Orð og tunga - 01.06.2014, Page 87

Vanessa Isenmann: Computer-mediated communication
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with Androutsopoulos' (2007) categorization model and deviating
from previous writing norms have been extracted and counted.
In this analysis, borrowings adapted to Icelandic phoneme-graph-
eme correspondence, such as næs 'nice', which could be categorized
as graphostylistics due to their alternative writing, are counted as in-
stances of the theme of conceptual orality. This coincides with the fre-
quent use of (English) borrowings in spoken Icelandic. Foreignisms
are often anxiously observed and contrast with Icelandic purist lan-
guage policy that aims to keep the Icelandic lexicon "pure" (cf. Han-
na Oladóttir 2009, Kristján Árnason 2006, 2009). Full integration of
borrowings into Icelandic requires adaption on different levels such
as accent, phonology, morphology and grammar (cf. Baldur Jónsson
2002, Guðrún Kvaran 2004). In addition, neologisms are created in or-
der to counteract the distribution of borrowings. Nevertheless, (Eng-
lish) borrowings are one of the most distinctive features in the corpus.
For a deeper analysis the themes have been expanded into sub-
categories as shown in the following.
4 Results
The findings, introduced here, do not serve as quantitative or qualita-
tive measures, but rather illustrate features and patterns present in
Icelandic CMC. The phenomena observed in the corpus are deviant
from (previous) writing outside the digital medium and may hence
serve as an indication of the development of a new variety of written
Icelandic.
4,1 Conceptual Orality
The following examples, (l)-(4)5, illustrate the two most frequent
phenomena that were classified as realizations of conceptual orality ac-
cording to the model of Koch & Oesterreicher (1994), English borrow-
ings and interjections. (The content of each example is described in a
footnote.)
(1) A: Jæja krakkar, boys are back in town. Ætla að
henda inn grófri dagskrá fyrir löngu dagana. (...)
A: róleg á likeinu
5
In the examples, each participant is represented by a letter of the alphabet to en-
sure anonymity. The letters do not refer to the same participant across examples.