Netspeak An Analysis Of Internet Jargon Essay Example For Students

Netspeak: An Analysis Of Internet Jargon Essay Approximately 30 million people world-wide use the Internet andonline services daily. The Net is growing exponentially in allareas, and a rapidly increasing number of people are findingthemselves working and playing on the Internet. The people on theNet are not all rocket scientists and computer programmers;theyre graphic designers, teachers, students, artists,musicians, feminists, Rush Limbaugh-fans, and your next doorneighbors. What these diverse groups of people have in common istheir language. The Net community exists and thrives because ofeffective written communication, as on the net all you haveavailable to express yourself are typewritten words. If youcannot express yourself well in written language, you eitherlearn more effective ways of communicating, or get lost in theshuffle. Netspeak is evolving on a national and international level. Thetechnological vocabulary once used only by computer programmersand elite computer manipulators called Hackers, has spread toall users of computer networks. The language is currently spokenby people on the Internet, and is rapidly spilling over intoadvertising and business. The words online, network, andsurf the net are occuring more and more frequently in ournewspapers and on television. If youre like most Americans,youre feeling bombarded by Netspeak. Television advertisers,newspapers, and international businesses have jumped on theInformation Superhighway bandwagon, making the Net moreaccessible to large numbers of not-entirely-technically-orientedpeople. As a result, technological vocabulary is entering intonon-technological communication. For example, even thearchaic UNIX command grep, (an acronym meaning Get REpeatedPattern) is becoming more widely accepted as a synonym ofsearch in everyday communication. The argument rages as to whether Netspeak is merely slang, or ajargon in and of itself. The language is emerging based looselyupon telecommunications vocabulary and computer jargons, withnew derivations and compounds of existing words, and shiftscreating different usages; all of which depending quite heavilyupon clippings. Because of these reasons, the majority of Net-using linguists classify Netspeak as a dynamic jargon in and ofitself, rather than as a collection of slang. Linguistically, the most interesting feature of Netspeak is itsmorphology. Acronyms and abbreviations make up a large part ofNet jargon. FAQ (Frequently Asked Question), MUD (Multi-User-Dungeon), and URL (Uniform Resource Locator) are some of themost frequently seen TLAs (Three Letter Acronyms) on theInternet. General abbreviations abound as well, in morefriendly and conversationally conducive forms, such as TIA(Thanks In Advance), BRB (Be Right Back), BTW (By The Way), andIMHO (In My Humble Opinion.) These abbreviations can bebaffling to new users, and speaking in abbreviations takes somegetting used to. Once users are used to them, though, suchabbreviations are a nice and easy way of expeditingcommunication. Derivation is another method by which many words are formed. Theword Internet itself is the word net with the prefix inter-added to it. Another interesting example is the word hypertext,used to describe the format of one area of the Internet, the WWW(World Wide Web). The WWW is made up of millions of pages of textwith hotlinks that allow the user to jump to another page withdifferent information on it. Hypertext, derived by adding theprefix hyper- to the word text, produces the definition amethod of storing data through a computer program that allows auser to create and link fields of information at will and toretrieve the data nonsequentially, according to WebstersCollege Dictionary. Proper names also make a large impact on the vocabulary of Netusers. Archie, Jughead, and Veronica are all different protocolsfor searching different areas of the Internet for specificinformation. Another new use of proper names is for descriptivepurposes. For example, the proper-name turned descriptivenoun/verb/adjective Gabriel has come to be understood as astalling tactic, or a form of filibustering; Hes pulling aGabriel, or Hes in Gabriel mode. Most frequently, this typeof name-borrowing happens due to highly and widely visibleactions by an individual on the Internet. Talcott Parsons EssayAmerican English Net jargon is somewhat internationallyprevalent. Many terms used on the multi-lingual yet Englishdominated Internet are borrowed from language to language. Thewords Internet and cyberspace are used around the world, asis evident when one is cruising the Net and encounters a piece ofwriting entirely written in Norwegian or Russian. The only wordsan English-speaker easily recognizes are those internationallyunderstood items of Netspeak. Another example are the grammaticaland vocabulary mutations that English Net jargon inspires. According to the Hacker Jargon File, Italian net users often usethe nonexistent verbs scrollare (to scroll) and deletare (todelete) rather than native Italian scorerre and cancellare.The English verb to hack has been seen conjugated in manyEuropean languages. As the Internet and computer online services further invade lifein the United States and the world over, more and more peoplewill contribute to, change, and further develop Net jargon as weknow it today. In addition, more people will find Net jargonspilling over into their offline lives. Nothing in our worldtoday is changing more quickly than computer networks andtechnology, and therefore, no jargon is changing more quicklythan Netspeak. As more and more specialty words make theirway into our dictionaries, Net jargon will become increasinglyprevalent in our written and spoken communication. Everyone, notjust Net users will become familiar with the new words andusages, as is already evident in the increasing use of the termsnetworking and cyberspace. As business, advertising, andentertainment move onto the networks, Netspeak will continue togrow, change, and become more a part of everyday communication. This dynamic language reflects the very rapid development of newconcepts and the need to communicate about these concepts. Aslinguists, tracking this language development is one interestingway of documenting the progression of the Information Age, justas the language changes of Early America allow historicallinguists to track the movements of our early ancestors.