The medium of Netspeak
Internet: electronic, global, interactive medium.
Each property has consequences on its language
character.
The most important influence arises out of the
electronic character.
User’s communicative options are constrained
by the hardware needed in order to get Internet
access.
Characters on the keyboard determines
productive linguistic capacity.
Screen size and configuration determines
receptive linguistic capacity.
Sender and receiver are linguistically
constrained by the properties of the Internet
software and hardware linking them.
the medium can facilitate some linguistic activities
and there are activities that no other medium can
achieve.
First of all it is necessary to know the limitations
and facilitations of the medium.
An axiom of communication states:
Users should know the strengths and restrictions of
the chosen medium, in relation to the uses they
subject it to and the purposes they have in mind.
The evolution of Netspeak illustrates a real tension
between the nature of the medium and the aims
and expectations of its users.
The problem is its relationship to spoken and
written language.
Some authors refers to the Internet language as
“written speech”.
But how is it possible to write speech given a
keyboard and a medium that disallows some
features of conversation speech?
People talk in different ways, what kind of
speech should be written down?
It is firstly important to be clear about
differences between spoken and written
language.
speech
writing
• Time-bound, dynamic,
transient. It is part of an
interaction in which both
participants are usually
present, and the speaker has a
particular addressee in mind.
• No time-lag between
production and reception. The
spontaneity and speed of the
interaction make it difficult to
plan it in advance. The
pressure to think while talking
promotes looser construction,
repetition, comment clauses,
etc. intonation and pauses
divide long sentences into
chunks, but sentence
boundaries are unclear.
• Space-bound, static, permanent.
It’s the result of a situation in
which the writer is usually distant
from the reader, and often does
not know who the reader is going
to be.
• Time-lag between production and
reception. Writers must
anticipate its effects and the
problems posed by having their
language interpreted in different
contexts. Writing allows closer
analysis and allows careful
organization and compact
expression. Units of discourse are
easy to identify through
punctuation and layout.
speech
writing
• Participants are usually in faceto-face interaction, so they can
rely on extralinguistic cues
(facial expression, gesture).
The speech lexicon is usually
vague, using words which refer
to the situation (deictic
expressions, that one, right
now, etc.)
• Many words and constructions
are characteristic of speech
(contracted forms). Lengthy
co-ordinated sentences are
normal. There is nonsense
vocabulary, obscenity, slang.
• Participants cannot rely on
context to make their meaning
clear. There is no immediate
feedback. Usually writers avoid
the use of deictic expressions.
• Some words and constructions
are characteristic of writing
(long sentences, elaborately
balanced syntactic patterns).
Certain items of vocabulary
are never spoken (chemical
compounds).
speech
writing
• Speech is very suited to social
or “phatic” functions, or any
situation where casual and
unplanned discourse id
desirable. It is good at
expressing social relationships,
personal attitudes.
• There is the possibility to
rethink an utterance while the
other person is listening, but
errors, once spoken, cannot be
withdrawn. Interruptions and
overlapping speech are
normal.
• Writing is very suited to the
recording of facts and the
communication of ideas, and
to tasks of memory and
learning. Written records are
easier to keep and scan, notes
and lists provide mnemonics.
• Errors can be eliminated in
later drafts without the reader
ever knowing they were there.
Interruptions, if they have
occurred, are also invisible in
the final product.
speech
• Unique features of speech
include most of the
prosody. Intonation,
loudness, rhythm, pause,
tones of voice cannot be
written down with much
efficiency.
writing
• Unique features of writing
include pages, lines,
capitalization, spatial
organization, punctuation.
Only a very few graphic
conventions relate to
prosody (question marks,
italics). Several written
genres (graphs, complex
formulae) cannot be read
aloud efficiently, but have
to be assimilated visually.
Speech is time-bound, spontaneous, face-toface, interactive, immediately revisable, loosely
structured.
Writing is space-bound, contrived, elaborately
structured, repeatedly revisable.
How does Netspeak stand, with reference to
these characteristics?
Netspeak relies on characteristics belonging to
speech and writing.
In many of its functions the Web is no different
from 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 find a use of language
which displays the general features of writing
described above.
At the same time, some of the Web’s functions do bring it
much closer to the kind of interaction more typical of
speech. Web sites have got interactive facilities (e-mail,
chatgroup).
E-mails, chatgroups, though expressed through the
medium of writing, display several characteristics of
speech. They are time-governed, expecting or demanding
immediate response, they are transient (e-mails can be
immediately deleted or be lost to attention as they scroll
off the screen - chatgroups). Their utterances display
much of the energetic force which is characteristic of
face-to-face conversation.
The situations are not all equally “spoken” in
character. E-mails are written but chatgroups are
for “chat”, and people “speak” to each other there
as in virtual worlds.
