Orð og tunga - 01.06.2014, Page 93

Vanessn Isenmann: Computer-mediated communication
81
(19) (...)
A: hvað kostar þetta?
B: nada25
The expressions observed include French (gúrm 'gourmet') with
adapted orthography, as well as Swedish (alsklings 'darlings') and
Spanish (nada 'nothing', pronto 'soon'). All these words keep their
original spelling. As shown in Table 1, such expressions occur rare-
ly (altogether 4 tokens), indicating the domination of English as the
main source of foreign influence in Icelandic digital discourse.
In accordance with earlier CMC research (cf. Androutsopoulos
2011, Storrer 2000) and the model of Koch & Oesterreicher (1994), in-
terjections (as for example jæja, æj, vá, jííííhaaaaaaaaa) are also classified
as instances of conceptual orality. Interjections are common in the cor-
pus (altogether 76 tokens), with hey being the most frequent one (11
tokens). Other common interjections are jæja (nine tokens), vá (eight
tokens) and oh (seven tokens).
Finally, lexical creations comprise formations that are created for
stylistic reasons:
(20) A: Djöfull sem ég sakna ykkar. kv. Frá
babbadíbubbílandi26
Lexical creations are, however, hardly used in the corpus. The only ex-
ample of an Icelandic creation is the one shown in (20), babhadíbúbhí-
landi. In addition the English formation alrightyright occurs once.
In short, interjections and English borrowings are the most frequent
features of the conceptual orality theme in the corpus. As for English
borrowings, single words may occur both adapted and unadapted
to Icelandic. Borrowed phrases are always unadapted. Internet and
Facebook related terms can have Icelandic inflectional endings but
they are not adapted to Icelandic orthography. It has been pointed
out that English is the dominant language in the field of computers
in Iceland (e.g. Hanna Óladóttir 2009:72). Although many programs
and Internet platforms such as Facebook are offered in Icelandic, Ice-
landers are used to the English terrns in the realm of computers. It is
therefore not surprising that English computer-related terms are not
adapted to Icelandic spelling in the corpus.
25 In (19), the costs of something are the topic of the conversation.
In (20), A says that he/she misses the other group members.
26