Russian SMS compliments

This study focuses on compliments in Russian language used in electronic communication. 187 examples of compliments sent from mobile phones by means of short message service (SMS) to the participants of a beauty contest that took place in a big west-Russian city were analysed. The language used in the short messages (SM) was similar to the spoken Russian language of young generation and contained incomplete sentences, slang words, etc. However, the compliments made by SMS were more expressive, more ingenious, and longer than the spoken Russian compliments. The cultural specifics of Russian SM and the specific features of SM as a discourse genre, which affect the compliment realization, are accented in the study.