I'm doing a couple of research papers on the Internet and Languages. I'm basically trying to figure out how langauge has changed through the use of the internet, and whether that change is good, bad, or just plain natural. I've noticed a number of things about language on the internet myself--like fad social languages, l337 for example--and was wondering if anyone else has noticed similar things. Be warned that I may quote people in my paper, but I'll ask permission before I do. I'm pretty sure I don't need any real names or anything like that. But anyway, any help or comments would be appreciated.
Posted by Boris (Member # 6935) on :
quote: 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 dont
Thanks. I might use that (if you don't mind too terribly). Just as a thought, has anyone seen this type of thing flow over into real life? Like in school papers, reports, snail-mail letters, etc?
Posted by Vadon (Member # 4561) on :
I think it first started through the gaming and chatting communities online. 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? So they probably started shortening things to get the message out quicker. are=r, you=u, and elite=leet=1337 etc.
Also, people wanted short acronyms (I think it's called) for common phrases. I have to leave = got to go = gtg, That's funny = laughing out loud = lol, I'll be right back = brb, etc.
Over time, as newer people were introduced to the internet, they started to see these weird things being used. Someone might say, "dude, that was a leet hs!" Which means, "Dude, that was one cool head shot!"
Many would be confused and try to adopt this odd language into their internet speech. Eventually, they thought it was to be cool to use it, so they added other useless things, leet=1337, woot = w00t, dude = d00d etc. Making a language that evolved by itself.
Also, emoticons... Or Emotion Icons. The casual smiley faces that we all love. Sometimes they were used to show humor or sarcasm through writing. If someone said, "Shut up, loser." It would seem rude. But if they put something like, "Shut up, Loser. =D" It's not really mean anymore.
(Well gtg. g00d luck! ^_^)
Posted by Farmgirl (Member # 5567) on :
Hmmm. I just read an article along these lines like yesterday. Wonder if I can find it again to help give you some guidelines...
FG
Oh -- for my part -- I will say the internet has increased my vocabulary knowledge a great deal
[ October 28, 2004, 05:14 PM: Message edited by: Farmgirl ]
Posted by Boris (Member # 6935) on :
quote: 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?
That's a good point. But to me, 1337 seems like it would take more time to type with. I've seen a lot of the alphabets for it and some of the letters take up 4 keystrokes (\/\/ = W). Is that just taking the original shortened usage of 4 = for 2 = to and taking it to the point of an exclusive dialect?
Posted by Vadon (Member # 4561) on :
...Nuts, I fogot to add that, yes. That is one of the problems with 1337. It was origionally there just to shorten how long it would take you to say something, there was no mix between numbers and letters.
It changed to where people believed that it was cool to do that...
Posted by Boris (Member # 6935) on :
quote: That is one of the problems with 1337. It was origionally there just to shorten how long it would take you to say something, there was no mix between numbers and letters.
It changed to where people believed that it was cool to do that...
I'm going to use that if you don't mind.
Posted by ketchupqueen (Member # 6877) on :
I don't think the internet has really changed my writing, grammar, spelling, or punctuation. However, I have one vice:
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.
See? I'm doing it again!
I can't stop! Someone get me out of the grip of these blasted emoticons!
*runs screaming from thread*
Posted by dabbler (Member # 6443) on :
I'm not sure how some of them start. A friend of mine used to say "OMG, guys, OMG" out loud in reference to 13-year old girls chattering on AIM ("Oh my God, guys, oh my God"). Smileys are ways to convey emotion. I used them back in '93 when I called bulliten board systems (BBS's). Abbreviations were commonplace, as were using words to mean new things (modem-speak, is how my friends and I would refer to it).
Nowadays, in AIM I speak in phrases and uncapitalized sentences (though I tend to capitalize I because it's so weird otherwise). With one friend, however, I tend to type in complete sentences more than not. It just gives me the sense of intelligence .
Posted by Boris (Member # 6935) on :
quote: 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.
Gotta use that too. And don't worry. St. Mark had the same problem... Mark 5:13- ...there were about two thousand;) (Okay, the whole thing was in parenthesis with a semicolon at the end, but it still made me go, huh? for a second)
Posted by Vadon (Member # 4561) on :
Go right ahead... ^_^
Should be an interesting essay.
