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Unlike previous studies of computer-mediated communication (CMC) which have concentrated on either psychological factors, or on the perceived attributes of the medium, and which have often used small and specific data sets, this chapter reports the findings of a large corpus-based comparison between spoken, written and CMC discourse. The various factors across which comparisons are made were drawn from a Hallidayan model of language use and focus upon the textual, interpersonal, and ideational (Halliday 1978) aspects of speech, writing and CMC.

The chapter initially describes the construction of a corpus of CMC interactions. The textual aspects of CMC discourse are then considered through such measures as type/token ratios and lexical density. The interpersonal in CMC is explored through the examination of pronoun use. Last, the presentation of the ideational within CMC discourse is considered through an exploration of modal auxiliary use within the CMC corpus. All of these results are comparatively analyzed against similar results from spoken and written corpora.