Digital Articulation: Examining Text-Based Linguistic Performances in Mobile Communication Through Keystroke-Logging Analysis

This study examines how text-based mobile communication practices are performatively constructed as individuals compose messages key-by-key on virtual keyboards, and how these synchronous performances (Mobile interface theory: embodied space and locative media. New York, NY: Routledge) reflect the iterative process of constructing and maintaining interpersonal relationships. In doing so, this study reports on keystroke-logging analysis (see Writ. Commun. 30, 358–392) in order to observe how participants (N = 10) composed text as part of everyday mobile communication for the period of one week, subsequently producing 179,996 individual keystroke log-file records. Participants used LogKey, a virtual keyboard application made exclusively for this study to run on the Android mobile operating system. Analysis of keystroke log-file data suggest that timing processes of composing text-messages may differ as participants messaged with different categories of interlocutors, composed on different communication applications, and composed paralinguistic features—such as variants of Lol and Haha Thurlow and Brown, (Discourse Anal. Online, 2003, 1, 1); Tagg, (Discourse of text messaging. 2012, Bloomsbury, UK)—at different turn-taking positions. This evidence suggests that keystroke-logging methods may contribute to understanding of how individuals manage interpersonal relationships in real-time (Please reply! the replying norm in adolescent SMS communication,” in The inside text: social, cultural and design perspectives on SMS. (Norwell, MA: Springer), 53–73); (Beyond genre: closings and relational work in texting,” in Digital discourse: language in the new media. (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 67–85), and suggests future direction for methodologically studying linguistic performances as part of text-based mobile communication.