November 3, 2022 · 4:34 pm

Week 4: Writing Conventions

This week is the first week where we’ll really start to look at some of the content we see when it comes to online language. Specifically, we’re looking at writing conventions – what choices do people make when it comes to punctuation, capitalization, and structure? 

 

Structure

As mentioned in a previous post, one benefit of online writing is that we don’t usually have to worry about the space our writing is taking up. Hence, we can use a linebreak to show a new utterance or a new thought (McCulloch 110-111). In informal contexts, this also allows for users to drop sentence-final punctuation (which will be expanded upon later in this post). The use of linebreaks applies not only to texting, but also to more formal pieces of writing, like newspaper articles. Rather than using line indents, online publishers can include line breaks between paragraphs (111). However, publishers do usually maintain standard punctuation in these situations.  

Online contexts also offer some spaces in which users can use traditional writing structures – but often with some adjustments. One 2012 study looked at how Facebook users interacted with one college’s Facebook posts. Many of the comments on these posts tended to use openings and closings, making them more akin to little emails than to straightforward direct messages. Most of these openings were mentions of the addressee rather than more elaborate greetings (Pérez-Sabater 87). Closings tended to be expressions of thanks or the slogan of the college’s athletic department (89). In general, commenters who were native speakers of English tended to use a similar register throughout their comment. Non-native speakers tended to use more formal greetings and closings in their comments, but mixed in more informal stylistics (89). All of this is to say that less formal stylistics are not necessarily viewed as such by all users, but that native speakers (at least in this study) seemed to draw a strong connection between nonstandard stylistics and informality, and vice versa.

 

Punctuation

Punctuation, or the lack of it, seems to be a recognizable feature in online writing. For instance, because line breaks are so often used in texts/direct messages, there is not necessarily a need for a period at the end of a text message in the same way we need a period in a longer text. So to a young text-savvy person, the presence of an unrequired period might suggest that it is indicating some additional meaning, like a serious or falling tone of voice (McCulloch 113-114). In general, punctuation can be used in nonstandard ways to indicate emotion, intention, or emphasis in a message (Crystal 63). 

Ellipses (…) may also create similar confusion to periods. In informal writing offline, writers use them to mark spaces between thoughts or sentence fragments in a space-efficient way (McCulloch 111). A postcard writer, for example, might write “Went to the beach yesterday…took a walk in the afternoon…beautiful area”. But because space efficiency is not as urgent in text messages, ellipses are generally not used this way. Rather, many users have claimed them as a way to indicate a trailing off tone. This can lead to confusion if two users who use ellipses differently interact. What reads to one person as a perfectly normal message (perhaps, “Saw Alex this morning…it was her birthday this weekend”) in which the ellipses are marking a separation between two clauses might read to another person as indicating a tone of voice. This tone of voice may in turn appear to a user as confusion or passive aggression (something like, “Alex’s birthday was this weekend, why didn’t you send her a card?”) (112-113). However, ellipses may be retaining their original function in at least one online space: blogs (Crystal 69). In these contexts, where communication is mostly one-sided and asynchronous, ellipses can be used to punctuate streams of thought, as they might in diaries or journals.

The exclamation mark has kept its old meaning of excitement or emphasis, but also seems to be used online to indicate warmth and sincerity (McCulloch 123-124). This extension likely came from the linking of excitement to sincerity; “After all,” McCulloch says, “to be excited to meet someone or help someone is also to be sincere about it”. One 2006 study found that exclamation marks in a sample of emails were used to express excitement in 9.5% of the sample, expressed emphasis in 29.5% if the sample, and expressed friendliness in 32% of the sample. Why has this new usage become popular? Well, in a context where you don’t have extralinguistic markers of emotions from your conversation partner, it can be helpful to have an explicit mark of sincerity or genuine excitement. 

Asterisks (*) and underscores (_) have been used to emphasize text (Crystal 64). This usage originated with software that allowed users to use asterisks and underscores to code their text as bold or italicized (McCulloch 127). This is not something universally available across all software. But these symbols are easy to notice visually and are easily accessible on a computer or phone keyboard, so they continue to be used to emphasize text even if the text is not being visually bolded or italicized.  