Posted by Boris (Member # 6935) on :
I'll probably post the whole thing here when I get done with it. (Soon as I find some new webspace...Lost mine)
Posted by Bokonon (Member # 480) on :
A lot of the acronyms pre-date online gaming (lol, brb), these go back to old IRC days.
Also, emoticons, and their effects are rather remarkable.
-Bok
Posted by blacwolve (Member # 2972) on :
quote: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 sounds so much like me. The worst is when I'm writing thank you notes to my grandparents.
I don't use (or understand) a lot of internet speak, so the only thing that's every gotten me in trouble was using prolly in place of probably. I do this all the time, regardless of whether it's appropriate. The worst is in papers or powerpoint presentations.
Posted by Brian_Berlin (Member # 6900) on :
methinks th' internet 's causin' more souls t' be talkin' like pirates! Yaarr!
Posted by advice for robots (Member # 2544) on :
You might want to consider how the new words affect how we think about things. Language basically allows us to construct meaning from observations we make. A common language would tend to steer speakers of that language toward certain ways of thinking about certain things. So--has there been any fundamental shifts in the ways people think with the advent of the Internet? Does 1337 affect the way you think, for example? Or is it mostly a way to distinguish true members of a community from the wannabes? In general, what communication needs drive the creation of new Internet-related lingo?
Posted by Boris (Member # 6935) on :
So far my paper is following the premise that Internet language has developed as a written dialect. As far as I know, no other dialects tend to be written out unless it is a part of a story. For example, a man with a stiff southern accent who may be impossible to understand for some people when spoken to may be understood in writing. The internet has changed this a little bit. Because of the limitations of Internet communication, where emotion placed behind spoken words is impossible to convey, a way was developed to allow people to include emotion in their online communication. Thus, emoticons were born. That's the basics of what I want for this paper, and I think I just about have what I need to get it done (At least the rough draft).
Posted by TMedina (Member # 6649) on :
Typing skills are usually self-taught, making people lazy typers who can't be bothered to hammer out a complete thought on a keyboard.
I tend to do it out of habit and two of my English teachers were punctuation Nazis, so I tend to pay a lot of attention to the typed message.
-Trevor
Posted by TMedina (Member # 6649) on :
The internet has developed it's own set of slang and specific lingo just like any other subculture.
If you listen to gaming geeks talking about +2 flaming swords, you might not get the reference but any other gaming geek probably will.
To a lesser extent, you can see this phenomenon in groups of close friends or co-workers when they reference a shared event or situation and use it as a means of communication.
Example: "Oh my god, you remember when John told the boss she looked fat in those heels and got fired a week later?"
Subsequently: "Careful, you're going to end up like John."
Or
"Careful, you're gonna pull a John."
Neither statement has any special meaning to anyone not familiar with the subculture.
My manager's daughter plays tuba in her high school band and they have their own list of "band-isms".
The Internet is like one massive collection of subcultures that can vary from page to page, board to board - each collective has it's own morays and social rules and, invariably, it's own lingo, slang and shared references.
-Trevor
Posted by Boris (Member # 6935) on :
This is kinda funny. I looked a little more into 1337 and found this: 1337 g00g13 Posted by Boris (Member # 6935) on :
quote: The Internet is like one massive collection of subcultures that can vary from page to page, board to board - each collective has it's own morays and social rules and, invariably, it's own lingo, slang and shared references
I'll probably use that too.
Posted by TMedina (Member # 6649) on :
I'm flattered - just give me credit in the bibliography if you do.
Or not, s'all good.
-Trevor
Posted by Boris (Member # 6935) on :
Bibliography is written. I'm quoting TMedina, Valon, adam613 and ketchupqueen. I may change that, but all of you can expect your words to grace a College Paper soon Posted by pooka (Member # 5003) on :
Is it for a linguistics or an english class?
Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
Except you probably meant mores, unless you're referring to the eels . . . I don't have any eels, though I ate some today.
Posted by Boris (Member # 6935) on :
quote: Is it for a linguistics or an english class?
Technically, both. English 325, Theory of Languages. That and I'm combining this paper with a paper I need for a Technical writing class.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
"It was origionally there just to shorten how long it would take you to say something"
This is wrong. 133t-speak was never intended to be shorthand.
IRC and USENET shorthand -- LOL, BRB, OMG, IMHO, AFK, and the like -- were shorthands developed to either abbreviate common phrases or make it easier to express a long concept in real-time. (This was especially important back in the days when everyone was connecting at 300 baud and sometimes even paid by the character for E-mail, so you wanted to keep messages short.)
