Transcript JS Lecture 5 Language and the Internetx

Lecture 5
Language and the Internet:
A linguistic perspective
Bibliography
 Crystal, D. (2006) Language and the Internet.
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Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
Crystal, D. (2011) Internet Linguistics: a student guide.
London and New York, Routledge.
Crystal, D. (2009) Txtng: the gr8 db8. Oxford, Oxford
University Press.
Danet, B., and Herring, C. (eds.) (2007) The
Multilingual Internet. Oxford, Oxford University
Press.
Journal of Computer-Medicated Communication
 Inventor of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee,
comments that:
 ‘The Web is more a social creation than a technical
one’
 ‘the dream of people-to-people communication
through shared knowledge must be possible for groups
of all sizes, interacting electronically with as much
ease as they do now in person’
 So, what is the role of language in the Internet, and
what is the effect of internet on language?
A linguistic perspective
 (1) Will the English-dominated Internet spell the end
of other tongues?
 (2) Quite e-vil; the mobile phone whisperers.
 (3) A major risk to humanity
 Concerns: Relaxed standards of e-mails
 A new era of technobabble?
 Loss of linguistic creativity and flexibility as
globalisation imposes sameness?
 Aim of studying language and the Internet is to
explore the ways in which the nature of the electronic
medium as such, along with the Internet’s global scale
and intensity of use, is having an effect on language in
general and on individual languages in particular.
 What are the linguistic consequences of evolving a
medium in which the whole world participates?
 What happens, linguistically, when the members of
the human race use a technology enabling them to be
routinely in contact with anyone else?
A ‘global village’?
 This concept raises all kinds of linguistic questions.
 A village is a close-knit community, traditionally
identified by a local dialect or language which
distinguishes its members from those elsewhere.
 If these is a genuine ‘global village’, we need to ask
‘what is its dialect’?
 What are the shared features of language which give
the world community of users their sense of identity?
A homogenous linguistic medium?
 Is the Internet emerging as a homogeneous linguistic
medium?
 Is it a collection of distinct dialects?
 Is it an aggregation of trends and idiosyncratic usages
which as yet defy classification?
Internet situations
 The concept of a language variety is helpful.
 It is a system of linguistic expression whose use is
governed by situational factors.
 Varieties are, in principle, systematic and predictable.
 Sometimes the features of a variety are highly
constrained by the situation.
 ‘anything goes’ is never an option.
Linguistic perspectives terminology
 Computer-mediated communication
 Electronically-mediated communication
 Digitally-mediated communication
 Cyberspeak
 Netspeak
 Netlish
 Weblish
 David Crystal: ‘Internet linguistics’ ‘study of language
on the Internet’
Internet linguistics: the research
challenges
 (1) amount of data it contains.
 (2) diversity of language encountered on the Internet.
 (3) the speed of change
Speed of change: an example
 Difficult to keep pace within a single output:
 e.g.
 e-mail
 Twitter
 Inaccessibility also a problem when it comes to email,
chat and text messages.
 Anonymity also a problem: linguists are normally at
great pains to establish the situational factors which
motivate or condition a use of language.
 Also, ethical considerations.
 In spite of this, there are many opportunities.
 First thing we have to do in Internet linguistics is to
establish the properties of the medium which
condition the language experience and behaviour of its
users.
Inrternet language: speech vs
writing
 Consider the following:
 Having an email ‘conversation’
 entering a ‘chat’ room
 ‘tweeting’
 ‘writing’ emails
 ‘reading’ web ‘pages’
 sending ‘texts’
What are the differences between
speech and writing?