The aim of this master’s thesis is to find out what students’ habits are when communicating remotely, what are the characteristics of the language used in SMS and text messages on mobile messaging apps, and what is the role of English in students' messages. An analysis of 3,900 messages from students at the Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana, was carried out, with special attention to the differences between students of Slovene, students of English and students studying other subjects. In addition, a survey was conducted on their communication habits. Longer conversations of six students were also analysed to put the students’ communication in a broader context. Students communicate mainly through text messages, adapting the way they communicate to the addressees and to different intentions. Messages tend to be short, and individuals often split their replies into several messages. Common linguistic features of the messages include English abbreviations, non-standard use of punctuation and capitalisation, non-use of diacritics, phonetic spelling, omission of vowels, dialectal features, and colloquial word order. English was used in a quarter of the messages, but the proportion of English words was in fact lower (7.82%). Most English words have an English spelling, followed by English words that are slovenized in writing, and the fewest English words have an English spelling with Slovene affixes added. As expected, students of English use the most English words, while students of Slovene use the fewest, and they use English words slovenized in writing more often than the other two groups. In general, it has been shown that communication habits and the language used in the messages are very individual and that differences between individuals are already visible even in such a homogeneous group as the students of the Faculty of Arts.
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