Language and the Internet PDF

Language and the Internet ************************************************************************************** Language, discourse and ‘ways of speaking’ Weblish, netlingo, e-talk, tech-speak, wired-style, geek-speak and netspeak. These are all common terms which people have used to describe la...

Language and the Internet ************************************************************************************** Language, discourse and ‘ways of speaking’ Weblish, netlingo, e-talk, tech-speak, wired-style, geek-speak and netspeak. These are all common terms which people have used to describe language in cyberspace. Although labels like these seem fairly amusing and harmless, they make poten?ally problema?c assump?ons about language generally, and about how language is changing on the internet. In par?cular, they assume that internet language is so different from other kinds of language that it warrants a new, special label. In fact, the popular belief oBen promoted by the media is that new technologies have also been radically affec?ng language and, in some cases, destroying ‘proper’ language. Have a look at this example of a newspaper headline from the Bri?sh press which also makes up yet another label: Hell is other people talking webspeak on mobile phones. (Sunday Times newspaper, 27 August 2000) Although the terms ‘netlingo’ and ‘netspeak’ can oversimplify things, we’ll s?ck with them because they are convenient and recognizable, and also because they help draw aJen?on to an important dis?nc?on made by linguists between language and discourse. Just as we considered some of the core concepts of communica?on, it’s important to start by establishing what we mean by ‘language’ before going on to discuss its place on the internet. Language As you might imagine, language is a symbolic system for crea?ng meaning and is made up of sounds (or phonemes), leJers (or graphemes) and words (or morphemes). These are in turn combined to form gramma?cal structures like sentences according to the rules (or syntax) agreed by any par?cular community of speakers. Discourse This is why scholars are more interested in what people actually do with language in their everyday encounters, the ways they use language to form rela?onships and to communicate their iden??es. This is why scholars talk about language-in-use or discourse. The term ‘discourse’ is used by many different scholars in many different ways. Although it’s used here in the par?cular sense of ‘language-in-use’, in actual fact ‘discourse’ and ‘communica?on’ mean preJy much the same thing: both terms are concerned with social interac?on and everyday encounters. However, while the no?on of ‘communica?on’ always indicates a very broad, nonverbal perspec?ve, ‘discourse’ tends to be more specifically directed at linguis?c issues (see Schiffrin, 1994). delagente.edgar.rile.thurlow.lengel.tomic Netspeak is itself slightly misleading because most of what happens isn’t actually spoken – maybe netwrite would be beJer! At least ‘netspeak’ does convey the sense of people actually using language, however. Therefore, while ‘netlingo’ is a useful term for describing the different linguis?c forms used on the internet (e.g. the leJering, words and gramma?cal rules), what’s also interes?ng is to examine people’s linguis?c prac?ces online – the ways they are actually interac?ng and conversing with each other. For us this is described beJer by the term ‘netspeak’. We don’t only want to know what language on the internet looks like but also how people are using language in different ways. Language varieGes and speech communiGes Scholars who study the rela?onship between language and society (usually called sociolinguists) know that the boundaries between different languages are not always clear-cut. They also know that it’s a maJer of history, poli?cs and power that some people’s ways of speaking come to be considered acceptable and pres?gious and a ‘proper’ language. In everyday talk, for example, we like to describe French as ‘the language of romance’, German as ‘the language of science and technology’ and oBen hear people describe English as the ideal ‘global language’. We also commonly imagine that regional dialects which people speak at home are not proper languages – they’re just slang or ‘patois’. Contrary to all these popular (or folk linguis?c) beliefs, however, sociolinguists know that there is never anything inherent in a language (e.g. its grammar or vocabulary) which makes it beJer or worse than any other language. Different people have different ways of speaking and that it’s a maJer of social conven?on that some ways are regarded as more or less superior. This is why sociolinguists prefer to talk about different varie?es of language to acknowledge that different groups – or communi?es – simply have different ways of speaking. Some?mes these varie?es come to be used as the na?onal language, at other ?mes they con?nue to be ‘just’ dialects which people use at home or in their local communi?es. People usually organize themselves into communi?es around the way they speak – what are called speech communi,es. What’s more, having