Cambridge Grammar of English Hardback with cd-rom a comprehensive Guide

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539 Glossary for any unfamiliar terms

From discourse to social contexts | 239

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Cato: sssssllllllooooooowwwwww …

Regent: bye everyone, bye bye

Cato: tarra luv!

Regent: good init?

Cato: yeh hehehe

Regent: ;-)

Cato: hooorah!

Regent: amazing

Regent: silly tune aint it

Cato: you can go now you passed the smiley test

Regent: bye

Cato: byyyyyeeeee.

The exchange is marked by attempts to represent speech in writing. Examples are:

wassup

(what’s up?), tarra luv (goodbye love), init, aint it (isn’t it?). 

Although the medium used is written and responses are typed on a keyboard, a

number of features of the chat-room language are very close to spoken English:

● A ‘smiley’ 

6

is created using the punctuation marks ;-) to imitate a human

smile. 

● Laughter is represented (hehehe).

● Spelling is creatively manipulated in order to reproduce particular sounds and

familiar intonation patterns (e.g. sssssllllllooooooowwwwww). 

● Non-verbal reactions and farewells (e.g. SOOOO and byyyyyeeeee) and

punctuation, in particular, are used to act as a channel for the expression of

feelings.

● Capitalisation and exclamation marks are exploited to underline what both

participants see as an interaction in which emotional reactions and responses

are given. 

It is likely that such new modes will continue to create new forms of spoken

English in writing.

* [In this particular chat room the software technology allows the creation of a ‘buddy’ list

which participants can store electronically; it also sends a ‘clanging’ message every time a

new chatter (chat-room term for a person who chats) enters the chat room; and a ‘warn’

button is available by which participants can send each other warnings if they use

offensive language such as swearing. Excessive use of offensive language can 

mean that the offender is automatically removed from the chat room.]

240 | From discourse to social contexts

Cambridge Grammar of English

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Grammar across turns and sentences

Introduction

123

Cohesion and coherence

124

Reference

125

Referring expressions

126

Endophoric reference

127

Panel: It, this and that referring to segments of text

128

Textual ellipsis (Yes I did.)

129

Substitution

130

General 130a

Substitute forms  130b

Ellipsis versus substitution

131

Substitution for nouns

132

One

, some, ones 132a

That

, those 132b

None

, enough 132c

Substitute verb do

133

So as a substitute form

134

Cohesion and comparative forms

135

Cohesion and linking adjuncts (in addition, however)

136

General 136a

Additive (also, likewise) 136b

Resultative (so, therefore) 136c

Contrastive (rather, on the contrary) 136d

Time (eventually, then) 136e

Concessive (anyway, though) 136f

Inference (then, in that case) 136g

Summative (overall, in short) 136h

Listing (firstly, lastly) 136i

Meta-textual (namely, so to speak) 136j

Panel: Coordinating conjunctions (and, but, or) and sentence boundaries

137

Parallelism and repetition

138

Cohesion and coherence in paragraphs

139

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242 | 

Grammar across turns and sentences