Language and the Internet: A Linguistic Perspective

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Language and the Internet A Linguistic
Perspective

• Xiaofei Lu
• APLNG 083S
• September 4, 2007

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Housekeeping

• Journal 1 due Thursday, 9/6
• Peer review requests to be sent this week
• Lecture notes posted on course webpage
• Presentation sign-up

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Outline

• Consequences of the Internet
• Defining language variety
• Internet situations
• Netspeak

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Consequences of the Internet

• The fear for new technology
• The Internet
• Netizens and the virtual community
• Social consequences
• Linguistic consequences

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The fear for new technology

• Is new communication technology always welcomed?
• Printing
• Vernacular translations of the Bible
• Use of local languages in religious settings
• Broadcasting
• The voice of propaganda?
• Norms of correct pronunciation
• Standard variety vs. dialects and local accents

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The Internet

• What is the Internet?
• A little bit of history
• When did the Internet start developing?
• What was it initially designed for?
• The first national commercial online service
  offered Internet access in which year?

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Internet scale and significance

• Functions the information highway
• Communication, information and entertainment
• Business and education
• Users what is the worlds current
• Overall population ?
• Online population?
• Challenges
• Data-transmission speeds
• Retrieval of vast amount of information

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Netizens and the virtual community

• Are you a netizen of a virtual community?
• Internet addiction?
• Warning signs and symptoms
• Take the test

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Social consequences

• Potentials
• Concerns
• Intellectual property rights
• Privacy issues
• Security issues
• Pornography

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Linguistic consequences

• Effect of Internet on language and languages
• Difference from spoken and written language
• A dialect of the global village?
• Homogeneous language or heterogeneous dialects?
• Concerns
• Relaxed standards vs. literacy
• Technobabble

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Defining language variety

• A system of linguistic expression whose use is
  governed by situational factors
• Examples?
• Systematic and predictable

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Features of a language variety

• Graphic
• Orthographic
• Grammatical
• Lexical
• Discourse
• Phonetic
• Phonological

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The question

• Is the Net a homogeneous language-using situation
  likely to generate a single variety of language?

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Internet situations

• E-mail
• Chatgroups
• Synchronous chat rooms
• Asynchronous bulletin boards and mailing lists
• Virtual worlds
• World Wide Web
• Instant Messaging
• Blogging

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Internet situations

• Rules of communication in the situations?
• Systematic language variety?
• Innovation and idiosyncrasy vs. conformity and
  community
• A new kind of language Netspeak?

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Netspeak

• A type of language displaying features unique to
  the Internet
• Evidence of its existence?
• Allusions in other linguistic situations
• Terms offline, bandwidth,
• The dot element www.alk this way
• The symbol _at_
• The e-prefix e-lance, e-tailers

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Summary

• Background Internet and its consequences
• Key concepts
• Language variety
• Internet situations
• Netspeak
• Central questions
• Effect of Internet on language and languages
• Language on the Internet a homogeneous variety
  or heterogeneous varieties?

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Questions?
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