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This chapter provides an overview of what is meant by language in an online and mobile world, offering a chronological precis of the types of language media to emerge over the past thirty-five years, with particular emphasis on some of the newer communication platforms used in the Internet. A bit of terminology is introduced to provide a common vocabulary. Various types of language transmitted via the gamut of information and communication technologies ICTs can be classified under the umbrella term “electronically-mediated communication” (EMC), which can be either synchronous or synchronous. Examples of asynchronous communication are one-to-one email, texting on mobile phones, newsgroups, listservs, blogs, MySpace, Facebook, and YouTube, while synchronous communication includes instant messaging, computer conferencing, MUDs (Multi-User Dungeons/Dimensions), MOOs (MUDs, Object Oriented), chat, and Second Life. This chapter discusses the evolution of EMC from email in 1971 to YouTube in 2005.

Data on instant messaging and text messaging suggest that at least among a sample of American college students, electronic language is at most a very minor dialectal variation. Yet these findings notwithstanding, there's an international perception that computers and mobile phones are affecting everyday language, and that these effects are generally not for the better. This chapter considers whether written language used on the Internet (and by extension, on mobile phones) is influencing offline writing, and perhaps even speech. The discussion looks at the current state of offline writing (for example, the kind that appears in newspapers, essays, or formal advertisements). The second stage addresses the normative question: Is electronically-mediated communication a linguistic free-for-all, or are there shared rules that users either follow or violate? The chapter proposes several ways in which the Internet may actually be shaping the ways people write and speak.

This chapter discusses how language technology is used to control the volume of interpersonal communication. It examines a range of language technologies that have increasingly empowered individuals to call the shots on social interaction. The more conceptual discussion is illustrated with data from a study undertaken in fall 2004 and spring 2005 of multitasking behavior by college students while using instant messaging. The study reveals how deft the current generation of multitaskers is at meshing online conversations with other activities. In electronically-mediated communication, users turn up the “volume” when they incessantly check their email. Along with the volume-control metaphor, another useful concept is affordances, the physical properties of objects that enable us to use them in particular ways. This chapter also looks at discourse control in traditional face-to-face and written-communication settings, and then at the affordances new language technologies add for adjusting the conversational “volume”. The cognitive and social aspects of multitasking, specifically with respect to instant messaging and mobile phones, are also discussed.