The tilde (~) has gained the ability to mark sarcasm in some online contexts (137). This mark, having very few functions in everyday written English, was first used as simple decoration in digital writing or to indicate drawn out words (138). This second function evolved from how Japanese internet users used the tilde to indicate a drawn out utterance. Since Japanese is written with a syllabary (one symbol for every syllable), they could not simply repeat the final symbol of a word to indicate a drawn out utterance; instead, they used the tilde (131). This usage was adopted by some English speakers, so the tilde now was established as a marker of how words sounded. The first use, for writing decoration, often indicated enthusiasm (why else would you spend time decorating your writing?). Taken together, both of these uses indicated a non-serious utterance. Over time, users seemed to narrow the meaning from simply non-serious to sarcastic (138). It is also possible that the tilde was adopted because its shape could be interpreted as reflecting a sarcastic tone which oscillates in pitch – but this may be a fun fancy more than a proposal with actual evidence (138).  

The hashtag, originally known as the pound sign (#), also had precious few uses in standard written English. Now, its most often used now as a way to self-categorize posts with other posts discussing the same topic (“So impressed with the renovations at the #NeilsonLibrary”). But it could also be used in a more tongue-in-cheek manner to emphasize certain words (“I am #exhausted of the midterm coverage”) or to provide metacommentary (“I’m sure this will all blow over soon #sarcasm”) (130). 

Metacommentary can also be provided via carrots (<>) and slashes (/) (127). These marks are, again, not commonly seen in standard written English, but are readily available to keyboard users. They provide a nifty way to designate notes or commentary as being apart from the text in a way parenthesis or brackets do not (since we’re used to them providing asides to the main text, not metacommentary!). The use of these marks also likely grew out of the earlier days of computers and the internet, where coding was much more frequently used by users. If something like <text color: blue> hi everyone! </text color> could be used to affect the appearance of text without changing its content, then <sarcasm> I’m so excited to be here  </sarcasm> could do the same – only now the user would be signaling this information to other users, and not to the software. The slash, used in examples like /rant, also acted in a similar manner. Speaking anecdotally, I haven’t noticed the use of < >  as much in my time online. It may be that these have become less common as the average user has had to deal with coding less often. The function that these serve, however, still seems to be needed. I have noticed that some communities on Instagram and TikTok have grown fond of using “tone indicators” with the / in order to more explicitly clarify the intention behind any given message. Maybe it just comes down to the fact that typing a slash requires a lot less effort than creating a pseudo-coding bracket using < >. 

 

Capitalization

Capitalization has had a long history of being used to indicate “yelling”, whether it be happy and excited or angry (Crystal 63, McCulloch 115). This goes back at least to 1984 in regards to the internet, and there are pre-internet examples of this in print as well (116). But use of only capital letters was actually normal for regular communication in the early days of the internet, so why did its meaning change and why did it seemingly become so well-known outside of an online context (117)? Capitalization was (and in some contexts, still is) the only way to play with text when writing online. Italics, bold, underline, and choices of color and font are available in word processors, but not when you’re writing a Facebook post or texting your friend (Heath 69). Capitalization is also something that doesn’t usually carry a ton of meaning in offline writing. It indicates the beginning of sentences and proper nouns, but the majority of sentences are still fully understandable without it. So capitalization would be a perfect thing to use for other functions of online writing. 

And capitalization does seem to have a strong influence on how we interpret a message, at least according to one 2021 study. Specifically, it seems to affect not the content of a message, but how we “[produce] the text subvocally” – how we imagine the text to be said (69). Participants tended to rate messages in all caps as being higher pitched and louder, which tends to correlate with how we vocalize strong emotion in face-to-face conversations (74). The author, Maria Heath, suggested that since laboratory environments tend to reduce the effects of any given stimuli on participants, the effects of all caps are likely stronger than they appeared in the results of her study (74). However, she suggests that the visual nature of all caps messages is likely not the reason why we have these associations – ie, we don’t perceive the texts as “louder” because an all caps message has bigger and taller text – but rather that we simply learned these associations over time. 

Or, to say it in another way, it’s likely that capitalization first was used to emphasize certain words and only later did it gain prosodic connotations.

 

Lengthening Words

Lengthening words by repeating letters (“no” versus “nooooo”) allows for users to indicate a drawn-out utterance, often to emphasize a certain word. This phenomenon did occur before the internet was around, although in limited capacity (McCulloch 119-120). Many of these early uses appeared in dialogue as a way to convey how a character was speaking. Lengthened words are used for a similar effect today as a way to show which words would be drawn out if the written conversation were occurring in a spoken context.