a shared way of speaking also helps create a greater sense of being in a community together. Communi?es of people blend into one another, and we usually belong to several different communi?es in the same way, languages don’t have perfect boundaries and are never ‘pure’ – in spite of whatever grammar books might have us believe. These same sociolinguis?c principles apply also to the way language is used on the internet. Mul?lingualism: Languages on the net Although this is a common mistake, it’s wrong to think of netlingo (or netspeak) as necessarily being a version of English. Given the ‘digital divide’, there are, of course, many different speech communi?es whose ways of speaking seldom get a look in on the internet. It’s not just people from the poorest parts of the world, however, whose voices are not heard on the internet; there are many other languages besides English spoken in otherwise media-rich countries. This raises two important ques?ons about languages in cyberspace: (1) what is the status of different languages and (2) to what extent is English the dominant language? delagente.edgar.rile.thurlow.lengel.tomic Language wars on the net? Although people oBen take language for granted (and especially their own language), be under no illusion, language is always a powerful poli?cal issue. On the internet, this usually means languages resis?ng the popularity and dominance of English, but there are also many examples from around the world where speakers of lesser-used languages are facing similar struggles (e.g. Catalan in Spain and Welsh in Britain). It’s in this way too that the prevalence of English online becomes easily caught up with more widely expressed issues about language and na?onal iden?ty, as well as even wider issues like the globaliza?on, ‘Americaniza?on’ or ‘Englishiza?on’ of world cultures. Language style and language change on the internet Netspeak is a development of millennial significance. A new medium of linguis?c communica?on does not arrive very oBen, in the history of the race. (Crystal, 2001: 238–9) This quote from David Crystal, a very well-known Bri?sh writer about language, is fairly typical of the kinds of grand claims being made about the way language is changing on the internet, and, supposedly, because of the internet. In fact, Crystal suggests that internet language is a ‘fourth medium’(aBer wri?ng, speaking and signing) and how the rate of change has been tremendous. Not everyone shares this perspec?ve, however, and most scholars tend to be a liJle more cau?ous. In par?cular, what experts of CMD are always interested to know is whether language in cyberspace is so different that it deserves to be seen as a completely new variety of language. Does it, for example, deserve special labels like netlingo and netspeak? Netlingo: Wri?ng that looks like speech? Language is changing all the ?me. Everybody knows that the way English is spoken and wriJen today is very different from the way it was used four hundred years ago by William Shakespeare. Even though people don’t always like the changes, language change is unavoidable and natural. And it is happening everywhere. What’s more, even though Standard English may be the agreed norm for wri?ng a college essay or a business leJer, it’s by no means the norm when speaking on the street – no one really speaks like they write! Nowadays, there are also more people who speak English as a second language than there are people who speak it as a first language. This is why one commentator, John Simmons, says that most English spoken these days is a kind of ‘fusion English’, whereby English is mixed up with other languages. Netlingo is no excep?on. The internet is just one of many factors influencing the way language is changing. delagente.edgar.rile.thurlow.lengel.tomic The linguis?c forms of internet language are obviously influenced a lot by the physical constraints of the technology itself – most notably the fact that it is usually typed on a standard computer keyboard. There are also important social factors which have influenced netlingo, such as the jargon of computer ‘geeks’ and other specialists who’ve been so heavily involved in developing communica?on technologies. In this sense, the language also reveals a speech community who enjoy playing with the possibili?es of the keyboard. The emphasis in netlingo is almost always on speed (i.e. trying to type as fast as you can speak) and informality (i.e. trying to be friendly). What this tends to mean is that language relies on crea?ve typology and many of the tradi?onal rules of grammar and style are some?mes broken – as they always are when we’re trying to be laid-back and fashionable. In a nutshell, then, the most basic ‘rules’ of netlingo are that it uses whatever is possible with the computer keyboard, but that it also tries to save as many keystrokes as possible. Some of the most commonly recognized features of netlingo are these: word compounds and blends (e.g. weblish, shareware, ne?queJe, e- and cyberanything); abbrevia?ons and acronyms (e.g. THX ‘thanks’, IRL ‘in real life’, F2F ‘face-to-face’, some1 ‘someone’); minimal use of capitaliza?on, punctua?on