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This chapter discusses mobile phones, also known as cell phones to highlight their portability, and their impact on language and social interaction. Mobile phones are used either to make voice calls or for text messaging, for emergency purposes or filling dead time while waiting for a bus. This chapter looks at how usage patterns differ across age or gender. Another issue concerns social dynamics: How are young people emancipated from direct adult supervision by having access to personal communication devices? Does a mobile phone make a social statement about the user through its faceplate, decorative strap, ring tones, or where it is placed when he or she sits down to lunch with friends? Under what circumstances is it appropriate to answer a ringing phone in public or place a call while riding on a commuter train? This chapter also examines the influence of culture on the use of mobile phones, focusing on Japan and the United States. Text messaging is also compared with instant messaging.

This chapter presents a case study examining the metadiscursive representation of politicians' text messages within television news broadcasts. The analysis shows that from the multimodal media context of TV news and the inconsistent erasure of some features of the texts, heteroglossic representations emerge of individual text messages and text messaging. It discusses this heteroglossia as it relates to ideologies of standard language, adulthood, and youth.

The abbreviated and often nonstandard orthography and grammar used in SMS messages have provoked the ire of language purists in France. This chapter presents a systematic linguistic analysis of neography in French SMS. Central to the study is the development of a typology of neographical transformations — involving phonetic reductions, syllabograms, and logograms — based on a corpus of examples. The analysis illuminates the heterogeneity, polyvalence, and high degree of variation in SMS spellings. Neography is proposed to be a dynamic phenomenon based on local combinations of general mechanisms, driven by natural linguistic and semiotic processes and produced under pressures from various constraints. Finally, SMS features are compared with those of other communication media and future directions for research are suggested to expand investigation to other alphabetical and nonalphabetical CMC phenomena.

This chapter presents a corpus-linguistic project based on a large-scale collection of Swiss text messages (SMS) and reveals some preliminary findings of this study. Although this is not the first corpus-based SMS project, it is still remarkable since most databases are very small and the insight therefore not statistically significant. SMS4science.ch is a sub-project of the international project SMS4science (coordinated in Belgium), which brings together researchers from various countries to conduct research on text messaging. After giving a brief overview over different types of existing corpora, the chapter introduces the Swiss SMS corpus and some projected research work based on it (particularly on code-switching, structural features, and pragmatic issues in text messages). Finally, the future of text messaging and text messaging research is briefly discussed.

This chapter focuses on the way people present themselves to a select group of friends online based on data from two sources: a study of instant messaging (IM) away messages collected by college students in fall 2002, coupled with a spring 2006 study of how college students were using and responding to Facebook. If personal bulletin boards are tangible devices for communicating with classmates who are physically proximate, virtual platforms such as IM and social networking sites such as Facebook or MySpace offer additional outlets for conveying information or socializing. However, online sites are also places for constructing images of how one wish others to perceive him or her. Away messages are part of a broad suite of IM functions enabling users to send synchronous messages to individuals but also to “present” themselves to members of their buddy list or anyone knowing their screen name. This chapter also looks at the use of mobile phones, chat, and text messaging to send informational/discursive messages that invite communication now or in the future.

This book examines how language evolves, along with changes in the way we interact with other people, as communication technologies become increasingly domesticated. As domestication of communication technologies spreads through the populace, people are increasingly “on” networks that extend beyond the landline phone. How has the growing domestication of email, instant messaging, text messaging on mobile phones, blogging, Facebook — and the rash of other forms of online and mobile communications platforms — altered our communication landscape? This book looks at two fundamental changes that email and its descendants are having upon our language and the way we use it. The first of these changes involves our growing ability, using communication technology, to assert control over when we interact with whom. The second transformation concerns the amount of writing we are now doing and what effect quantity may be having upon quality.

This chapter explains how the use of computer-mediated communication has dramatically altered written and spoken language, entertainment and socialization as well as general learning and formal education for students. This chapter explores types of computer-mediated communication and discusses potential consequences of digital communication. The chapter closes with strategies that practitioners can use to include computer-mediated communication within the auditory (re)habilitation context.

This chapter focuses on cultural studies of mobile communication. It discusses the importance of mobile phone customization and making it personal and user friendly. Reasons for the success of text messaging, which is an intrinsic part of mobile culture, are explored. Cultural studies of mobiles and their relationship with youth culture, spirituality, and religion are discussed, along with the role of mobiles in connecting diasporic communities. The chapter also explores the visual cultures of mobile communication, including mobile photography and multimedia messaging, along with the growing interconnection of mobiles, the Internet, and online technologies with new forms of image representation and sharing.