There are some unspoken rules about how words are allowed to be lengthened. Generally the repeated letter is either the rightmost letter in a word (“noooo”) or the rightmost letter in a smaller unit of sound (“Boooooring”) (120-121). The only exceptions are with consonant clusters; “both” can be lengthened as “booooth” or “bothhhhh” but never “botttth” (121) . But besides this consonant cluster rule, letters are duplicated regardless of whether they can actually be drawn out in a spoken context. Plosives (like the p in “stopppppp”) or silent consonants (“sameeeee”) cannot actually be held for an extended period of time, but this doesn’t seem to prevent them from being lengthened in a written context (121). 

 

Why Use These Conventions?

On one hand, we could chalk these conventions solely up to the desire to indicate tone in written messages. But these conventions also create an in-group, in a sense; there are those who understand what a tilde means and those that do not (148-149). Using a hashtag for something other than its primary purpose suggests one might be playing off the joke that some people overuse hashtags to the point that they are useless (130). Using these conventions competently may create a shared sense of camaraderie, even if the users in a conversation are strangers. 

 

Citations

Crystal, David. Internet Linguistics : A Student Guide, Taylor & Francis Group, 2011. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/smith/detail.action?docID=801579.

Heath, Maria (2021) “NO NEED TO YELL: A Prosodic Analysis of Writing in All Caps,” University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics: Vol. 27 : Iss. 1 , Article 10. https://repository.upenn.edu/pwpl/vol27/iss1/10.

McCulloch, Gretchen. Because Internet : Understanding the New Rules of Language. Riverhead Books, 2019.

Pérez-Sabater, Carmen. “The Linguistics of Social Networking: A Study of Writing Conventions on Facebook“. Linguistik Online, Vol. 56, Nr. 6, Nov. 2012, doi:10.13092/lo.56.257.

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October 16, 2022 · 1:49 pm

Week 3: Ethics, Limitations, and Challenges

This week’s theme is Ethics, Limitations, and Challenges. The sources I looked at focused more on how to collect and analyze language samples from online, rather than the content of these samples. What ethical questions do we need to consider when collecting linguistic data? What challenges are involved with data collection? 

 

Ethics

Researching online language, like all research, requires us to consider how to make ethical research choices. One of the largest issues might be the blurred line between public and private online content. Although most people are aware that anything posted on the internet is no longer private, most users also expect a degree of privacy when it comes to their emails and texts. Furthermore, even if a person publicly posts to a public social media account or website, they may not be intending for their words to reach a large audience. But researchers might also prefer this sort of data point, since the users are not being influenced (consciously or not) by the idea that someone might be analyzing their writing (Hou 36). The issue of informed consent and permission to use material is thus a relevant issue when looking at research being done on digital language (Lewis 14). Issues of privacy also arise. Although it is unlikely that any singular quoted tweet could be traced back to an English-speaking Twitter user, what if researchers are analyzing a smaller linguistic community? 

Depending on the research question, it might be easiest for researchers to collect data from users who are clearly public figures or organizations (Hou 41). But if research is focusing specifically on informal language, slang, or other linguistic phenomena that are less likely to appear in a corporate or professional context, the usefulness of data from public figures might be low. 

 

Challenges

Besides ethical considerations, there are multiple other challenges that may impact data collection and analysis. First of all, there is an extensive amount of data available to researchers (Crystal 10). Of course this can be a good thing, but filtering data to create a usable sample may pose some difficulties depending on the specific questions researchers are asking. The sheer amount of data also may influence researchers to focus on the sites/platforms that are easiest for data collection (such as Twitter) and overlook sites/platforms that are more difficult to research. If you can get all your data from Twitter, why would you choose to look elsewhere? (This is of course a generalization, but researchers only have so much time, manpower, and funding).

The second challenge is that some of this data may not be relevant to some research due to the rate of change online. Site updates may impact the type of data being produced (like Twitter raising the character limit for tweets) and site demographics may shift in just a few years time (Facebook at its inception was primarily used by college-aged young adults, but now is being used more by adults in their 30s and older). This is also true with studies done on traditionally published works or offline communities, but in general traditional publishing is more conservative and less inclined to abrupt, rapid change. 

