Language and the internet final

The Internet’s influence on
language: can English survive IM,
Twitter, Email, and Emoticons?
(IMHO, NP)
Musings, cartoons, and observations to be
presented at Supper Club
Tuesday, June 19th
2007
Cherie Dargan

Overview
 Look at some cartoons and examples of how
language is being used online (especially IM)
 Examine concerns of a few linguists and
researchers in the way that IM abbreviations
are moving into the f2f world, as well as the
impact of email on writing letters
 Explore ways the web has influenced our use of
language, but also how we communicate and
interact overall

Beginning assumptions
 Language is tied to culture and identity
 Groups share a common language – a symbol
system. (Outsiders may not “get it.”)
 Language is dynamic: it changes over time.
Some words drop out of usage or get retooled
(boot – boot) and others are added.
 Language is a bridge between individuals,
groups, cultures, and generations

Has the Internet affected your life—
and your language?
 Have you googled a person, event or word
lately? Read a blog? Watched a video or read a
story posted on CNN? Logged on to an online
bank or investment account, or shopped at
Amazon or E bay? Checked your email and
forwarded a link to a great new video at
Youtube?
 These terms are all part of our collective
lexicon, thanks to the Internet.

Netlingo—an online dictionary

How has the web made it easier to
communicate?
 Email part of our routine for business and home
 Forums for posting reviews of books, issues, and
products
 Tools to create blogs without any programming
knowledge
 Focus on user generated content and interaction
(social networking sites, Youtube)
 Most companies have a web presence, with space for
customers’ comments
 My personal examples—faculty web and blogs

Lost in the Stacks Blog contributor

Cartoons – people having fun with
internet slang
 Here are a few cartoons showing the way
language is being used in cyberspace—and f2f
(face to face) alike

Online Dating cartoon 5 - catalog reference ksmn1803
Email courtship

Online Dating cartoon 7 - catalog reference hsc1837
'I'm sorry, Jason. I don't date anyone new until I've googled them.'
Google your date

Text message performance review

Text to speech (They called him Text)

Zits (“aren’t they cuter than words?”)

Themes--or concerns
 Is Text messaging taking over our lives?
 Who can keep up with all the new tech terms (and
technology) when they become buzz words overnight?
 The good news – anyone can have a web presence.
The bad news – anyone can have a web presence.
 With so many people using email, who writes letters?
 Other quick observations, using one of Mike’s all time
favorite movie stars, Clint Eastwood.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
about the WWW

The Good
 Lots of information—e-books, online journals, CNN,
NPR, online libraries, and don’t forget wikipedia
 Lots of opportunities to interact with people via email
and discussion boards
 Whole web sites devoted to very specific topics,
hobbies, or people (something for everyone)
 Search engines and online databases make it easier to
do research on questions ranging from trivial (who was
that guy in the movie with Brad Pitt?) to important
(health concerns, the best car according to Consumer
Reports, or shopping for a hotel room)

The Bad
 Typos, grammatical errors, and blatant misspellings in
way too many web pages
 Lack of consistency in format, such as a note of when
content was last updated, or absence of the credentials
of person/organization posting content
 Tendency of students to think info across the net is
equally credible (a blog posting, IM, or Mayo Clinic e-
newsletter)
 Too much “junk” that is old, hard to navigate, or
difficult to verify as credible

The Ugly
 Hate sites
 The “mean girls’ ” postings on Face book,
blogs, and other personal pages
 Sites promoting eating disorders, cutting,
suicide
 Cyber bullies
 Pedophiles
 Scams and other criminal activity
 Terrorists

My Concerns
 Many people are obsessed with texting, and it
is creeping into their everyday speech and
writing. (So should I develop a new system of
grading comments in text?)
 I see lots of references to it being used in a
variety of way: IM Reference, IM to vote on a
favorite song or person, or to enter a contest.
What’s next?

People are asking questions like “Is it
okay to use text messaging….”
 To say I LOVE YOU for the first time?
 To ask someone out?
 To break up? (netfamilynews blog)
 There are also articles discussing the gender
differences—men use messaging “to manage
relationships while women view text as another
way to foster emotional interaction.” (Pressner,
USA Today)

More facts on text messaging
 Over 90% of wireless customers in the U. S. are
equipped to send text messages
 The number sent has doubled every year,
exploding to 7.3 billion in June 2005 along,
compared with 2.9 billion in June 2004.
 One writer described them like junk food,
calling them “fast cheap and easy….text is
replacing some cell phone calls” (Pressner,
USA Today)

There’s even a Text message novel!
 Posted 1/24/2007 12:54 PM ET
 HELSINKI, Finland (AP) — A novel in which
the entire narrative consists of mobile phone text
messages was published Wednesday in Finland,
home of the world's top handset maker Nokia
Corp.
 The Last Messages tells the story of a fictitious IT-
executive in Finland who resigns from his job and
travels throughout Europe and India, keeping in
touch with his friends and relatives only through
text messages.

