With the arrival of communication tools, a whole new form of communication has developed, which is generally referred to as computer-mediated communication (CMC). There are some typical features that all forms of CMC share, regardless of the choice of the tool. Computer-mediated communication shows characteristics of both, written and spoken communication; has some characteristics that are unique to the computer medium (e.g. own forms of greetings, special uses of abbreviations and symbols, own rules of turn-taking and topic shifting); reduces social context (clues related to gender, race, disability, accent, status) and thus makes conversation more anonymous. Do you speak the language of chat, forum & co? >>