Language and the Internet
In recent years, the Internet has come to dominate our lives. E-mail, instant messaging and chat are rapidly replacing conventional forms of correspondence, and the Web has become the first port of call for both information enquiry and leisure activity. How is this affecting language? There is a widespread view that as 'technospeak' comes to rule, standards will be lost. In this book, David Crystal argues the reverse: that the Internet has encouraged a dramatic expansion in the variety and creativity of language. Covering a range of Internet genres, including e-mail, chat, and the Web, this is a revealing account of how the Internet is radically changing the way we use language. This second edition has been thoroughly updated to account for more recent phenomena, with a brand new chapter on blogging and instant messaging. Engaging and accessible, it will continue to fascinate anyone who has ever used the Internet.
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In comparison to all of the media we have available to us as means of communication, the internet is still incredibly young. As such, any kind of analysis of the linguistic style(s) of the internet is greatly limited by the (comparatively) minimal amount of available data. Crystal's attempt is mostly descriptive, and he admits that there is no way of knowing what kind of impact on language the various areas of the internet he explores will have. He does this well, and quite humorously, coming to the final conclusion that whatever effects the medium has on language, they will be interesting and ultimately good.
This is the second edition, printed 2006, of a book originally published in 2001. Because of the relatively limited nature of the information he is using, I would be interested to see another revised edition of this work in another five years, when the author can perhaps reach some more satisfying, or, at the very least, grounded, conclusions.
