Since the emergence of computer-mediated communication (CMC) in the 1990s, research has concentrated mainly on Internet communication (Kendall 2000, Baron 2008), leaving texting without due attention; the relatively few existing studies tend to concentrate on the unique linguistic features and functions of texts (Thurlow 2003, Crystal 2008). At the same time, the development and ubiquity of computer-mediated communication (CMC) seems to have facilitated a shift in the users’ approach to this form of communication in terms of managing physical distance in text-only interactions. This paper shows how such a verbally minimalist, originally transactional, modality as ‘text-message’ has become a powerful resource for texters to discursively create an illusion of co-presence (Ijsselsteijn & Riva 2003), defined as a sense of being together in a shared interactive space.
Analysing a corpus of text-messages sent by British and Polish volunteers, I establish that Polish and English senders employ a variety of textual tools to mark co-presence in text-messages. These strategies can be divided into references to places, sensory cues, and activities.
The findings show significant differences and some similarities between Polish and British senders. Apart from descriptions of places where the communication takes place and verbally signalling entering and leaving a common communicative space which can be found in both Polish and English samples, English senders employ deixis to mark social presence but physical absence of the interactants. They also use inclusive we to signal mutuality in communication. This contrasts with Polish senders who concentrate on the sensory cues received by the recipient. English texters, mainly in flirtatious messages, discursively create stimuli for the recipients’ senses, a feature absent in the Polish sample. In the same type of messages, English senders describe activities in the form of directions for the recipient and at the same mutually create a shared activity – initiated by the sender but performed by the recipient.
This paper advances current knowledge about discursive ways of marking presence in CMC, and leads to larger questions about texting as a mode of communication which offers enormous expressive possibilities despite physical restrictions.
References
Baron, Naomi (2008). Always On: Language in an Online and Mobile World. New York: Oxford University Press.
Crystal, David (2008). txtng: the gr8 db8. New York: Oxford University Press.
Ijsselsteijn, Wijnand and Riva, Giuseppe (2003). Being There: The experience of presence in mediated environments. In Giuseppe Riva, Fabrizio Davide and Wijnand Ijsselsteijn (eds.), Being There: Concepts, effects and measurement of
user presence in synthetic environments. Amsterdam: Ios Press, pp. 3-16.
Kendall, Lori (2000). „OH NO! I’M A NERD!”: Hegemonic Masculinity on an Online Forum. Gender & Society 14, 256-274.
Thurlow, Crispin (2003). Generation Txt? The sociolinguistics of young people’s text-messaging. Discourse Analysis Online (http://extra.shu.ac.uk/daol/index.html) [Accessed 01 June 2008].
HOw can I read the full paper?
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