Orð og tunga - 01.06.2014, Qupperneq 97

Vanessa Isenmann: Computer-mediated communication
85
Acro- nymes Abbre- viations Shortenings Spelling
Foreign based Icelandic Foreign based Icelandic
Types Tokens Types Tokens Types Tokens Types Tokens Types Tokens Types Tokens
3 6 5 15 1 1 5 8 4 4 54 452
Total number of types/ tokens 3/6 5/15 6/9 58/456
Table 3. Linguistic economy: Categories are acronyms, abbreviations, shortenings and
spelling deviations. Shortenings and realizations of spelling deviations are subdi-
vided into foreign based words and Icelandic words.34 The last row shows the total
number of types and tokens.
As shown in Table 3, variation in spelling (se instead of sé, manaða for
mánaða, fastraðinn for fastráðinn, Kringlumyri instead of Kringlumýri,
lata for láta, eg for ég', i instead of t) occurs frequently in the corpus
(altogether 456 tokens). Spelling is facilitated in different ways. The
strategies follow traditional techniques of typewriting, which are
dominated by a sign-repertoire that does neither consider diacritics
nor language-specific characters, due to its endeavor of general valid-
ity. Spelling consistency is not required. Special characters may be
used but diacritics left out, as in (28) and (29) (manaða, fastraðinn in-
stead of mánaða, fastráðinn). In other examples diacritics are used but
special characters are left out as in (31) (repeated from (3) above) (ad
for að, med for með, midbænum instead of miðbænum):
(31) A: Er séns ad fa far med einhverjum úr midbænum i
kvöld?
Also, the correct use of upper and lower case according to official
spelling rules becomes irrelevant as in (32) (cf. (30) above).
(32) A: eigum við að panta borð kl 8?
Correct spelling does not seem to be required. Only in one example
a user refers to a spelling deviation in the response as shown in (33)
(repeated from (22) above):
34 The same foreign based terms were also counted in the theme of conceptual orality.