"Language and the internet", David Crystal (2001)

Résumé du document

Nowadays there is surely an increase of new forms of communication among people thanks to technological achievement, communicative power, and social potential of the Internet. While sociologists, political commentators, economists draw attention to the dangers of the Internet because of pornography, intellectual property rights, privacy, security, crime and so on, scholars are worried first of all about issues related to the power its linguistics implication.

The same fears were perceived in the fifteenth century when the arrival of printing was received by the Church as an invention of Satan because there was the fear that uncensored ideas would lead to a breakdown of social order so to the evil. Worries about censorship and control spread all over when society began to cope with the arrival of telegraph, telephone and broadcasting technology.

The Internet is an association of computer networks with common standards which allow messages to be sent from a host to another. It developed in the 1960s in the USA as an experimental network which included military, federal, university, personal users and so on. Now with over 300 million hosts connected by the year 2005, a large number of people are able to keep in touch with each other through electronic mail (e-mail), discussion groups, and the provision of web site on any topic we need information.

Extraits

[...] From a linguistic point of view in these system there is a level of informality because the participants know each other, speed of interaction, abbreviations, regardless of punctuation. It is possible to send files, play games, share web links and using the appropriate audio equipment switch to telephone communication. Skype is a computer program that can be used to make free voice calls over the Internet to anyone else who is also using Skype. It's free and considered easy to download and use, and works with most computers. File transfers and chat options are also available. [...]

[...] The @ symbol separates the username from the host name. The host name uniquely identifies the server computer and is the last part of the Internet email address. The three-letter suffix in the host name identifies the kind of organization operating the server. The most common suffixes are: .com (commercial), .edu (educational), .gov (government). An individual e-mail consists of a series of functional elements: an upper area (the header or heading) and a lower area for the mail text (the body or message). [...]

[...] In multi-party interaction the situation immediately becomes potentially much more confusing: you enter a chatgroup not knowing how many other people are involved, who they are or what they have been talking about. The use of nicknames is highly distinctive feature of synchronous chatgroup language. The choice of a nick is a ritual act and represents an electronic identity. It's possible to change one's nick at any time but if someone else in the group has already chosen that nick the software will not allow you to use it. Grammar is chiefly characterized by high colloquial constructions and non standard usage, following patters known in other dialects or genre. [...]

[...] Most varieties of written language can now be found on the web. The situation of e-mail, chatgroups, virtual words and instant messaging are expressed through the medium of writing. Netspeak is a function of the technology and messages sent via computer are complete and unidirectional (lack of simultaneous feedback). There is no technical way of allowing the receiver to send the electronic equivalent of a simultaneous nod or any of the other audio-visual reactions which play such a critical role in face-to-face interaction. [...]

[...] Newcomers to the group may begin their message with a “hello everyone” especially if the group is small and closed in membership and everyone use certain types of grammatical construction, slang, jargon or abbreviations. Messages are short since are influenced by technological length constrains and it would be pointless for everyone try to use for long reactions a medium which is designated for short messages and multiple reactions. There are two situations here: in real time (synchronous) or in postponed time (asynchronous). In a synchronous situation a user enters a chat room and begins a conversation in real time, sending contributions with other participants and there are more conversations simultaneously. [...]