Netspeak Informal Language

Netspeak IRL: Internet English and the Impact on Colloquial and Formal Language

Since the development of computers and the various aspects of technology that comes with it, our time has been called the ‘digital age’. As with all novelties that have a high impact on this world, the digital age brings new changes to the way people use language. This seems to be the case with the internet in particular, which has given new dimensions to the way we write, to much concern of language purists all over the world. It is feared that the World Wide Web will have a negative impact on formal language. This seems unlikely, because while Internet English makes colloquial language more informal, it does not impair formal academic language.

The internet has

Occasionally, the conversation partners are communicating about subjects or events that elicit a certain emotion. In spoken conversation, emotion, nuances and meaning are expressed and modified by paralanguage –the “optional vocal effects […] that accompany or modify the phonemes of an utterance and that may communicate meaning” (Merriam-Webster)– and its suprasegmental features, which are the “features of language such as stress and intonation that accompany the sound segments […] of language” (Fought 226), like pitch and intonation. In addition to that, the listener oftentimes is able to acquire additional information by looking at facial expressions and body language. Standardised written language lacks the ability to convey subtle differences in meaning in this way, considering written English barely contains any form of emotional expression other than the occasional exclamation mark or disjunct adverbial, a sentence adverbial used to “provide some comment by the speaker/writer about what she is reporting or about how she feels she herself is expressing what she has to say” (Burton-Roberts 99). Correct English grammar, spelling and punctuation would not be sufficient in order for the interlocutors to express themselves without possibly misreading each other’s messages. Nonetheless, users of the World Wide Web are able to sufficiently

However, it therefore enlarges the gap between informal and academic English, thus hardly influencing the standard of academic language. In addition, even though it is often feared that the internet will permanently deteriorate the English language, there is hardly an impact to be seen. In an article written for Digital Trends, David Crystal says that “as the Internet is predominantly a graphic medium, the most noticeable changes have been there[…] So there have been some interesting novel informalities in orthography, such as punctuation minimalism, and the arrival of emoticons. But in speech, nothing. Most people speak today just as they did before the Internet arrived. The occasional additional spoken abbreviation (such as LOL) is hardly a significant effect.” (Knibbs) Indeed, there is no need to fear drastic changes in the use of English language, like some opponents of Internet English do. Even when considering the internet created innumerable amounts of neologisms that are also used in real life, it is only a logic inheritance of new technologies introduced to an ever-changing world. This does not mean that Netspeak does not alter the way we use language in everyday life to some extent. For example, John Reed writes that the abovementioned ‘hashtags’ have found a place in the real world, whether as a statement as a pop culture