Language and the Internet (Hardcover)

by David Crystal (Author) "Will the English-dominated Internet spell the end of other tongues?..." (more)
Key Phrases: asynchronous chatgroups, usage manuals, electronic discourse, World Wide Web, Internet Relay Chat, Patricia Wallace (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal
In this first book-length consideration of the Internet by a linguist, Crystal, whose Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language and over 40 other books have established him as a leading authority on language, begins with the idea that the Internet is not just a technological revolution but a social one as well. The author reasons that language is central to the revolution and explores the role of language in the Internet and the effect of the Internet on language. In four central chapters, he details the significant linguistic features at work in the four major "situations" of the Internet: e-mail, chatgroups (including listservs and discussion groups), virtual worlds, and the web. He concludes that Netspeak (his word for the language of the Internet) is a new medium, "neither spoken language nor written language nor sign language, but a new language dimension computer-mediated language." Crystal sees Netspeak creating huge opportunities for the expansion and enrichment of language. This is only the first snapshot of an amazingly dynamic new field, but it provides some of the groundwork indispensable to future research. Recommended for larger public libraries and all academic collections. Paul D'Alessandro, Portland P.L., ME
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Scientific American
Never mind those anxieties about the Internet's impact on privacy, intellectual property and the recreational habits of 12-year-olds. What is it doing to the future of the English language? Will it really lead to the end of literacy as we know it--not to mention spelling? Not according to David Crystal, a linguist who says in this witty, thoughtful book that, on the contrary, the discourse of the Internet--with its new, informal, even bizarre forms of language--neither threatens nor replaces existing varieties of English but instead enriches them, extending our range of expression and showing us "homo loquens at its best." Crystal, the Welsh author of the Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language who is known to many in the U.S. through his comments on National Public Radio, analyzes the discourse of Web pages, e-mail, chatgroups and virtual-reality games. At first glance, much of this text certainly looks like a primer on linguistic irresponsibility: the shedding of capital letters; the minimalist punctuation; the perverse spellings and goofy abbreviations like RUOK ("are you okay?"); the smileys, such as :-), representing humor; the coining of terms at a rate that has no parallel in contemporary language. For Crystal, though, these phenomena are not portents of linguistic doom but examples of a set of language tactics developed for a new medium he calls computer-mediated communication. The innovative, sometimes screwball varieties of English expressed in computer-mediated channels, he says, have evolved as users have adapted their language creatively to meet changing circumstances. Smileys, for instance, appeared early in the language of e-mail as people struggled to replace many characteristics of speech, like pitch and tone, with symbols, using ;-) for winking or :-( for sadness. Most other forms of written language suffer under the same burden as e-mail, of course--they are not face-to-face and are therefore always ambiguous in their omission of cues such as intonation. So why are there no smileys in other forms of writing? Crystal argues that the answer lies in the immediacy of computer-mediated communication. Traditional writing entails time to revise, to make personal attitudes clear, to tinker with phrases. Smileys and other, related devices stand in for this extra work in the more spontaneous, fluid world of the new medium, which combines properties not only of speaking and writing but of rapid electronic exchange. Crystal is unbothered by typical usage issues--for instance, whether the form "email," "e-mail" or "E-mail" will prevail. He's willing to leave such matters to a future editorial consensus. And he does not worry about whether using "Dear Bob" instead of "Bob" at the beginning of an e-mail will make him a fuddy-duddy, as one handbook on e-mail usage advises. In fact, Crystal laughs at this prescriptive approach, arguing that to condemn one style as bad is to deny English users the stylistic option of switching, thereby reducing the versatility and richness of language. No single recommendation, he says, can suit the expectations of the range of audiences the Internet is reaching. His interest, instead, is in the readiness with which people are adapting spelling, grammar and semantics to meet the needs of Internet-based situations. The chapters on specific adaptations are studded with linguistic delights to satisfy anyone who has ever wondered what TTFN means ("ta ta for now") or tia ("thanks in advance") or gal ("get a life"). (Many more of these abbreviations are explained in highly entertaining tables, as are the varieties of smileys.) He tackles etymologies, too, and the derivations shed light on much that may otherwise have been mysterious: cc, for example, has a new gloss as "complimentary copy," now that carbon copies are a distant memory. He examines the plural ending "-en" that is popular on the Internet--as in "vaxen" for VAX computers--saying that such suffixes are a development that "will cause delight to all Anglo-Saxonists." Crystal devotes a chapter to the discourse of chatgroups--"gossip groups" is a more accurate description for most of what goes on within them, he says-which he characterizes as a "perpetual linguistic party, where you bring your language, not a bottle." He is fascinated by chatgroup language in part because it provides a domain in which to see written language in its most primitive state--banal, repetitive and untouched (as most writing is) by editing. "Chatgroups are the nearest we are likely to get to seeing writing in its spontaneous, unedited, naked state." He also reports on the scholarly literature of computer-mediated communication, including such gems as the finding that, in contrast to females, males on academic newslists sent longer messages, made stronger assertions and engaged in more self promotion, while making fewer apologies and asking fewer questions. Crystal is definitely upbeat, discovering the still evolving discourse of the Internet an area of huge potential enrichment. He uses the analogy of a gift he received-a new informal shirt. This shirt didn't destroy his sense of the value of formal and informal--it just made his previously satisfactory, informal shirts look somewhat staid. He sees the language of the Internet, too, as similarly extending the range of communication options. RUOK with this?

