Exploring Language Variation on the Internet: Regional Speech in a Chat Community

This paper suggests a sociolinguistic approach to computer mediated communication (CMC), drawing on a case study of language variation in e-chat. While most linguistic research on CMC has focused on media or genre related language variation, we argue that more attention should be paid to user related language variation. We will outline three components of a sociolinguistic perspective on CMC, i.e. a focus on social diversity of online language use, the notion of online community as a structural unit of analysis, and an integration of variationist and interactional sociolinguistic methods. The case study to be reported is concerned with the representation of regional speech in #mannheim, a German city-chat. Based on log files collected through participant observation, we discuss the range of regional variation represented in online conversations from a particular region, the frequency of selected regional features as well as the conversational functions of regional speech chat interactions.

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