posted
For those of you who helped with it. Getting all the paragraphs broken apart for easier reading might not have worked as well as I'd liked, but anyway, here it is...
The Internet Dialect
In an essay, which was written in 1969, entitled, “The Language of Computers”, Edward J. Lias predicted quite accurately the affect computers would have on the way people communicate. At the time, it was possible for a scientist to publish an idea and have it refuted or substantiated within a few hours. Lias predicted that this amount of time would decrease slowly (154-160). And slowly decrease it did, until the Internet exploded onto the public. Today, it is not unthinkable for a scientist to have an idea refuted within a minute of being posted on the Internet.
Though Lias presented a fair idea of what the world would see in communications because of computers, he did not predict the likelihood of completely new forms of communication which seem to have forced the beginnings of a new dialect.
Along with the evolution of the Internet dialect has come the social attitude that usually accompanies many other dialects. Some people tend to look down on the unusual and non-standard usage that dialects like African American Vernacular English are known for. This fact has caused a number of arguments against the way people communicate on the Internet.
Some people argue that spelling in email and in cell-phone text messages is decreasing literacy. There is one opinion that states, “E-mail’s immediacy is destroying the art of prose” (Sklaroff). David Crystal, in his book Language and the Internet equated the animosity surrounding Internet communications with that shown after the creation of the printing press in the 15th century. He states:
There is of course nothing new about fears accompanying the emergence of a new communications technology. In the fifteenth century, the arrival of printing was widely perceived by the Church as an invention of Satan, the hierarchy fearing that the dissemination of uncensored ideas would lead to a breakdown of social order and put innumerable souls at risk of damnation (Crystal, 2).
Crystal continues by noting that there were frequent arguments about which accents and pronunciations would be used for broadcasts (Crystal, 2). Similar arguments are being used today, such as one attributed to Dr. Ken Lodge at the University of East Anglia. Dr. Lodge believes that “text messaging is destroying literacy”(qtd. in Bristow, 513). Dr. Lodge’s feelings likely stem from the replacement of words with numbers and other shorthand used in text messaging. For example, the word for can be replaced with the number 4 to convey the same meaning. Yet Jennie Bristow argues in an article on the subject, Text messaging has very little to do with grammar. If young people write a bad letter, you can tell they are grammatically deficient. Text Messaging, by contrast, is just note writing. If I leave a note for my husband reading ‘GONE 2 SAINSBRY J,” I do not expect him to criticize the lack of paragraph breaks…It might not be poetry, but it gets the point across (Bristow, 514).
Saying something in as few words as possible is one of the defining characteristics of Internet communications. After all, the most common method for communication over the Internet requires a keyboard. Most people are not fast typists, and as such, they find ways to overcome the limitations that a keyboard causes. In fact, “getting the point across” is really a major characteristic of any language. However, even with this understanding, many people argue that Internet communication is filled with bad grammar. The arguments made against the way people communicate over the internet are part of a prescriptive view. For years, linguists have studied language in two ways. Prescriptive linguists study and argue the way language should be used. The prescriptive view points out errors in spelling, grammar, and pronunciation. The descriptive view of language, however, focuses on explaining how language is actually used. “The descriptive approach…does not condemn usages that do not follow the rules thought up by prescriptively minded authors. Rather, it describes the variations in usage found within a language, and explains why variant forms exist” (Crystal, 63).Internet communication can easily be seen as a “variant form” of language.
In general, the prescriptive view is very adamant against usage on the Internet. The descriptive view doesn’t discount the changes as mere laziness, but rather, suggests that the internet is slowly evolving.
In order to determine the effect that Internet communication has had on some individuals, a group of people in an online forum were asked what they had noticed about Internet language usage. The things they noticed were interesting. One user “TMedina” summed up the reason for differences in usage by saying, “The Internet is like one massive collection of subcultures that can vary from page to page, board to board - each collective has it's [sic] own morays and social rules and, invariably, it's own lingo, slang and shared references.”
