Codeswitching on the Web

Based on a corpus of private email from Jamaican university students, this study explores the discourse functions of Jamaican Creole in computer-mediated communication. From this participant-centered perspective, it contributes to the longstanding theoretical debates in creole studies about the creole continuum. The book will likewise be useful to students of computer-mediated communication, the use and development of non-standardized languages, language ecology, and codeswitching. The central methodological issue in this study is codeswitching in written language, a neglected area of study at the moment since most literature in codeswitching research is based on spoken data. The three analytical chapters present the data in a critical discussion of established and more recent theoretical approaches to codeswitching.
Fields that will benefit from this book include interactional sociolinguistics, creole studies, English as a world language, computer-mediated discourse analysis, and linguistic anthropology.

Kathryn Graber, in Linguis List Vol 18-852:
The book is well laid out and reader-friendly, with engaging and even entertaining data. The introductory overview of theoretical debates in the Jamaican and creole studies literature is extremely helpful and makes the study accessible to scholars who are otherwise unfamiliar with the Jamaican case. Hinrichs has created some unusual and innovative corpora.