Building "code": Development, maintenance, and change in a private language

Abstract

Using primarily data collected from the discussions of two sisters over a four-month period, this article shows the development and maintenance of private language orally and in the e-mail medium. Specifically, I demonstrate how a family private language first developed orally, then rapidly expanded into a special sibling code in the e-mail environment. The results have implications for the communicative potential in interpersonal interaction, particularly in terms of how interpersonal interaction can directly affect the rapidity of language change. Copyright 2007 by the American Dialect Society.