This truth is important to remember as the Internet, with all of its different facets, has what could be referred to as regional dialects. For example, people who primarily play games on the Internet speak differently from people who only use instant messaging or email. Furthermore, the standards for Internet communications, known as “netiquette”, works almost as if it were a shibboleth. An example of one shibboleth on the Internet, which has actually existed for over a decade, is sending messages in all capital letters (Fahey, 103). Typing in capital letters is often used to add great emphasis, and is seen as shouting on the Internet. This perception is because of the effect that large blocky text has on the eyes.
Oftentimes, people who are new to communicating on the Internet choose to keep the “caps-lock” key on their keyboard engaged. This is because they are not used to seeing sentences without any capital letters, and the constant use of the “shift” keys takes extra concentration at first. As a result, a person who types a normal message in all capital letters is seen as a novice, and referred to as a “newbie.” In contrast, using no capital letters is quite common in Internet communication. The lack of capitalization, in part, has its roots in the all capital letters habit. A person who isn’t used to using the shift key on a keyboard will choose to type without caps instead of adjusting their habits to include the extra keystroke required to make capital letters with a keyboard.
Another problem the prescriptive viewpoint sees in the proliferation of Internet slang is the tendency of code-switching among the people who commonly use Internet slang. Code-switching is a term used by linguists to describe what happens when people who speak a certain dialect changes the way they speak to alter public perception. This happens often when people change from Internet communication to standard written communication. In the forum previously mentioned, the user “ketchupqueen” mentioned,
I love emoticons. I find myself barely resisting the urge to use smileys in hand-written cards and letters to indicate sarcasm, irritation, amusement, and other emotions instead of using "real language" to achieve the desired effect. Several times, I've had to cross out a sentence and re-write it, realizing I was depending on putting an emoticon at the end of the sentence to make my point.
This is actually a common event for people who use Internet slang terms and phrases. Some other people in the forum interview mentioned that they had the same habit of wanting to use emoticons in standard written communication. “Smilies” and other “emoticons” (a combination of emotion and icons) mentioned by “ketchupqueen” are one of the most commonly used ways of displaying emotion in a language that depends entirely on written words.
One major example of the necessity of emoticons is the use of sarcasm. Sarcasm is almost impossible to write, and in spoken language is conveyed by changing the tone of voice used in saying something combined with facial expression. It is likely that early internet communication was tedious, as people were required to write out the full meaning of a message.
The tediousness of writing long messages to convey meaning easily understood in spoken language resulted in the creation of emoticons. By using combinations of keystrokes to create imitations of facial expressions, a person can easily amend a different meaning to a written message. As an example, a person writing, “I hate you” without anything to convey emotion could result in a misunderstanding. However, if an emoticon is used, like this, “I hate you :-),” the person receiving the message will easily understand that the message was meant in joking, and the true meaning is received. But emoticons are simply one facet of the Internet dialect.
In much the same way emoticons meet the need to convey emotion in Internet communication, acronyms met others. In the early days of the Internet, communication was far more expensive than it is today. Some Internet providers charged users for each character that was typed in a message. Out of the need to save money, many people shortened words or used acronyms to spell out actions or commonly used phrases. Examples of this are; LOL (Laugh Out Loud), BRB (Be Right Back), TTYL (Talk To You Later), and ROFL (Rolling On the Floor Laughing). Most acronyms stand for short phrases, but some are the equivalent of multiple sentences of communication. A good example of this is the acronym ASL. ASL stands for “Age/Sex/Location.” Typing out the full meaning of this acronym requires three sentences: “How old are you?” “Are you male or female?” “Where are you located?”
Sometimes, however, acronyms don’t completely fill the need. Communication in online computer games, for example, requires users to write messages in an extremely short period of time. If a gamer to write his or her message fast enough, the likely result is what is known as being “KIC,” or killed in chat (This acronym is actually pronounced the same as kick, so a person is KICed or kicked when they are killed while chatting).
Because communication takes precious attention away from the game, gamers abbreviate words in order to send messages with less typing. This reasoning is summed up in the words of Hatrack River user “Vadon,” “In video games, often, you would have to stay on your feet, ready for a sudden unexpected change, you wouldn't want to be stuck chatting would you?”
