14. New Media: new Romance varieties?

What is it about?

The present chapter examines the possible emergence of new language varieties in computer-mediated communication (CMC). Over the course of the chapter, several authentic examples of CMC-texts from different Romance languages are analysed in detail with a particular focus on alternative spellings or “neographies”. Neographies, it is shown, are used as graphematic markers of colloquial meanings but also as evidence for an emerging new written register. Some of the strategies analysed here include new correspondences between phonemes and graphemes, logographic or syllabographic grapheme-uses, or the alternative use of diacritics. The “cybernetic register” (i.e. the electronic written register) described here seems to develop simultaneously with the standard written register amongst digital natives, which also has implications for language teaching.

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