What is ACMC - asynchronous computer-mediated communication

This chapter summarizes the growing body of research on humor and play in computer-mediated communication (CMC) from disciplines such as psychology, applied linguistics, and foreign language acquisition that seeks to explain the abundance of humor and language play in computer-mediated communication. Humor researchers, for example, have shown how the absence of the nonverbal repertoire in CMC may encourage play while, at the same time, making it more difficult to signal a joke. From the perspective of computer-mediated discourse analysis, certain linguistic and interactional features of computer-mediated discourse may promote non-seriousness (Herring, 1999). Another strand of research focuses on the social functions of humor in constituting and maintaining online communities (Hübler & Bell, 2003). The emerging picture of language play and humor in CMC is becoming clearer but, at the same time, increasingly complex.