Aside from acronyms, gamers often shorten words and replace words with numbers, much like the “note-writing” that Jennie Bristow mentioned in her article, quoted earlier. Examples include “thx” for thanks, “ppl” for people, and 2 for any variation of to.
Aside from emoticons, acronyms, and word shortening, the Internet has even developed its own vocabulary. This fact is seen in every bookstore’s section for computer books. It’s hardly possible to browse through the computer books shelf without seeing at least one dictionary devoted to Internet slang. Truly, Internet communication is now a major part of everyday life for most people, and there is a market for books that can explain the meaning of all the acronyms and shortened words. .
Another Hatrack River forum user, “adam613,” mentioned that, “instant messaging has led to a startling decline in the use of things like capital letters and punctuation, and increase in abbreviations. in my experience, almost nobody puts a capital letter at the beginning of a sentence. some ppl capitalize names, but a lot of ppl don’t [sic]”. His wording and usage shows a typical method of communication on the Internet (This was done intentionally). “adam613”’s usage shows the very lack of capitalization he speaks of. He also uses a shortened version of the word people. The cause for this “improper” usage is simple, people have developed typing methods that require as little finger movement as possible, thus increasing their typing speed. It takes more thought and a little more accuracy to hit the “shift” key to create a capital letter at the beginning of a sentence. Words are shortened to as few letters as possible to convey the same meaning. This is more common on the internet now than it was even five or six years ago.
The prescriptive view of language asserts that this change is a bad thing. The descriptive view allows for this variation and explains the roots of it. Which view is correct? Only the passage of time will give an answer to this question. What may actually be happening is a change in the written form of language that may revolutionize the way people communicate. It may be possible to assume that at some time in the future, the dialect of Internet users may result in a change of accepted use in written language outside of the Internet. Perhaps one day written language will consist almost entirely of acronyms and symbols that will convey universal meaning with a minimum of space. One thing remains certain, however. The dialect of the Internet will continue to evolve and change, just as the Internet will continue to expand. There is likely nothing anyone can do to stop such progress.
Posts: 3003 | Registered: Oct 2004
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I found that I accidentally used "btw" once in an email to a coworker, and he had to ask me what it meant. I deliberately don't use onlinespeak at work, but that one just slipped through. I think it may be becoming my native language now.
Oh and in snail mail letters written to online friends I freely use emoticons but I rotate them 90 degrees so that they are right side up.
BunnV and I were trying to come up with a good way to denote actions over the phone (with hilarious results). But it seems wrong that you can hug someone in an im but not on the phone where you have much higher bandwidth, doesn't it? But every method we thought of was hilariously ridiculous. Does anyone have a solution to this?
Posts: 6246 | Registered: Aug 2004
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quote: BunnV and I were trying to come up with a good way to denote actions over the phone (with hilarious results). But it seems wrong that you can hug someone in an im but not on the phone where you have much higher bandwidth, doesn't it? But every method we thought of was hilariously ridiculous. Does anyone have a solution to this?
I've always thought just saying,"Hugs" is a good way...But then, I'm a little crazy.
Posts: 3003 | Registered: Oct 2004
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Seriously though...if I was a teacher, my complaint would be that you used one forum (hatrack) as the basis for your examples of people using slang...and talking about internet slang in their own experiences. It might be good to have a wider sample of message boards so you can show that it is common at multiple places on the web.
regardless, it was a very interesting read.
Posts: 1901 | Registered: May 2004
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The trick is, most people wouldn't even have thought to have ONE forum worth of messages. The fact that I actually did some original research into the subject actually adds MORE credibility to the paper, at least in the eyes of teachers here. It isn't exactly Harvard.
Posts: 3003 | Registered: Oct 2004
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It's already been turned in, so it doesn't make much difference. And I figure there are still plenty of errors in it...
Posts: 3003 | Registered: Oct 2004
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One of my "French language" teachers a couple of years ago put a smiley after a joke I made in an essay I had to write. How cool is that?! Posts: 4519 | Registered: Sep 2003
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I didn't correct myself - figured if anyone couldn't understand it, they would ask.
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