133t-speak is much newer, and evolved as a consequence of the warez/h4x0r community. In the old days, it was not at all uncommon for people to actually ADVERTISE their services as hackers and/or publish long lists of illegal downloads. For legal reasons, BBSes (and later ISPs) would run searches for common words like "hacker" or "Windows license" and kill the posts they found. To hide, creative spellings were developed -- on the same principle today that you might receive an E-mail for "BuWHY V1a.GaRRA! Susan was unhappy to learn that her dog had fallen off an unexpected cliff, but Barry was overjoyed. Click here!"
This spelling evolved faster than the filters, and eventually acquired a life of its own -- especially since it was a great way to distinguish the people who "got" the joke from the squares who didn't know what you were talking about when you said something like "0 133t 0wnz yr b0x3n!" (Note: words like boxen, which are falling into increasing disuse as 133t-speak becomes more of a gamer/trendy thing -- witness the gradual addition of words like 'spawn' and 'pwned' to the lexicon -- are a good indication of the kind of humor possessed by system administrators in the late '80s and early '90s. It is on these kind of semantic jokes that most of the early lexicon was built. You will, in fact, miss a lot of the jokes in early Infocom games if you aren't familiar with computer engineer slang from the '70s. *laugh*)
That said, most people using these old standards are ignorant of the history involved, and the language(s) are consequently changing to fit the new demographics -- largely young, geeky, and aggressive -- pouring in.
[ October 28, 2004, 09:11 PM: Message edited by: TomDavidson ]
Posted by Boris (Member # 6935) on :
Thanks Tom, I actually found that info on Wikipedia. From the article there I've noticed that the use of 1337 for regular communications was actually looked down on by hackers and people who actually were 1337. It does seem, though, that the use of 1337 that occurs more today is due to Wanna-be's thinking it's cool. Most of the sentiment towards common use of 1337 has been negative.
Posted by Boris (Member # 6935) on :
quote: IRC and USENET shorthand -- LOL, BRB, OMG, IMHO, AFK, and the like -- were shorthands developed to either abbreviate common phrases or make it easier to express a long concept in real-time. (This was especially important back in the days when everyone was connecting at 300 baud and sometimes even paid by the character for E-mail, so you wanted to keep messages short.)
I think I might use some of this as well. You wouldn't happen to remember how much was charged per character in those days would you?
Posted by Boris (Member # 6935) on :
And can you believe it, in the period of 6 hours I managed to do a majority of research for and write a 7 page paper. Someone asked me why I was an English major once...
Posted by Boris (Member # 6935) on :
Oh, and again, thanks to adam613, ketchupqueen, Vadon, TMedina and TomDavidson for the help Posted by Boris (Member # 6935) on :
Actually, thanks to everyone for the help, but thanks especially for the quotes to those mentioned Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
I think that particularly interesting are the ways in which 1337 and related dialects have filtered into English proper. People are growing up now saying (or at least writing) w00t and pwned and the like. While boxen has fallen out of 1337 usage it still pops up all over the internet as the plural of (computer) boxes. As it always is, English has been changed.
Posted by ketchupqueen (Member # 6877) on :
You have my permission to quote anything I say in this thread.
(AAAAACK! I'm doing it again! Ooooh, there's something else I do-- I now say "AAAAACK" and "MUAHAHAHA" in everyday conversation. I never did that before I started spending too much time online.)
Posted by Boris (Member # 6935) on :
*chuckle* I used to mutter that to myself every time something amused me. I'd quote you on the AAAACK! thing but uhh, yeah, paper's written.
Posted by ketchupqueen (Member # 6877) on :
Oooooh! Can I read it? *is fascinated by etymology*
Posted by Boris (Member # 6935) on :
Yikes, slow down. I've got to get it peer-reviewed and edited first (I'll post when all that's done, though)
Posted by Anna (Member # 2582) on :
Internet makes me speak English No, really, if you need an opening, you can tell that many people who didn't spoke or understood English fluently now do both things only because most of the Internet is in English.
[ October 29, 2004, 04:29 AM: Message edited by: Anna ]
Posted by Sean (Member # 689) on :
I rarely use capital letters when I speak. The rise of IM just made it noticable.
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