Michelle A. McSweeney is a Research Scholar in the Center for Spatial Research at Columbia University. She completed her PhD in Linguistics in Interactive Technology and Pedagogy in 2016 at the Graduate Center at City University of New York. Her recent work focuses on digital writing in romantic relationships.

This book provides a comprehensive linguistic exploration of textism use by bilingual young adults, illustrating the function of these alternative and creative linguistic forms and the affordances and constraints of text messaging as a form.

1. A Language Is Born: Introduction

2. Txts in Focus: Participants and Corpus

3. It's All in the 'Contxt': Theoretical Background

4. Mind Your Texts: Politeness

5. Txt Acts: Speech Acts

6. *Nvrmnd: Identity Performance

7. We Don't Speak Phone: Bilingual texting

8. Txt IRL: Conclusion