Currently I am working on a project whose aim is to analyse and compare corpuses of logs of IRC conversations in Polish and English. I want to establish the level of "orality" of the IRC conversations for both Polish and English.

IRC is a written medium, yet the IRC conversations seem to show many characteristics of ordinary, "oral" conversations.
Through an analysis of form and frequency of speech acts occurring during IRC conversations, which are rather characteristic for ordinary conversations, I wish to establish what the level of orality of IRC conversations is.
In other words, I wish to find out whether the language of IRC should rather be labelled oral, or written, and if there are any systematic differences in this respect between English and Polish.