Anonymity can also pose issues when trying to determine demographic data for any given sample. Factors like age, geographic location, and gender may not be readily shared by a user. So any analysis that wants to look at differences within or between specific demographics will be missing some data (14). In some contexts anonymity might pose less of a problem; for example, if a researcher is looking at vlogs of individuals using ASL, then this demographic information might be more obvious. But this type of data collection brings us back to the question of ethics and informed consent – the more information that researchers have about any one person in the data set, the higher the possibility that that person’s privacy might be compromised (Hou 40).  

Another challenge arises simply from the formatting of different sites. For example, how should retweets be treated if a researcher is analyzing language use on twitter (Crystal 40)? Reduplication in the data set could skew results, but removing  retweets entirely could ignore how users are interacting with each other or how they are reacting to or interpreting certain linguistic structures. Similarly, users may compose tweets which have incomplete utterances or whose meaning is difficult to figure out without additional context (41, 45). Removing these tweets might be necessary in some cases, but it does mean that researchers will be losing some data. The difficulty of 

The ability for posts to be edited or deleted might also cause issues. When citing data from someone else, including the data’s provenance – its line of history from you to its original creator – can allow for someone to check for errors and, if there are errors, to pinpoint where and possibly how they occurred (Lewis 8, 13). What should be done if a research cites a particular post, and that post no longer exists? Or what if that post has subsequently been changed? 

 

Final Thoughts

As time goes on, more tools will be developed to help researchers filter data, and more people will bring forward ideas as to how we can best overcome these challenges of collecting online linguistic data without compromising the privacy and informed consent of those users that data is being collected from. 

And, as we continue on this semester, we’ll have to consider how these challenges may have impacted the data we are looking at.

 

Citations:

Crystal, David. Internet Linguistics : A Student Guide, Taylor & Francis Group, 2011. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/smith/detail.action?docID=801579.

Hou, Lynn, et al. “Working with ASL Internet Data.” Sign Language Studies, vol. 21, no. 1, 2020, pp. 32–67, https://www.jstor.org/stable/26984276. Accessed 21 Sept. 2022. 

Lewis, W., Farrar, S. & Langendoen, T. (2006), Linguistics in the Internet Age: Tools and Fair Use, in ‘Proceedings of the EMELD’06 Workshop on Digital Language Documentation: Tools and Standards: The State of the Art’. Lansing, MI. June 20-22, 2006.

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· 1:22 pm

Week 2: Practical Effects of Technology

Welcome back to week two! This past week I looked at what I called the “practical effects of technology” on online language. 

The biggest takeaway from this week was that the online world offers a unique context in which to use language because it combines factors from both written and spoken language. This is not to say that the language itself becomes especially unique as a result, but we’ll dig into that more a bit later.

One benefit of the internet is that it contains a multitude of different people who are writing in a variety of settings. Traditionally published writing tends to be found in a limited number of contexts, like books and newspapers. These mediums tend to have more standard and formal varieties of the language (although not always!). Additionally, publishing in these formats is inaccessible  for many people. The internet, on the other hand, can be used by anyone with an internet connection and time. As such, it can be used to explore people’s everyday casual and informal language (if we assume that people’s tweets, texts, and emails reflect people’s spoken speech) (McCulloch 5). The other benefit of the internet is that it allows these informal forms of language to be explored outside of a laboratory and research context, which may influence individuals to change their language if they are aware it will be analyzed by other people later. 

So, what practical effects does the internet and other technology have on the recording and publishing of written and spoken language? Are there distinct differences between offline and online writing? How do online conversations differ from offline face-to-face conversations?

Let’s jump in.

 

Writing Online vs. Offline

Writing online is just that – writing. However, online contexts do present some differences from handwritten and traditionally published writing. Offline writing is static and subject to space constraints  – the back of a postcard, the space allocated to a newspaper column, and so on (Crystal 17). It tends to be easily categorized as public or private (Jucker 42). Often there is a delay between when something is written and when it is published, and writers need to take that delay into account when considering how a reader might interpret their writing. This delay means writers have the time to read over and edit their work before it is published, often resulting in “the development of careful organization and compact expression, with often intricate sentence structure” (Crystal 18). Traditional writing usually produces coherent and internally consistent pieces, since collaborative work with multiple authors will usually either attribute specific elements of the text to specific authors or will be edited so as to produce a similar style throughout the entire piece.  

