Insights from an MSN Corpus

In this chapter I look closely at one type of Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC), Microsoft Network (MSN) instant messaging. MSN instant communication is quite popular among the youth in most parts of the world. In Hong Kong, it has fast replaced I-seek-you (ICQ) and QQ (in mainland China) as one of the primary instant communication tools among the youth. In this chapter I will be looking particularly at the linguistic features of this kind of communication. More specifically, Hong Kong being a trilingual and biliterate society, one would want to see how participants juggle these languages within the medium of the MSN instant messaging and what linguistic features are thus produced. As is usual with most chapters our observations are based on a case study. So first I