Read My Voice: Expressing Silence and Sound in Text-messages

Abstract

Texting as a modality of computer-mediated communication (CMC) has attracted the attention of researchers as a sociological and linguistic phenomenon. They have focused on usage patterns and peculiarities of SMS-language, while other, more complex forms of CMC have been discussed as a field for creating virtual communities and co-constructing social realities. In this paper, I establish that texters co-opt technology to record audible features in writing, and propose that ‘text tools’ employed to replace voice features can be divided into three categories: silences, fillers, and phoneticons. Based on samples of English and Polish texts, I establish that silence and voice features are present in texting and play an important role in increasing the perception of physical proximity of the participants. This paper advances current knowledge about text-messages and contributes to questions about the ways non-verbal features are marked and the illusion of conversational reality created in this important, but often overlooked, medium.