Digital writing presents some differences to these traits. Articles and posts don’t need to be abbreviated due to the amount of space available, and oftentimes can be edited after they are originally published, either to correct for errors or to update the piece with more relevant information (30). Some digital writing, such as Wikipedia articles, is created by multiple authors over time. Thus, there exist articles and pages which may not be fully internally consistent, as different authors and editors have different ideas of both what content should be included (and what should be emphasized, explained, or glossed over) and what style is appropriate for the piece (uses of narration, figurative language, register, and so on) (31). In other cases, work by a singular author might be difficult to classify as a text at all. For example, tweets on a timeline might not add to a coherent “text” because the content of each one may be totally separate from the next (Jucker 52). 

In some regards, however, digital writing retains similarities to traditional writing. In some contexts there is a character limit for posts or texts (58). And asynchronous writing still exists online, so writers of articles and emails do need to account for a delay between when they are written and when they will be read. As in offline publishing, users in these contexts are likely to double check their grammar and spelling before releasing their work into the world. Similarly, emails cannot be edited once they are sent, and many messaging applications also do not allow for edits to be made, maintaining the static nature we see in offline writing. But users may use more ambiguous language in texts or chats, since the rapid back and forth of such a conversation allows for more room for correction or elaboration (43). Meanwhile, when handwriting a letter or writing a newspaper article, you might be more careful to make sure your message was as clear as possible. The delay between writing and reading makes it more difficult to quickly clarify what the author intended to say.

Multiple articles and authors seem to share the sentiment that digital writing (especially texting or messaging features on apps/social media) can be a hybrid medium that includes features we usually associate with spoken language. Speech is spontaneous and quick, often with blurry sentence boundaries. Similarly, texting or direct messages tend to expect a timely response, and make use of sentence fragments (a very common feature in spoken language) rather than sticking solely to complete sentences (Crystal 18, 20). These messages often cannot be edited, so any errors must be corrected in later messages – just like in spoken language. 

Some features of spoken language do not translate as easily – for instance, facial expressions and gestures can be indicated, to some extent, by emoji and emoticon, but they certainly are not the same thing (23). Features like intonation, prosody, volume, and tempo are also largely lost. But the largest difference may be the lack of simultaneous feedback. In spoken language, participants in a conversation can shape how a speaker is talking even when it’s not their turn. Facial expression, body language, and filler words can indicate a listener’s comprehension and engagement with a conversation. A confused look might spur the speaker to elaborate, while a bored or irritated look might cause a speaker to trail off or finish their thoughts quickly. This feedback is missing in digital writing because the audience cannot access the writer’s utterance until they send it. So a writer will receive feedback on a previously sent message, but they cannot access feedback on a message they are currently typing (21).

With all of this in mind, David Crystal describes internet language as “writing which has been pulled some way in the direction of speech rather than as speech which has been written down” (21). 

 

Technology and Turn-Taking

Conversations between two or more people are made up of a series of turns. Generally, only one person has the floor at any given time. Through spoken and physical signals, often unintentional, the speaker can cede the floor to another person. In the early days of computers and the internet, how to translate face to face conversations into a digital written context was not immediately obvious. In the early 1970s, the TENEX system used a single text file which both users shared; if you started typing before the other user had finished, your words would overlap with each other (McCulloch 210). Later systems tried using chat boxes; each user had a box and typed all of their turns in this box (211). However, this made it difficult to follow a conversation chronologically, as one had to look between each of the chat boxes to see who had said something new. Today’s upward scrolling chat first appeared in the 1980s. Unlike the TENEX or chat box systems, these scrolling chat systems did not show messages keystroke-by-keystroke, but rather only showed the full message when it was sent by a user. 

In face-to-face conversations we have what is called ‘turn monitor’, meaning we hear utterances as they are being constructed (Jenks 79-80). A keystroke-by-keystroke approach to digital writing would give users this turn monitor, but it also poses some issues. We tend to read more quickly than we can type, which could cause irritation as other users waited for someone to finish typing (McCulloch 211). Pauses in typing might indicate that the writer was done typing or that they were trying to decide how to phrase something. Without the body language and tone we can utilize in face-to-face conversations, readers might not be able to tell the difference. 

But on the surface, message-by-message chat also seems like it would pose problems. Wouldn’t users be more easily interrupted? Won’t there be issues with ambiguity if there are multiple conversations occurring at once? But in practice these potential problems don’t seem to present much difficulty to users. For one thing, most typed utterances are directly adjacent to the utterance they are related to or responding to (Crystal 25). But when they aren’t, users are often looking for the specific lexical terms or phrasing that would be relevant to their earlier message, so they can recognize that some messages in a chat are not being directed towards them (26-27). Users could also clarify their language to ensure clarity of their message, such as addressing a specific recipient or reintroducing the topic in their text (“I can’t” versus “I can’t come to the party”) (Jenks 84, McCulloch 25). 

