So put dat in yer fadder's mustache an smoke it!

LOL - what a scriptwriter Bush coulda had!

Yes, the difference of style expected in different channels of communication is one of the things I am really interested in just now. One of the (many) intriguing things about this forum is the way these style boundaries are crossed and joined. Forming sometimes in the nature of very colloquial speech and with many of the discursive and collaborative features of dialogue, and made sometimes in more formal ‘written’ style with reference to other written texts, this seems to me a whole nother way of designing a discourse. I am looking forward to David Crystal’s book due out this autumn, in the hope that he may have some interesting research in this area.