But there are several differences between Netspeak
and face-to-face conversation:
1) Lack of simultaneous feedback. Messages are
complete and unidirectional. The message does not
leave the computer until we send it. A complete
message is transmitted at once and arrives at once.
The recipient cannot react to our message while
we’re writing it and there is no way for a
participant to get a sense of how successful a
message is, while it is being written. The
receiver cannot send an electronic equivalent of
a simultaneous nod. Messages cannot overlap,
recipients must experience a waiting period
before the text appears.
2)The rhythm of an Internet interaction is much
slower than that found in a speech situation,
depending on many different elements
(personal habits, computer access). Even if
participants reply immediately, there may be a
delay before the message reaches the other
members’ screens (bandwidth processing
problems, traffic density on the host computer).
Lags (time delays) cause problems.
A low lag is of the order of 2-3 seconds
(significantly greater than that found in
conversational exchanges).
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 faceto-face conversation, the conversational turn.
People take turns when they talk, it enables
interaction to be successful and they expect
“adjacent-pairs”, question-answer, compliantexcuse.
When there are long lags, the conversation
becomes unusual and its ability to cope with a topic
can be destroyed because the turn taking is dictated
by the software, not by the participants. Messages
are posted to a receiver’s screen linearly, in the
order in which they are received by the system.
In a multi-user environment, messages are coming
in from various sources all the time, and with
different lags. Because of the way packets of
information are sent, it is even possible for turntaking reversals to take place.
The time-frames of the participants do not coincide
(A sends a question. B replies and A sends another
question. On the screen of C the second question
arrives before the answer of B to the first).
The possibilities for confusion are enormous.
The number of overlapping interactions that a
screen may display increases depending on the
number of participants and the random nature
of the lags.
The situation is at best confusing for an outsider.
Practiced participants seem to tolerate the
anarchy which ensues.
Issues of feedback and turn-taking are ways in
which Netspeak interaction differs from
conversational speech.
But Netspeak has got other peculiarities that
make it different from speech with respect to
the formal properties of the medium.
Among these properties, it must be considered
the domain of prosody and paralanguage (“it
ain’t what you say but the way that you say it”).
In conversational speech there are variations in
pitch, loudness, speed, rhythm, pause, tone of
voice.
Emoticons have been called “the paralanguage of
the Internet”, but they are not the same in that they
have to be consciously added to a text.
In face-to-face communication someone may grin
over several utterances, and the effect may be
noted. In Netspeak an emoticon may be added to
just one utterance, although the speaker may
continue to feel the emotion over several turns.
There have been efforts to replace the prosody and
paralanguage in the form of an exaggerated use of
spelling and punctuation, use of capitals, spacing, special
symbols for emphasis.
Examples include repeated letters (aaaaaahhhhh,
ooooops)
Repeated punctuation marks
(no more!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)
And some emphatic conventions
(I SAID NO – all capitals for shouting, the *real* answer –
word emphasis by asterisks).
These features can convey some meanings, but
their range is small and restricted to gross notions
such as extra emphasis, surprise, etc.
Less exaggerated nuances cannot be handled in this
way and there is no system in the use of the marks.
There are signs of other characters used in order to
express shades of meaning, but in the absence of
agreed conventions it is difficult to know how to
read such symbols.
To avoid confusion, participants in chatgroups
use literary expressions in order to capture the
range of emotions involved, using a graphic
convention to distinguish the text from the rest
of the conversation.
(<Hoppy giggles quietly to himself>, <Henry eyes
Jane warily)
Anyway, people are aware of the ever present
ambiguity when the prosody of speech is lacking.
Netspeak lacks the facial expressions, gestures and
conventions of body posture and distance,
fundamental in expressing personal opinions and
attitudes.
This limitation was noted early in the development
of Netspeak, that’s why smileys/emoticons have
been introduced.
Smileys: keyboard characters designed to show an
emotional facial expression. Almost all of them are
read sideways.
The 2 basic types express positive and negative
attitudes, but there are hundreds of sequences
invented and collected in smiley dictionaries.
They are helpful but their semantic role is limited.
They can forestall a misperception of a speaker’s
intention, but a smiley still allows a huge number of
readings.
If the user does not pay attention, they can lead to
misunderstanding: adding a smile to an angry utterance
can increase rather than decrease its force.
Those who get into the habit of using smileys may find
themselves in the position of having their unmarked
utterances misinterpreted.
Connery, talking about people who avoid flaming by using
such abbreviations as IMHO (in my humble opinion), says
that because of the authoritative nature of writing, within
such anti-authoritarian conversations, the absence of
cues could create problems because of the suspicion that
the author is claiming to put forward a definitive answer.
However smileys are not especially frequent and
some people do not use them at all. Most
participants use only one or two basic types.
Furthermore, they have got other roles than
disambiguation. Often they seem to have purely
pragmatic force, a warning to the recipients that
the sender is worried about the effect a written
sentence may have.
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.
That’s why the formal conventions of letterwriting developed.
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.