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LANGUAGE AND THE INTERNET – THE MEDIUM OF NETSPEAK
The internet is an electronic, global and interactive medium. Each property has consequences on its language character.
User’s communicative options are constrained by the nature of the hardware needed in order to gain internet access.
Characters on the keyboard determines productive linguistic capacity. (type of information that can be sent) Screen size and configuration determines receptive linguistic capacity (type of information that can be seen).
Senders and receiver are constrained linguistically by the properties of the Internet software and hardware linking them.
Netspeak illustrates a real tension which exists between the nature of the medium and the expectations of its users. The problem is its relationship to spoken and written language. Some authors talks about “written speech” ; “Write the way PEOPLE talk” the question is : WHICH PEOPLE?
We need to be clear about the nature of spoken and written language:
- Speech is typically time-bound, spontaneous, face-to-face, socially interactive, immediately revisable.
- Writing is typically space-bound, contrived, visually decontextualized, elaborately structured, repeatedly revisable, graphically rich.
Netspeak relies on characteristics belonging to speech and writing.
In many of its functions Web is no different from the traditional situations which use writing.
Any attempt to identify the stylistic peculiarity of Web pages will need to deal with the same sort of visual and graphic matters as any other variety of written expression. Therefore, we found a use of language which displays the general features of writing as described above.
Web’s functions do bring it much closer to the kind of interaction more typical in speech. Web sites now have interactive facilities like e-mail and chatgroup.
Web’s situations display several characteristics of speech. They are time-governed, expecting or demanding an immediate response. They are transient, messages can be delated or be lost to attention as they scroll off the screen.
Differences between Netspeak and Face-to-face conversations :
- Lack of simultaneous feedback. Messages sent via a computer are complete and unidirectional. It doesn’t leave our computer until we ‘send’ it. The whole of a message is transmitted at once and arrives on the recipient’s screen at once. No way that recipient can react to our message while it’s being typed, they don’t know they’re getting the message. You can’t send a ‘uh-uh’ (simultaneous nod = annuire). Messages cannot overlap! (un messaggio alla volta) waiting period.
- the rhythm of an internet interaction is very much slower than that found in a speech situation, depending on many different elements. Even if participants reply immediately, there may be a delay before the message reaches the other members’ screens. Lags (time-delay) cause problems, some are much worse than others. A low lag is of the order of 2-3 seconds. Anything over 5 seconds will generate frustration, often prompting people to make remarks about the lag itself. The frustration is on both sides of the communication chain.
The larger the number of participants involved in an interaction, the worse the situation becomes.
Delays in a conversation between 2 people are annoying but manageable. But in an electronic interaction between several people lag produces a different situation, because it interferes with a core feature of traditional face to-face conversation, the conversational turn.
People take turns when they talk, it enables interaction to be successful and they expect “adjacent- pairs”, question-answer, complaint (denuncia) - excuse.
When there are long lags, the conversational situation becomes so unusual that its ability to deal with a topic can be destroyed. Turn-taking is dictated by the software and not by the participants. overlapping
In a multi-user environment, messages are coming in from various sources all the time, with different lags. The time-frames of the participants do not coincide. Q1,R2,Q2,R
Confusion is possible. The number of overlapping increases depending on the number of participants and the random number of the lags.
ISSUES OF FEEDBACK AND TURN-TAKING ARE WAYS IN WHICH NETSPEAK
INTERACTION DIFFERS FROM CONVERSATIONAL SPEECH.
- The domain of prosody and paralanguage “it ain’t what you say but the way that you say it” : expressed through vocal variations in intonation, loudness, speed, rhythm, pause and tone of voice.
- Exaggerated use of spelling and punctuation : 1) all capitals for ‘shouting’ 2) letter spacing for ‘loud and clear’ 3) word/phrase emphasis by asterisks
Despite these innovations, Netspeak lacks the facial expressions, gestures and conventions of body posture and distance which are so critical in expressing personal opinions and attitudes. Led to the introduction of smileys and emoticons. The two basic types express positive and negative attitude.
