Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- A note on the second edition
- Preface to the first edition
- 1 A linguistic perspective
- 2 The medium of Netspeak
- 3 Finding an identity
- 4 The language of e-mail
- 5 The language of chatgroups
- 6 The language of virtual worlds
- 7 The language of the Web
- 8 New varieties
- 9 The linguistic future of the Internet
- References
- Index of authors
- Index of topics
9 - The linguistic future of the Internet
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- A note on the second edition
- Preface to the first edition
- 1 A linguistic perspective
- 2 The medium of Netspeak
- 3 Finding an identity
- 4 The language of e-mail
- 5 The language of chatgroups
- 6 The language of virtual worlds
- 7 The language of the Web
- 8 New varieties
- 9 The linguistic future of the Internet
- References
- Index of authors
- Index of topics
Summary
It seems to be a standard convention for books dealing with digital technology to begin or end by warning their readers that everything they contain is going to be soon out of date; and a linguistic perspective on the subject is no exception. Any attempt to characterize the language of the Internet, whether as a whole or with reference to one of its constituent situations, immediately runs up against the transience of the technology. The different arenas of communication described in earlier chapters will not remain as they are for long, given that the technological developments upon which they rely are constantly evolving, putting users under constant pressure to adapt their language to the demands of new contexts, and giving them fresh opportunities to interact in novel ways. The readiness with which people do adapt language to meet the needs of new situations, which is at the heart of linguistic evolution – and which the central chapters of this book clearly demonstrate – is going to be fully exploited in the next few decades, with the emergence of yet more sophisticated forms of digitally mediated communication. Nor is the population using it any more stable: it is unusual to see a disclaimer of the kind used on the imprints page of this book, for example, but there is simply no guarantee that any of the URLs [uniform resource locators] listed in my footnotes and bibliography will still exist by the time this book appears.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Language and the Internet , pp. 257 - 276Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2006