Means and Forms of Czech-Polish Semi-Communication via SMS

It was Einar Haugen (1966) who introduced into linguistics the term semi-communication. He examined the means of verbal communication in a group of three Scandinavian languages, the interlocutors of which used different language codes in one communication act. Asymmetry of such a discourse is manifested by a communiqué formulated in one mother tongue and perceived by a recipient on the basis of his/her own vernacular code knowledge. This article aims at analysing means and forms of Czech-Polish semi-communication via SMS. The investigation indicates that writers used in their SMS messages intended for the other-language recipients especially those linguistic means, by which they seek to increase the clarity of text messages intended for recipients – speakers of closely related (West Slavonic) languages.