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ABSTRACT
The present article deals with the integration of English in informal written computer-mediated communication (CMC) by teenagers and young adults who are not native or first language speakers of English. Data from an extensive Flemish chat corpus are compared to South African, Kenyan, Nigerian, Ghanaian and Sierra Leonean chat and texting data. While the general (socio) linguistic context of the respective speech communities varies considerably, the younger generations appear to share an orientation towards global CMC English. Moreover they apply similar strategies when integrating English in their online discourse and demonstrate both cosmopolitan and local chat linguistic dexterity. The approach of the present study is mainly qualitative. It focuses on spelling adaptations and on the presence of ‘universal’ English chatspeak features. While the parallelisms between the Flemish and African data are most significant, the discrepancies point to the potential impact of factors related to the local context and the CMC medium.