Codeswitching on the Web: English and Jamaican Creole in E-mail Communication (Pragmatics & Beyond, Issn 0922-842x)

By Lars Hinrichs

Based on a corpus of private email from Jamaican university students, this study explores the discourse functions of Jamaican Creole in computer-mediated communication. From this participant-centered perspective, it contributes to the longstanding theoretical debates in creole studies about the creole continuum. The book will likewise be useful to students of computer-mediated communication, the use and development of non-standardized languages, language ecology, and codeswitching. The central methodological issue in this study is codeswitching in written language, a neglected area of study at the moment since most literature in codeswitching research is based on spoken data. The three analytical chapters present the data in a critical discussion of established and more recent theoretical approaches to codeswitching. Fields that will benefit from this book include interactional sociolinguistics, creole studies, English as a world language, computer-mediated discourse analysis, and linguistic anthropology.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 9027253900
• ISBN13: 9789027253903
• Release Date: September 2006
• Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
• Length: 302 Pages
• Weight: 1.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.3" x 0.8" x 6.5"