Text message novel, cont.
 His messages, and the replies — roughly 1,000
altogether — are listed in chronological order. The
texts are filled with grammatical errors and
abbreviations.
 "I believe that, at the end of the day, a text message
may reveal much more about a person than you
would initially think," said Luntiala (the author)
 http://
www.wastedblog.com/viewcontent.php?AlwaysUseFra
=1&IdContent=4612

And now, it’s time for a quiz!
 Which of the following
terms do you
recognize?
 List taken from the
article “OMG: IM
Slang is Invading
Everyday English”
(NPR, Neda Ulaby)

“OMG: IM Slang is Invading Everyday
English” (NPR, Neda Ulaby)
 RUOK?
 BBL
 BRB
 IMHO
 JK
 LOL
 LYLAS
 NP
 OMG
 OTP
 ROFL
 TTFN
 TTYL
 YW

And now the Translation…
 RUOK: Are you okay?
 BBL: be back later
 BRB: be right back
 IMHO: in my humble
opinion
 JK: just kidding
 LOL: laughing out loud
 LYLAS: love you like a
sister
 NP: no problem
 OMG: oh my God
 OTP: on the phone
 ROFL: rolling on the
floor laughing
 TTFN: Ta-ta for now
 TTYL: talk to you later
 YW: you’re welcome

Three of the most popular IM terms
 By the way, another writer, Haig, identifies the
three most popular IM terms: LOL, IMHO and
BFN

OMG: IM Slang, cont.
 (Weekend Edition, Feb. 18, 2006)
 Quotes Professor David Crystal, “I see a brand
new language evolving, invented really by
young people…”
 He also says that these terms “extend the range
of the language, the expressiveness…the
richness of the language.”
 Not everyone is in agreement with him.

Taking sides on IM…
 Professor Crystal compares the introduction of
IM slang into face to face communication as
something like the revolution that occurred
when Gutenberg introduced his movable type.
(In other words, NBD—no big deal)
 Others disagree, stating that since these terms
are abbreviations for existing phrases they don’t
enrich anything but simply shorten it.
(wikipedia)

LOL in F2F (ROFL?)
 Increasingly, these IM terms are slipping into face
to face communication. For example, LOL (Lahl)
and ROFL (rafful)
 Professor Lacetti is critical of the acronyms.
“Unfortunately for these students, their bosses will
not be “lol” when they read a report that lacks
proper punctuation and grammar, has numerous
misspellings, various made-up words, and silly
acronyms.” (The Lost Art of Writing, quoted in
“Internet Slang,” Wikipedia)

Reactions to the NPR story from the
blogosphere
 Blog posting by jadedlistener, Feb. 25 2006
 Writer recalls a teenager explaining that teens
might say LOL to someone who told a bad joke
(as in NOT funny).
 “Imagine that! “laugh out loud” means the
opposite of “laugh out loud”—leave it to those
wacky teenagers!”

Jadedlistener’s blog, cont.
 Some terms like ROFL have been reduced to
one “word” in roffle. “OMG! Professor Crystal
even says that he believes Shakespeare himself
would have loved this new language.
Academics say the darndest things!”
 He gives examples from the past: college
friends who used to hold entire conversations
using one word (Dude)
 Rap music twisting the meanings (Word – I
agree)

Interesting insight – context matters!
 Jadedlistener concludes, “These new lingos
don’t “enrich” anything: they just shorten it. …
the point of speaking this way, as with my
friend’s “dude” conversations is to strip
communication of language altogether
and to make it completely dependent on
contextual expressiveness.”

This leads us to a cautionary note
 Bidgoli warns that these abbreviations “save
keystrokes for the sender but might make
comprehension of the message more difficult
for the receiver.”
 (“Internet Slang,” Wikipedia)
 The next writer was even more blunt.

Internet slang: the dummening* of
our culture -- by Siren
 http://eville.net/articles/netslang.html
 “Internet slang. Geez. Who made this up? It's like
handicapped typing. It's like another language. It's
dreadfully annoying to people who can actually type
out entire words and phrases without the help of
some kind of set code made up by some teenage
pseudo-internet guru chewing pink bubblegum.
 The word "you" is just entirely too long. So how can
we shorten it? I just don't get it. How much time
does one actually save by doing this? Assuming you
type more than six words a minute, not much.”

Siren’s take on Internet Slang,
cont.
 “I can read "Does anyone want to chat?" much easier
than I can read "NE1 want 2 chat?"...and chances are,
I'll ignore someone who chose the latter way to type a
sentence, being that I assume the entire "conversation"
will be one big guessing game after another.
 No, it's not that hard to figure it out, but why in hell
should you have to RE-read a simple sentence in order
to understand what it means? Is this slang thing some
exclusive club for people who can't type properly? Is
that why we weren't briefed on it?”
 * HIS spelling!

Next, what is twitter, and why
should you care?
 If Siren was annoyed by text messaging, he will
really be annoyed by twitter….
 A brand new service that lets people send short
messages that focus on what he or she is doing
RIGHT NOW
 Sample print screen

Language and the internet final

The official explanation
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter
 Twitter is a social networking and micro-
blogging service that allows users to send
"updates" (text-based posts, up to 140
characters long) via SMS, instant messaging,
the Twitter website, or an application such as
Twitterrific. Twitter was founded in October
2006 by San Francisco start-up company
Obvious Corp.

