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jor role of language. Language is the instrument of thought and people often feel the need to speak their thoughts aloud as when they are working on a math problem. And the most important sociological use of language is the interpersonal function, by which people establish and maintain a comfortable relation in a society. SM is a medium whose function is rather confusing. People use it to convey information, keep in touch with each other, share jokes, express emotions or even pass anger. But the recipient cannot tell which from which, he might deal with his short messages with an attitude that is unexpected by its sender. Let’s see the following example. A: “I played football this afternoon, how tired I am.” B: “Oh, really? You’re energetic!” The conversation ends here. A feels tired after playing football, and sends a SM to one of his friends B to express his excitement. But this confuses B as to how to respond appropriately, or he may simply brood about it for quite a long time. Secondly, the recipients of SM make their own interpretations based on situational effects and schemata. The first and the second sort of misunderstandings can be somewhat overlapping. Because function of SM language is not clear, people began to interpret messages with their own experience. Besides, the quantity of information conveyed is often inadequate, SM leaves a lot of blank spaces in what people say, which the recipient tends to fill with the most negative interpretations. Thirdly, how to end SM conversation and when is the right time to end it also bother SM users a lot. No matter how people enjoy SM, writing it is very time consuming. If one wants to end it and the other does not, at least one will be unpleasant. It is unlikely that both of them are ready for SM conversation at the same time, because two people are in two environments. III The deficiency of SM in contrast with face-to-face conversation and Tel call People can hide themselves behind the tiny screens, and therefore, they are braver and they can tell whatever they like. So many people are now abusing it. But is it superior to face-to-face conversations and telephone calls? The answer might be no. Firstly, SM lacks body language and facial expressions. The communicative use of the visual and tactile modes is often referred to as “nonverbal communication”, especially in academic discussion. In everyday terms, it is the area of “body language” (Crystal 1997: 403). Most people may not be aware of the importance of it when they message each other, because they do it subconsciously. The field of non-verbal visual communication, kinesics, can be broken down into several components: facial expression, eye contact, gesture, and body posture. Each component performs a variety of functions. Movements of the face and body can give clues to a person’s personality and emotional state. The face, in particular, signals a wide range of emotions, such as fear, happiness, sadness, anger, surprise, interest, and disgust. Many of the expressions vary in meaning from culture to culture. In addition, the face and body send signals about the way a social interaction is proceeding. Patterns of eye contact show who is talking to whom; facial expression provides feed-back to the speaker, expressing such meanings as puzzlement or disbelief; and a body posture conveys a person’s attitude towards the interaction (e.g. relaxation, interest, boredom). Several kinds of social context are associated wi