Orð og tunga - 01.06.2014, Síða 83

Vanessa Isenmann: Computer-mediated communication
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specifically focus on the communicative options of Facebook as it pro-
vides the source for the corpus that will be introduced in this paper.
In section 3, a case study is discussed. The results are then presented
in section 4, with due regard to their communicative function and
meaning for CMC as a variety of written Icelandic. Finally, section 5
serves to summarize the most relevant findings.
2 Computer-mediated communication
2.1 A new written variety
In linguistics, scholars have approached CMC from various perspec-
tives, using an array of methods and focusing on a variety of phe-
nomena. Some have tried to give a general overview of CMC specific
forms (Runkehl, Schlobinski & Siever 1998, Storrer 2000). Others have
surveyed CMC with regard to discourse analytic questions (Schön-
feldt 2001, Beifiwenger 2003). Yet others discuss the role of CMC for
language (Bittner 2003, Crystal 2006) and the impact of English on
individual languages, refuting anxieties that it might dominate the
digital discourse (Sveningsson 2003, Thurlow, Lengel & Tonic 2004).
Language change in and through CMC, and the categorization of
CMC as written or spoken language has also been a topic of linguistic
investigation (Haase et al. 1997, Smyk-Bhattacharjee 2006).
Nonetheless, CMC is neither written nor simply typed spoken lan-
guage. Users have to develop strategies to meet communicative chal-
lenges involved in interaction without visual contact (Storrer 2001).
Moreover, some essential features of oral communication are missing
or become functionally reinterpreted. Since the utterance is conveyed
as a whole, planning units such as hesitation sounds are not need-
ed but may be used to fulfill stylistic purposes. Furthermore, CMC
contains elements of writing, for example punctuation and spelling
features such as upper and lower cases. Baron (2000:248) therefore
describes CMC as an "emerging language centaur - part speech, part
Writing".
CMC also reveals communication codes that go beyond tradi-
tional elements of interaction. Emoticons are neither associated with
standard writing nor speaking, as are hashtags2. Their use however
: Hashtags are character strings with an initial hash that were primarily used as
metatags on different platforms to technically link different posts together in or-