Conventionality gets creative on a health Q&A website

The virtual encounter with different linguistic communities has increasingly become the norm, and this study examines the impact that this new scenario has had on the evolution of English. Focussing on the messages posted by adolescents and on the answers they receive by a team of Columbia University healthcare providers, patterns of communication are delineated, with the aim of providing a profile of contemporary post usage. This corpus of health posts – free from external linguistic filtering - becomes an excellent source of material to reflect young people's subjective perspectives and communication routines, on one hand, and the health professionals’ attempts to facilitate effective communication, on the other.