Discussants/Stakeholders: Simeon J. Yates, Susan C. Herring s.yates@shu.ac.uk, herring@indiana.edu]

Abstract: The so called ‘net generation’ is popularly assumed to be naturally media literate and to be necessarily reinventing conventional linguistic and communicative practices. With this in mind, this paper reports the analyses of qualitative data arising from a investigation of 159 older teenagers’ use of mobile telephone text-messaging - or SMS (i.e. short-messaging services). In particular, I examine the linguistic forms and communicative functions in a corpus of 544 of participants’ actual text-messages. While young people are surely using their mobile phones as a novel, creative means of enhancing and supporting intimate relationships and existing social networks, widespread claims about the linguistic exclusivity and impenetrability of this particular technologically-mediated discourse appear greatly exaggerated.

Keywords: text-messaging, young people, linguistic forms, communicative functions,computer-mediated discourse, language change

Multimedia: A tables and figures are presented in PDF format