Textese and Singlish in multiparty chats

Prior research has shown that orthographic Singlish often occurs with textese features in asynchronous Internet registers. This article presents findings from multiparty chats among Singapore youths, which suggest that a principle of decipherability governs the textisms based on standardized Singapore English and Singlish. Most textisms were contractive due to the pressure to abbreviate messages to keep up with the rapidity of multiparty chats, although orthographic Singlish was largely not abbreviated. The results indicate that the preponderance of abbreviation in standardized Singapore English and the relative dearth of abbreviation may be explained by the effects of ‘abbreviation asymmetry’ as an enregistered variable distinguishing the two Englishes.