002; Murray 1988). Crystal (2001: 89) suggests
that some emailers maintain traditional punctuation while others do not use punc-

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 Micro-linguistic structural features of computer-mediated communication 477

tuation at all, “either as a consequence of typing speed, or through not realizing

that ambiguity can be one of the consequences”, and suggests that “[e]mphasis and
attitude can result in exaggerated or random use of punctuation, such as !!!!!!! or
£$£$%!”. In addition to emphasis, multiple punctuation marks as in Type back
soon!!!!!! have also been “associated with playfulness and informality in the CMC
context” (Tseliga 2007: 121). Luginbühl (2003) claims that multiple punctuation
marks are used in arguments in Internet Relay Chat rooms to express emotion,
while Danet (2001: 17) argues that multiple punctuation is used to “enhance the
readers” and writers’ ability to experience the words as if they were spoken” (see
also Lakoff 1982; Werry 1996). Other reported non-standard uses of punctuation in
CMC include ellipses – also known as “trailing dots” (Baron 2000: 193) or simply
“repeated dots” (Herring and Zelenkauskaite 2008: 85) – and the omission of punc-
tuation at the ends of sentences (Baron 2008; Runkehl et al. 1998).
Recent studies have identified patterns concerning the use of non-standard
punctuation in CMC in various languages. In her comparison of BBS communi-
cation in Japanese and English, Nishimura (2007) found multiple punctuation in
both languages, but only the Japanese data contained examples of wavy lines at
the end of sentences “to emphasize visually the length of time” (Nishimura 2007:
169). Tseliga (2007) reports for Greek and Greeklish contributions to discussion
lists that multiple exclamation marks are more frequent than multiple question
marks of either the English or the Greek type. In Herring and Zelenkauskaite’s
(2008) analysis of insertions in Italian iTV SMS, various types of repeated punc-
tuation were the most common form of insertion. Females employed more re-
peated punctuation than males, which is identified by Herring and Zelenkaus-
kaite (2008: 88) as among the non-standard features used to “communicate
feminine qualities of expressiveness, friendliness, and playfulness”. As in Tseli-
ga’s (2007) study, multiple exclamation marks were also found to be more fre-
quent than multiple question marks, but both types were less frequent than re-
peated dots.
As far as the omission of punctuation is concerned, Herring and Zelenkauskaite
(2008) consider the omission of final punctuation to be the norm in iTV SMS, but
found that males omitted punctuation in other positions more frequently than did
females, although neither gender omitted punctuation very frequently overall.
Baron’s (2008) analysis of English-language texting and instant messaging by fe-
male students showed that they used significantly more question marks to end
questions than periods or exclamation marks to end declaratives, exclamations, or
imperatives. When she compared the use in the two modes of communication,
Baron (2008) found that punctuation marks were omitted more frequently in tex-
ting than in instant messaging.
In sum, similar to the occurrence of the other “characteristic” micro-linguistic
features of CMC, the use of non-standard punctuation shows variation. In contrast
to the use of shortenings, however, the occurrence of non-standard punctuation

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478 Markus Bieswanger

seems to depend more on the social background of the user and the mode used than
on the language of the interaction.

4. Outlook

This chapter has discussed a number of micro-linguistic structural features that are
frequently considered characteristic of CMC, pointing out variation that occurs ac-
cording to the language and script used, the mode of CMC employed, and other
use- and user-related factors. So far, research on the use of micro-linguistic fea-
tures in CMC has mainly focused on issues such as which features are used, in
which language, in which modes, and by whom. Many of the studies mentioned in
this chapter, however, do not focus solely on the linguistic description of the lan-
guage used in CMC, but also implicitly or explicitly discuss pragmatic aspects
concerning “the process of producing language” (Mey 2001: 5), including address-
ing the various motivations for and functions of the use of the micro-linguistic fea-
tures investigated. Unfortunately, studies of micro-linguistic phenomena with a
specifically pragmatic focus – such as Dresner and Herring’s (2010) investigation
of the association between emoticons and illocutionary force – have so far been
rare. From the point of view of pragmatics, future studies of micro-linguistic fea-
tures of CMC should concentrate on the actual use of these features in different
contexts, including the reasons for their use and the pragmatic meanings their use
conveys.
Finally, although many studies have addressed micro-linguistic structural fea-
tures of CMC, these studies vary in focus and scope as well as in the methodology
used. Danet’s and Herring’s (2007b: 28) observation that “[t]here is a pressing
need for systematic cross-linguistic studies that make use of similar methods in
similar contexts involving different languages” certainly holds true for the lin-
guistic and pragmatic investigation of micro-level features of CMC. Moreover, it is
necessary to broaden the perspective of this exhortation and apply it to other fac-
tors influencing computer-mediated language use, such as mode, purpose, and the
sociolinguistic background of users, as systematic and comparable studies are also
lacking for these factors.

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Susan C. Herring, Tuija Virtanen, and an anonymous reviewer for

their detailed feedback on an earlier draft of this chapter. Any errors or oversights
remaining are my own.

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 Micro-linguistic structural features of computer-mediated communication 479

Notes

1. See Herring (2007) for a discussion of the terms “CMC mode” and “CMC genre”.
2. Crystal (2006) still uses the term “Netspeak” in the second edition of his much-discussed
book Language and the Internet.
3. I would like to thank Tuija Virtanen for suggesting a number of works in Finnish and
Swedish to be included in this chapter.
4. The term “initialism” is used as a cover term for all shortenings that “consist of the first
letter (or letters) of a combination of more than one word” (Bieswanger 2007: n.p.).

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