They can prevent a serious misperception of a speaker’s intent, but an individual smiley still allows a huge numbers of readings. However, they are not especially frequent.
The question is why emoticons have turned up now. Written language is always been ambiguous in absence of facial expressions and prosodic features of speech. Why did nobody ever introduce emoticons in written language? Crystal believes that the answer must be something to do with the immediacy of Net interaction.
In traditional writing there is time to develop phrasing which makes personal attitudes clear.
A Net message, lacking the usual courtesies, can appear rude, so a smiley can be useful. Whatever their function, smileys are one of the most distinctive features of e-mail and chatgroup language.
Even apparently spontaneous Internet messages can involve elements of preplanning, pausing to think while writing, mental check before sending, which are simply not options in most everyday conversation.
- Lack in use of reaction signals ( m, mhm, uh-uh, yeah..)
- Lack in use of comment clauses ( you know, you see, mind you..)
This is one of the reason why so many Internet interactions are misperceived as abrupt, cold, distant.
Although Netspeak tries to be like speech, it remains some distance from it, in respect of several of spoken language’s most fundamental features.
CONCLUSION : Netspeak is identical to neither speech nor writing but displays properties of both.
Netspeak is more than an aggregate of spoken and written features. It does things that neither of these other medium do. NEW SPECIES OF COMMUNICATION “a genuine Third medium”
NETSPEAK MAXIMS.
The philosopher H.P. Grice known in pragmatics research for his four maxims:
- The maxim of Quality where one tries to be truthful and does not give information that is false or that is not supported by evidence.
- The maxim of Relevance where one tries to be relevant and says things that are pertinent to the discussion.
- The maxim of Quantity where one tries to be as informative as one possibly can, and gives as much information as is needed, and no more.
- The maxim of Manner when one tries to be as clear, as brief, and as orderly as one can in what one says, and where one avoids obscurity and ambiguity.
It is not easy to work out with what is going on in the Internet world. Part of the difficulty arises out of the anonymity in the electronic medium. individuals who are talking to each other under nicknames, in e- mails too. Operating behind a false (nick)name seems to make people less inhibited: they may feel stimulate to talk more and in different ways from their real – world linguistic repertoire. risk in talking with someone we don’t know harassment, insulting, aggressive language. It is not safe talking with strangers.
Two circumstances both of which undermine the maxim of quality:
- A SPOOF (“parodia”) is any massage whose origin is suspect; spoofing is commonplace in some Internet situations. (Wikipedia : is a situation in which a person or program successfully masquerades as another by falsifying data, to gain an illegitimate advantage.) common on emails
- TROLLING the sending of a message, a troll, specifically intended to cause irritation to others. The term derives from fishing (to see what a baited hook catches), also the trolls from Scandinavian mythology (the bridge-guardian)
On the Internet the bait is false information, introduced into a conversation to see who falls for it.
The maxim of quantity is often undermined in Internet situations:
- (^) LURKING a refusal to communicate. Lurkers are people who access a chatgroup and read its messages but don’t contribute to the discussion. Some manuals refer to lurking as ‘spying’.
- SPAMMING refers to the sending of usually unwanted messages of excessive size. (spam on emails)
3 Types of SPAM :
- (^) Playful spamming : occurs when visual or audio effects (duck quacking) have been programmed to turn up in text, unasked – for, at intervals within the game situation.
- Pernicious spamming: the internet equivalent of real-life harassment, sexually explicit language and description of actions.
- Ambiguous spamming : falls between these extremes. A participant might repeatedly send a message which irritate other players. The ambiguity lies in the fact that the intention behind the spam may be unclear.
- Flaming differs from spamming. It is always aggressive , related to a specific topic, and directed at an individual recipient.
A situation in which participants have stopped talking about their topic and simply exchanging verbal abuse would be a clear flame.
Flaming behaviour would seem to contravene Grice’s maxim of manner than of quantity.