Furthermore, although the lack of turn monitor might cause some issues for users, texts and chats do offer the advantage of ‘turn recall’ – we are able to scroll back to earlier messages to remember what was said, rather than having to rely on memory as happens in face-to-face conversations (Jenks 79). This allows for more pauses and gaps in chats and allows for multiple conversations to occur at once (85-86). 

As a result of these differences, turn-taking in online chats and texts does differ from turn-taking in face-to-face (FTF) conversations. In FTF conversations, turn transitions between individuals tend to occur near the end of someone’s turn rather than after they are done speaking; in online conversations, turn transitions by necessity occur after someone’s turn, since turn monitor isn’t available (80). Hesitation and restarts are used offline to ensure we are not encroaching on someone’s else’s turn, while in the digital realm any hesitation or restarts that occur will not be seen by the other participants, again due to the lack of turn monitor and simultaneous feedback (83). But these differences don’t seem to inhibit the speed and efficiency with which users are able to have conversations via text or direct message.

 

Sign Language Online

ASL and other signed languages are used online in specific contexts. The largely written format of the internet has for a long time meant sign language users need to use a written language in order to interact with others online. But newer technologies like virtual reality offer a way for speakers of signed languages to have synchronous conversations with each other in sign language. The specific technology involved presents two unique challenges to the language, as explained by TikTok user dillonthecheeseman. The first is that the handheld controllers do not allow for the full range of hand shapes needed to sign or fingerspell. VR users have developed modified fingerspelling signs to overcome this problem. The second issue is that VR does not allow for users to share their facial expressions, which are an important aspect of ASL grammar. Some users have tried using more dramatic body language to replace facial expressions. Since VR is a fairly new technology, we will have to see whether these sorts of modifications change over time or if they will impact offline signing in any way. 

 

Citations

Crystal, David. Internet Linguistics : A Student Guide, Taylor & Francis Group, 2011. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/smith/detail.action?docID=801579.

Dillonthecheeseman. “I’ll you guys what its like signing in Virtual Reality in a later video! #asl #americansignlanguage #signlanguage #virtualreality #vrsignlanguage #interesting.” TikTok, 23 Jul. 2022, https://www.tiktok.com/@dillonthecheeseman/video/7123725161181924654.

Dillonthecheeseman. “Let me know what you guys think! Would you like to see more VR signing? #asl #americansignlanguage #signlanguage #vr #virtualreality #vrsignlanguage #vrsign #vrasl #vrchat.” Tiktok, 14 Aug. 2022, https://www.tiktok.com/@dillonthecheeseman/video/7131668536522493226. 

Jenks, Christopher J. “Turn-Taking in Chat Rooms: Texting Versus Talking.” Social Interaction in Second Language Chat Rooms, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 2014, pp. 76–94.  JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.3366/j.ctt1g0b2g8.9. Accessed 14 Sept. 2022.

Jucker, A. H., und C. Dürscheid. „The Linguistics of Keyboard-to-Screen Communication: A New Terminological Framework“. Linguistik Online, Bd. 56, Nr. 6, November 2012, doi:10.13092/lo.56.255.

McCulloch, Gretchen. Because Internet : Understanding the New Rules of Language. Riverhead Books, 2019.

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September 18, 2022 · 8:32 pm

Week 1: Early Studies in Internet Linguistics

For week one, I thought it made the most sense to start at the beginning to see how people have approached the topic of internet linguistics in the past. Because technology changes so quickly, “the past” is here being roughly defined as before 2012.

The materials for this week:

  • Crystal, David. Internet Linguistics : A Student Guide. Chapter 1 pg 1-10
  • Cook, Susan E. “New Technologies and Language Change: Toward an Anthropology of Linguistic Frontiers.” Annual Review of Anthropology, vol. 33, 2004, pp. 103–15.
  • Crystal, David. Language and the Internet, Cambridge University Press, 2001. Pg 6-23 
  • Squires, Lauren. “Enregistering Internet Language.” Language in Society, vol. 39, no. 4, 2010, pp. 457–92.

[full citations at the end of the post]

Let’s jump in!