Anne Eisenberg

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 282 pages
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press (October 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0521802121
• ISBN-13: 978-0521802123
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.7 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #552,269 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars needs to be retitled "Internet for Dummies", February 14, 2002

By	"jlsolber" (Champaign, IL United States) - See all my reviews

I'm a graduate student with a focus in computer technologies and writing, so I approached this book with an attitude of "what can I learn about language and the Internet?" The answer, unfortunately, was: not much. If you're at all familiar with the Internet and use email regularly, most of Crystal's book will just be covering a lot that you already know. Crystal gives the impression of having just discovered the Internet--e.g., he voices frustration at the number of non-relevant hits from a search on a word like 'depression', something that most of us have figured out strategies to deal with (and which he, as a linguist, might find interesting). Some of the solutions he suggests to the search-engine problem are already out or in beta, yet he doesn't show any familiarity with such developments.

Crystal admits up front that his aims with this book are modest -- basically, he wants to ask whether the Internet has affected language and language use. Um, well, yeah it has.

But he never answers the question that my undergraduate English professor made us ask of all of our paper theses--So what? Why/how do these changes matter? What larger significance do they have? As a linguist, Crystal isn't perhaps so interested in social or political commentary, but never was there such a disembodied look at language. It's as though because the words appear on a screen, we don't need to think about the social, political, or economic pressures that influence these "language communities" he's looking at. He admits that market forces are driving which languages get to be used in the "global village" but then acts as if that fact is of little consequence.

Crystal's method is best described as descriptive--but he doesn't have much to describe, as his sample for analysis includes his own email as well as that of his two children. And as far as I can tell, he doesn't attempt to tie in these changes to any kind of linguistic theory (with the exception of his use of Grice to explain the cooperative nature of conversation). I'm also struck by the lack of evidence that he's read in this area at all--no citation of Sherry Turkle, for example, whose work would have been informative for the whole chapter he spends on MUDs.

If you know next to nothing about Internet-related communication (email, web pages, MUDs) then this book would be a good introduction for you (hence the title of this post). Viewed as an very introductionary text, I'd probably give this a slightly higher rating, because it is clearly written.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars much-needed academic discussion of online language, April 22, 2003

By	Nadyne Mielke (Mountain View, CA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

David Crystal, one of the world's eminent linguists, has given us a desperately-needed academic resource: this text. Although, as other reviewers have pointed out, some of the conclusions drawn are fairly obvious, this text is useful to have such conclusions stated concisely, in a single location, by a recognised linguist.

The book discusses the effects of the Internet on language, specifically English. Anyone who has spent any length of time online has noted that the language used online is a strange mix of formal and informal, abbreviations and highly-specialised jargon. How does this effect the language as a whole? Crystal does not pretend to answer this question, but raises questions for later research.

As with any book that discusses an aspect of the Internet, some pieces of the book are out-of-date. Search engines are more robust than when Crystal surveyed them. MUDs are essentially dead, replaced in part by massively-multiplayer online games that have their own linguistic ramifications.

In all, this book is an interesting and clearly-written broad introduction to the application of linguistics to the Internet. It is not an advanced text, although the nearly-exhaustive footnotes and citations are an excellent resource for a reader who would like to learn more.

3.0 out of 5 stars Many observations but little analysis, May 9, 2008

By	t0m0p - See all my reviews

This review is from: Language and the Internet (Hardcover)

I was hoping for some insights into a fascinating subject. But this book is mostly a description of various internet language phenomena, which experienced internet users will likely already know. There's no depth.