Based on a corpus of private email from Jamaican university students, this study explores the discourse functions of Jamaican Creole in computer-mediated communication. From this participant-centered perspective, it contributes to the longstanding theoretical debates in creole studies about the creole continuum. The book will likewise be useful to students of computer-mediated communication, the use and development of non-standardized languages, language ecology, and codeswitching.

The central methodological issue in this study is codeswitching in written language, a neglected area of study at the moment since most literature in codeswitching research is based on spoken data. The three analytical chapters present the data in a critical discussion of established and more recent theoretical approaches to codeswitching.

Fields that will benefit from this book include interactional sociolinguistics, creole studies, English as a world language, computer-mediated discourse analysis, and linguistic anthropology.

基于牙买加大学生的私人电子邮件语料库，本研究探讨了牙买加克里奥尔语在以计算机为媒介的交流中的话语功能。从这个以参与者为中心的角度来看，它对克里奥尔语研究中长期存在的关于克里奥尔语连续体的理论争论做出了贡献。这本书同样对研究计算机辅助交流、非标准化语言的使用和发展、语言生态学和代码转换的学生有帮助。

本研究的核心方法问题是书面语言中的编码转换，这是一个目前被忽视的研究领域，因为大多数编码转换研究的文献都是基于口语数据。三个分析性的章节在批判性地讨论已有的和最近的关于编码转换的理论方法时介绍了这些数据。

将从本书中受益的领域包括互动社会语言学、克里奥尔语研究、作为世界语言的英语、以计算机为媒介的话语分析以及语言人类学。