Twitter map
 You can actually look at a map and see where
people are located as they post their messages.
 Some are fascinated with this, and others are
critical, saying that it is all just a fad.
 However, is something more going on?

Netspeak– a new kind of language?
 Professor Crystal is a noted scholar and the
author or editor of several books on language,
including The Cambridge Encyclopedia of The
English Language, 1995.
 Uses “netspeak” to describe what he sees as a
“third medium” to speech and writing. It has
some of the qualities of both.
 Crystal was cited in numerous articles.

Franklin Cook: 3 seminal events in
the development of language
 Development of speech approximately 40,000
years ago
 Development of writing about 6,000 years ago
 Development of digital communication via the
www in the closing decade of the 20th
century.
 Language on the internet is a new mode,
according to Dr. Dieter Stein

A New Mode—linguistic hybrid
 Stein cites David Crystal, who wrote two books
in the past couple of years: Language and the
Internet and The Language Revolution.
 Stein calls the new mode a linguistic hybrid,
because it has qualities of “spokenness” and
“writenness”

Research results of IM fit the new
mode
 Naomi Baron collected IM from college
students and analyzed them. She found “they
used few abbreviations, acronyms and
emoticons, the spelling was reasonably good…
Overall the study suggested that conversing
through instant messager resembled speaking
more than writing.”
 Side note: 70% said they were doing other
activities while they IM’d or talking to other
people at the same time.

Wired words article
 As noted, the Internet transformed our
notions of print and email has turned us
all into writers. Some examples:
 Blog (online journal)
 Post or view videos
 Twitter (send short messages to describe what
you are doing RIGHT NOW. 140 characters
limit)
 Tag content (delicious)

“The web is not the death of language”
 “Traditional linguists fear the internet damages our
ability to articulate properly, infusing language
with LOLs, dorky emoticons, and the gauche
sharing of personal information on blogs,” Kristen
Philipkoski
 She cites David Crystal, who says that any new
technology tends to bring out the prophets of
doom. He thinks the internet is getting more
people to write, and that is a good thing.
 From article dated 2/25/05

Where’s the quality control? The
Internet and content
 McCabe points out that “the internet is one big
vanity press,” (cited in Cook article)
 This provides people with an opportunity to tell
their stories; however, the gatekeepers of
traditional publishing are disappearing.
 Print magazines have editors and/or peer
reviewers. This is not always true for online
publications.
 One thing we are all writing & reading is email

Statistics about email
 An October 2006 report by technology market
research firm The Radicati Group estimates
that there are "1.1 billion email users and 1.4
billion active email accounts worldwide."
 The same report suggests that some 183 billion
emails were sent each day in 2006 and that
wireless email users will grow "from 14 million
in 2006, to 228 million in 2010."
 http://www.email-marketing-reports.com/metrics/

Quick--reflect, then click!
 Naomi Baron, author of book (2000) on email
and writing, states
 “I believe that we are making ourselves into
less sophisticated users of language because of
computer mediated communication in general,
and perhaps, email in particular…..drives us to
produce writing and send it off without
reflecting.” (Cited in Cook)

What do I think?
 Know your audience – one of the basic things
we try to teach our students in preparation for
writing or presenting a speech
 Use internet slang in context (and make it easy
for the reader to figure them out!)
 My informal findings—my students don’t know
all of the text messaging terms
 Most of them use a handful of terms when they
do IM and send text messages by phone

My big concern: the temporary nature of
email (who writes letters anymore?)
 Email is a great tool to keep in touch with
family, friends and coworkers
 Instant – we may not build in enough time for
reflection for some messages
 Most of the time it is very functional – good for
short, quick messages
 However, many of us cherish old family letters
that help to recapture life in an earlier time.
What will our children look at?

War time correspondence
 Know someone who is serving in Iraq or
Afghanistan? Most soldiers have access to
email, and many families are able to keep in
touch. Some do IM and video conferencing.
 However, is someone going to print out that
exchange of messages and put them into three
ring binders, to treasure later on?
 This is a big contrast with previous wars, when
morning mail call was special.

Letters home from Viet Nam
 Dear America: Letters Home from
Vietnam, compiled entirely from
the avalanche of letters and
poems received by the
Commission for consideration
to be included on the Memorial,
was published by W. W. Norton
& Company.
 In all, 208 pieces written by 125
people were chosen for
inclusion

In closing
 Slang varies from generation to generation; each era
has its buzzwords and internet slang is not much
different
 Language (especially English) has proven to be fairly
resilient
 Some concerns may be justified about how much
time people spend with IM; however, most people use
a handful of terms at best
 Some IM terms may cross over into common usage
f2f but it won’t be the end of English
 Twittering is IM to the extreme and probably just
another fad (like driving around to find “hot spots”)

Want to brush up on your Internet
slang? Go to Netlingo.com
Netlingo.com is an online
dictionary with thousands
of terms relating to the
internet and technology
(also lists of Smileys and
IM terms), and a great
resource.

Language and the internet final

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