Language Scholars Click on Netspeak
Have you been LOL lately?
No? You must not be Internet savvy. But beware: The expression--which means “laughing out loud”--could creep into non-Net communication before long.
How the computer revolution is changing language was among the topics discussed at the recent annual meeting of the Modern Language Assn.
One researcher looked at the evolution of an early discussion list on the Arpanet, the predecessor of the Internet. The discussion list was much like the Internet newsgroups of today, with messages passed among members by computer.
Susan C. Herring of the University of Texas, Arlington, said she was surprised by many of her findings, mainly that computer correspondence did not lead to reduced sentence complexity, poor grammar or an abundance of typos. “This should reassure parents who think their children’s grammar will suffer because of the Internet,” she said.
And, contrary to popular belief, computer correspondence did not appear to lead to a homogeneous style among users. Instead, writers tended to cultivate their own style.
Herring also found that computer correspondence tended to become less formal, and less polite, than other communication.
The study looked at the archived messages of about 100 computer science professionals in the discussion group from 1975 to 1986.
Herring noted how computer talk is crawling into general use. Take the “smiley,” the combination colon and end parenthesis that indicates a happy face in Netspeak. “Smiley faces have been around for a long time, . . . right side up,” she said. “The Internet turned them sideways. Now I see more and more people putting them in letters and notes that way.”
Lisa Gerrard of UCLA examined nearly 200 Web sites created by women, with a primary audience of women. Overall, the sites challenged stereotypes--or tweaked them. For example, she noted, references to “chicks” and “bimbos” were used in an empowering way. A search of the Web shows such women’s sites as https://www.brazenhussy.com, https://www.chickclick .com and https://www.riotgrrl.com.
Kenneth Rivers of Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas, spoke on the use of French on the Internet--or the lack of it. There wasn’t a French search engine on the World Wide Web until February 1996, Rivers said. Today, only 2% of what is available on the Internet is in French; most is in English.
Rivers said the lack of diverse languages on the Web posed the question: If a language isn’t a part of the Internet, can it survive?