Why is it important to study language on the internet?

There are two primary arguments that the authors I read for this week made about why we should study language on the internet. 

Firstly, the internet allows us to study linguistic interactions in a unique way. Because the internet is majority text-based and often anonymous, users can withhold the visual or auditory markers of gender, age, race, and ethnicity that people take note of when interacting with people offline (Cook 104). 

Secondly, technology is an increasingly omnipresent factor in our everyday lives. It’s good for us to understand it! By understanding it we can make more informed choices when it comes to internet use and management, both as individuals and in the public sphere (Crystal 2011, 7). 

How do we talk about language on the internet?

It’s more complicated than you might think. One early choice was to refer to it as “computer-mediated communication” or CMC for short. However, as David Crystal asserts in Internet Linguistics, this term is too narrow – computers are not the only way we access the internet nowadays, so this term leaves out phones and tablets (2). Terms like “digitally-mediated communication” (DMC) or “electronically-mediated communication” (EMC) are more inclusive, but they are in fact too broad. This is because communication is not synonymous with language (1). Texting someone a selfie might communicate something – be it an emotion, information about one’s location, and so on – but it doesn’t involve using language. 

In the 1990s and early 2000s, netspeak and chatspeak became seemingly common ways to refer to internet language. These two terms are not ideal for my purposes, however, since (1) they presume that all internet users are using English in the same way, and (2) they are tied to particular features that are seen as being emblematic of English on the internet. Lauren Squires expands on this in her 2010 article “Enregistering Internet Language”. Enregisterment is defined as “how a linguistic repertoire becomes differentiable within a language as a socially recognized register of forms” (459). In more accessible terms, it’s how a type of language usage becomes recognized as a distinct variety of language with distinct features. As Squires explains, “Netspeak” and “Chatspeak” are essentially social constructions of what “Internet Language” is thought to be, and the enregisterment of these terms was mostly done by people who were outsiders to the chatrooms and other online spaces where these nonstandard uses of English were occurring (466). 

In my experience ‘chatspeak’ and ‘netspeak’ have now fallen out of fashion anyway and feel pretty dated (I can’t remember the last time I heard someone call the internet “the net”).

So how do we describe language used on the internet? Perhaps a term like  “electronically-mediated language”, EML for short, would be helpful – and we could specify EME for when we’re specifically talking about English. But there is no singular way that English is being used on the internet, and I do worry that using a term like “electronically-mediated language” might imply some sort of homogeneity. In any case, “language on the internet” or “English on the internet”, especially with specifiers for specific contexts, genres, and demographics may be the most accurate (and most easily accessible) way to discuss how people are using language online. 

Things to keep in mind as we discuss language on the internet

Although technology allows for rapid transnational communication, that doesn’t mean internet users don’t exist in a vacuum. Offline events may impact uses of languages just as much as new technologies or sites do, and we should avoid taking a “technological determinism” outlook and assuming that technology has an “inevitable consequence” on how users interact (Cook 108, Squires 461).

We should also be wary of generalizations, as is true in most any field. Internet users come from a variety of backgrounds, so thinking of nonstandard language use as being primarily driven by youth or by uneducated people may cause us to overlook what is objectively occurring (Cook 109, Squires 479-480).  

How do we discuss different aspects of language on the internet?

In Language and the Internet, David Crystal lays out some different categories for language features:

  1. Graphic features: these describe how language is presented and organized, and includes things like font, page design, spacing, and color.
  2. Orthographic/Graphological features: these describe how a language utilizes its writing system, including capitalization, spelling, punctuation, and any type effects (bold, italic, underline, etc).
  3. Grammatical features: these describe the grammar of the language, like its syntax (sentence structure), morphology (word formation), and word order.
  4. Lexical features: these describe the vocabulary being used.
  5. Discourse features: these describe the larger organization of language, like how a text is structured, how it uses coherence and relevance, how it structures paragraphs, and how it progresses and transitions between ideas.

He also adds two other categories for spoken language:

  1. Phonetic features: describes how speech sounds, and includes tone of voice, quality of voice, volume, and so on.
  2. Phonological features: describe how sounds create meaning, and include features like the distinctive use of vowels and consonants, and how one uses intonation, stress, and pauses.

The first five categories will be the most helpful for me this semester.

How does language on the internet differ from offline language?