and hyphena?on – or none at all (e.g. cooperate and, of course, email and internet); generally less regard for accurate spelling and/or typing errors; less or no use of tradi?onal openings and closures (e.g. use Hi or Hello instead of Dear...). Some?mes people will use nothing at all – especially in online chat and instant messaging where your user ID is given automa?cally. Netspeak: Speech that looks like wri?ng? Some of the most common typographic strategies used to achieve this interacGonal style are: leJer homophones (e.g. RU ‘are you’, OIC ‘oh, I see’), acronyms (e.g. LOL ‘laugh out loud’, WG ‘wicked grin’ ) and a mixture of both (e.g. CYL8R ‘see you all later’); creaGve use of punctuaGon (e.g. mulGple periods... exclamaGon marks !!!!); capitalizaGon or other symbols for EMPHASIS and *stress*; onomatopoeic and/or stylized spelling (e.g. coooool, hahahaha, vewy intewesGn ‘very interesGng’) keyboard-generated emoGcons or smileys (e.g. : -) ‘smiling face’ ,-) ‘winking face’, @>—;— ‘a rose’); direct requests (e.g. A/S/L ‘age, sex, locaGon?’ and GOS ‘gay or straight?’) interacGonal indicators (e.g. BBL ‘be back later’, IGGP ‘I goJa go pee’, WDYT ‘what do you think?’) with more elaborate programming, colored text, emotes (e.g. *{Sender} eyes you up and down*, *{Sender} cries on your shoulder*) and other graphic symbols (e.g. images of gies and accessories in Virtual Worlds). delagente.edgar.rile.thurlow.lengel.tomic Folk linguisGcs and the spread of netlingo This spread of netlingo is what experts would call stylis?c or linguis,c diffusion – when one way of speaking starts to seep into another. Netlingo is also having an influence on languages other than English, leading to popular reports of ‘CyberSpanglish’ with isolated terms like surfeando el Web and estoy emailando. This of course ?es in with issues we discussed earlier, about the combined impact of English and netlingo. Which is why, in some cases, languages like French are resis?ng such influences by promo?ng their own equivalents for certain terms (e.g. bavardage for chat and un pirate informa?que for a hacker). As we suggested at the start of this unit, there is a lot of folk linguis,cs (i.e. popular, lay talk about language) and not a lot of expert linguis?cs. For example, one interes?ng aspect of language on the internet which remains under-researched is the emergence of labels like weblish and netlingo. Where do these terms come from? Who invents them? How do they become more widely used? Another interes?ng change which no one seems to document is the gradual ‘evolu?on’ of netlinguis?c terms such as the way E-mail becomes e-mail becomes email, or Internet becomes Net and then net. First ‘smiley’ found A Microsoe researcher has rediscovered what is believed to be the first known instance of a ‘smiley’… The smiley has spawned a whole range of emoGcons since its appearance on a bulleGn board discussion at Carnegie Mellon University on 19 September 1982. The emoGcons, as they are known, have become an important part of the worldwide online social culture because they make it easy to communicate emoGons quickly – something that many people find difficult to express using words. (Yahoo! News, 13 September 2002) New ways of communica?ng and using language are emerging all the ?me as a result of technological and social changes. What was once new, trendy and cool, eventually becomes formal, old-fashioned and uncool. (Even the smiley seemed like a major breakthrough at one ?me!) This is by no means something special to the internet but is the way language has always evolved. It’s a mistake ever to think of language as being something fixed or sacred. Of course, there will always be people in society who want to privilege their ways of speaking over other people’s ways of speaking, just as there will be other people who don’t want their way of speaking (and wri?ng) to change. delagente.edgar.rile.thurlow.lengel.tomic First Industrial Revolu4on/The “Bri4sh” Industrial Revolu4on By the end of the 18th century, Great Britain had started to dominate the world both geographically, through the establishment of the Bri?sh Empire, and technologically, with innova?ons like the steam engine, the industrial weaving machine and more. Steamships and trains could transport goods over thousands of miles, both within and across countries. Second Industrial Revolu4on The end of the World War II marked a new beginning for the global economy. Under the leadership of a new hegemony, the United States of America, aided by the technologies like the car and the plane, global trade started to rise once again. The Internet (Third Industrial Revolu4on) It connected people all over the world in an even more direct way. The internet has revolu?onized connec?vity and communica?on, and helped people share their ideas more widely, just as the inven?on of the prin?ng press did in the 15th century. ANSWER THESE QUESTIONS. (1) Do you see any possibility of a Fourth Industrial Revolu?on? Be able to elaborate your response. (2) If the Third Industrial Revolu?on has Netlingo, how should you term the language of the probable Fourth Industrial Revolu?on? Diaz.Palma.delaGente