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Language Variation - European Perspectives V: Selected papers from the Seventh International Conference on Language Variation in Europe (ICLaVE 7), Trondheim, June 2013
Edited by Eivind Torgersen, Stian Hårstad, Brit Mæhlum and Unn Røyneland
[Studies in Language Variation 17] 2015
► pp. 43–54

Code-switching in SMS communication

Formal and functional aspects in the Swiss-German sms4science corpus

This study examines the formal and functional aspects of code-switching in a Swiss-German SMS (text messages) corpus of 10,706 messages. We investigate the types of codes used by the writers, the grammatical properties of the code-switched elements, and the potential functions of code-switching under the medium-specific conditions of SMS communication. We conclude that classical formal categories of code-switching and their usual functional interpretation need to be revised when it comes to analysing SMS data. It is necessary to broaden our understanding of the notion of a code in favor of other communicative codes, to extend classical formal code-switching categories in terms of isolated items, and to conduct multifactorial analyses when approaching functional aspects of code-switching.
Keywords: CMC (computer-mediated communication), code-switching, formal, functional, identity, multilingualism, SMS (text message, Swiss-German
Published online: 9 April 2015
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https://doi.org/10.1075/silv.17.04buc
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Online References
http://www.sms4science.ch (retrieved on 21 August 2014)
https://www.kpz-linguistik.uzh.ch/sms-navigator/docu/index.php (retrieved on 21 August 2014)