To me, cyberslang is the language that comes out of written electronic communication. It started with lol, or IMHO, as abbreviations. Other examples are ppl (for people), or txt msg (for text message), or cul8r (for see you later). This last one in particular I consider a prime example of cyberslang. These are written examples. But there are also words that are created through or about electronic communication, such as IMing (sending an instant message) that are then used both in written interaction, and in spoken interaction.
this brought back a memory - at the time when i was spending about 12-18hrs a day online 'performing' my ethnography in a cybercommunity - i had great difficulty moving between the two 'modes of interaction', and i often used to say lol out loud in my 'other' everyday life! family and colleagues often asked me what i meant - and it was difficult to explain, because i was finding that lol was the exact expression that i wanted to use, and nothing else would suffice. denise Denise Maia Carter, School of Comparative and Applied Social Science, University of Hull, UK http://www.denisecarter.net denisecarter@denisecarter.net