While schools have been using computers within their classrooms for years now, there has been a purposeful ignoring of the growing power of social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. Many schools ban students from accessing and using sites such as Facebook at school and many English and literacy teachers ignore or deny their value as a teaching…

Communication technology is changing things. Language is no exception. Some language researchers argue that language is deteriorating due to increased use in electronic communication. The present paper investigated 100 randomly selected electronic mails (e-mails) and 50 short messaging system (SMS) messages of a representative sample of…

This study aims to investigate Instant Messaging from the new rhetorical genre perspective. Considering IM as a primary genre (Bakhtin, 1986) I intend to examine its social motive and social and textual features. Also, using Vygotsky's (1978, 1986) concept of situated learning, I will explain how IM users learn the genre to communicate through it.…