Code Switching on the Web

In this presentation of his doctoral dissertation research, Lars Hinrichs outlines the discursive functions of codeswitching between Jamaican Creole (Patois) and Jamaican English in computer-mediated communication (CMC).
Based on innovative corpora of personal email messages and posts to internet discussion forums, he analyzes written codeswitching as a fundamentally different phenomenon than codeswitching in speech. In the process, he contributes to long-standing debates in creole and contact studies over the definitions and applicability of diglossia and the creole continuum. Positioning himself within ''Third Wave Variation Studies'' (Eckert 2005), Hinrichs attempts to shift the focus of codeswitching research to processes of identity negotiation, stressing the conscious deployment of codes as resources to be used strategically.

This book should be of both methodological and theoretical interest to scholars of CMC, writing systems and their development, interactional sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, linguistic anthropology, codeswitching and language contact, creole studies, English as a World Language (EWL), and the Caribbean area and its diaspora.