The internet is a very different forum compared to traditionally published written works. But whether there are specific differences between language on the internet and spoken and written language in other contexts is still somewhat unclear. One’s individual context – the websites being used, the communities one is joining, and so on – will impact how exactly one uses language online, and each online community will use language a bit differently. The language one is using online may not be radically different from the language one uses while speaking and writing offline.

One thing that has not changed in the twenty years since Crystal wrote his 2001 article is that users tend to absorb much more language than they produce, and the internet is “almost entirely dependent on reactions to written messages” (18). An internet user is an unseen audience member taking in a large amount of language, unlike offline face-to-face conversations. But unlike traditional written media, the internet is also interactive. There is the potential to comment, to interject, to edit or correct. Some people have described internet language as a “hybrid variety of language” because it combines features traditionally associated with spoken language and written language (Squires 461-462). 

One commonly cited element of internet language is its vocabulary and writing style – lingo, slang, abbreviations and phonetic spellings. However, the extent to which there is strictly internet lingo is debatable. Abbreviations, acronyms, and nonstandard spellings have long been a part of written English texts, and slang and writing conventions can differ wildly between sites, genres, and age groups. For instance, apostrophe usage can vary greatly between individual users, as can patterns of capitalization and frequency of acronym usage (481-482). Internet language is not a singular variety of language, but rather an umbrella that encapsulates many different ways that people write online. 

Reflections

One fascinating thing from this week was seeing what from these older pieces felt incredibly dated and what held up as still relevant. 

Take, for example, these examples of “terms from underlying computer technology” bleeding into offline conversations, from page 19 of David Crystal’s 2001 book, Language and the Internet:

I recognize three of these terms as they are used in the list – “bandwidth”, “multitasking” and  “get with the program”. The rest feel incredibly dated. As with all slang and new terminology, the number of words/phrases that remained within the general lexicon of English speakers is far smaller than the number of words and phrases which were short-lived and remained within niche groups. 

Let this be a reminder to us that the observations we make about language on the internet apply to a specific context! What’s true five years ago may not be true today, and the language we see on Twitter may not reflect the language we see in texts, emails, or Facebook. 

 

See you next week, where we’ll look at how technology shapes online writing and how it may shape the language and writing conventions of its users.

References

Cook, Susan E. “New Technologies and Language Change: Toward an Anthropology of Linguistic Frontiers.” Annual Review of Anthropology, vol. 33, 2004, pp. 103–15. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25064847. Accessed 15 September 2022.

Crystal, David. Internet Linguistics : A Student Guide, Taylor & Francis Group, 2011, pp. 1-10. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/smith/detail.action?docID=801579.

Crystal, David. Language and the Internet, Cambridge University Press, 2001, pp 6-23. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/smith/detail.action?docID=201947. 

Squires, Lauren. “Enregistering Internet Language.” Language in Society, vol. 39, no. 4, 2010, pp. 457–92. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40925792.

 

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Filed under History, Technology, Weekly Post

September 13, 2022 · 4:58 pm

Introduction

My name is Zoe, and for a long time I’ve been fascinated with how we use language on the Internet. So when it came to finding a subject to design a special study around, I knew what would be at the top of my list.

How does internet language differ from that in ‘real life’? How does technology expand or constrain our usage of language? What impact might internet language have on spoken and traditionally published language? These are just a few questions I’m hoping to explore over this semester.

A few introductory things –

How do we define “Internet language” or “Internet linguistics”? For my purposes, Internet language includes any language originally published via a digital device connected to other digital devices. E-mail, texts, social media (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, etc), chatrooms, forums, etc are all fair game here. I will also largely focus on written language simply. due to the amount of publications available, but spoken language does exist on the Internet (YouTube, TikTok, VR, etc) and I’m sure is just as fascinating as written language is.

What does the schedule for this semester look like? Here’s my current plan:

Sept 15: Early studies in Internet Linguistics

Sept 22: Practical Impact of Technology

Sept 29: Researching Internet Linguistics (Corpora, Ethics, Limitations, and Challenges)

Oct 6: Writing Conventions

Oct 13: Textspeak & Slang

Oct 20: Emoji & Emoticon

Oct 27: Impact of Social Factors on Language Use 

Nov 3: Multilingualism Online & English Influences

Nov 10: Non-English Internet Language

Dec 1: Case Study: Arabic Internet

 

To the best of my ability I will be writing a blog post each week looking at the articles/sources I have collected for that week (the format only seems fitting considering the subject).

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