ABSTRACT
This chapter explores text-messaging has been treated mainly as a carrier of degenerate language to the discussion and establishes it as bearing narrative features and worthy of further analysis in terms of its narrative potential. The author's discuss texters use of specific discursive tools to construct storyworlds and position themselves and the intended recipients of their text-messages within them. The analysis presented here is based on nearly two thousand text-messages collected from English and Polish native speakers living in London and Warsaw. The data collection, the detailed account of which can be found in Lyons, involved the friends-of-friends network approach, where groups of friends were asked to contribute their text-messages to the study and recommend other friends who might be interested in participating. Two of the features often mentioned as characterising texting are portability and constant reachability. Resulting from these characteristics are the unique properties of texting, including those related to establishing location and drafting a temporal frame in interactions.
