The widespread use of the Internet has significantly impacted the language people use to communicate. One of the clearest indications of this phenomenon are chat rooms. Many kind of chat settings are available online for the users, e.g. IRC (Internet Relay Chat), MUDs, MOOs, MIRC, ICQ, Instant Messengers and many websites like www.yahoo.com  or www.cnn.com etc.offer their chat rooms. These chat settings allow users to create and join chat channels or rooms which may have an intended topic of discussion or multiple topics being discussed simultaneously. This paper proposes to discuss how conversation in the text-based Pakistani chat rooms differs from every day ‘casual’ conversation in a number of respects. The data was collected through internet chat logs from Pakistani chat rooms and questionnaires. The study aims to demonstrate the deviations in the  ‘chat’ conducted online from that carried out face-to-face. Here the focus also falls upon the expression of culture or the absence of it in the speech. In this paper deviations from culture as well as social norms are focused upon in the light of the Pakistani socio-cultural norms.

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