Preview

Role of Language in the Internet and the effect of the Internet on Language

Powerful Essays
Open Document
Open Document
992 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Role of Language in the Internet and the effect of the Internet on Language
The Internet is one of the most remarkable things human beings have ever made. With the past few decades, internet has become so popular and it is an integral part of our daily lives. Email, instant messaging and chat are rapidly replacing the 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. This project is an attempt to explore this linguistic problem. A qualitative and also quantitative study is conducted here to see how internet’s global scale and intensity is having an effect on language in general, and on individual languages in particular. 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. The thesis work will first discuss the role of language in the internet and thereafter, the effect of the internet on language with central focus on the latter. David Crystal, in his book Language and the Internet says that language is at the heart of internet. Internet comes increasingly to be viewed from a social perspective, so the role of language becomes central. Thus internet is a medium of communication which is inevitable aided by language. Whether it is browsing, blogging, chatting or e-mails, language has a great role to play because if we do not know the language, then we cannot use the internet at all.
The influence of internet over the language has to be viewed in much broader aspect. There is of course nothing new about the fears accompanying the emergence of a new communications technology. In the fifteenth century, the arrival of printing was widely perceived by the Church as an invention of Satan, the hierarchy fearing that the dissemination of uncensored ideas would lead to a breakdown of social order and put innumerable souls at

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Language is important to our everyday interactions we have throughout our lives, it is a basic part of who we are and where we've came from. It helps us to understand and learn about other people's cultures, without a common language of communication we would not be able to advance in society. Communication is a basic part of our human rights and allows us to progress further with knowledge. Language is key to communicating with people within our societies, and also plays part in each individual's identity, based around the culture and places people have grown up in.…

    • 665 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Whether it be the people a person spends time with or a product they use frequently, they become influenced. The technology that surrounds an individual has the potential to change who they are. The human brain, being the highly adaptable organ that it is, is susceptible to this sort unintentional shift. Carr explains, “As we use what the sociologist Daniel Bell has called our ‘intellectual technologies’— the tools that extend our mental rather than our physical capacities— we inevitably begin to take on the qualities of those technologies.” (Carr 576). This means that in terms of the internet, we are coming into thinking and operating more like it. This way of thinking makes sense why people have adopted ‘text speak’ among other things. Just like the internet, society continues to aim to be efficient, cutting corners to keep things quick. Society becomes what it creates; the digital world parallels the human…

    • 836 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Analyse some short extracts from transcripts of people communicating using digital media. Explore the features that show these written communications are close to spoken language and the attitudes that different people have to the effects of these new hybrid languages.…

    • 2881 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    By shortening words are we working faster or just being bone idle? The online communications through social networking sites such as Yahoo messenger, Msn messenger, Skype, Facebook and IM chat have revolutionized the way communicate and causing rapid change in linguistics. The use of these sites threatens the education system and the appropriate prescriptive grammar.…

    • 2116 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    2b or Not 2b

    • 328 Words
    • 2 Pages

    In chapter fifteen ''2b or Not 2b?'' of ''They Say / I Say'', David Crystal provides arguments in favour of text messaging. Crystal tries to prove his point that text messaging is not destroying the English language with great research, a lot of examples and a clear organization. As the author himself puts it, ''Texting has added a new dimension to language use, but it's long-term impact is negligible. It's not a disaster. ''. Although some people believe text messaging is pillaging our punctuation, savaging our sentences and raping our vocabulary, Crystal insist that. In sum, then, his view is that the abbreviations were used as a natural, intuitive response to a technological problem, but that they are also more than just time and energy saving act. He considers some texts also as linguistically quite complex.…

    • 328 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Technology has changed vastly over time. Now language is being influenced “faster and better than before, across 3g” and its changing language as we know it. Text messaging has changed the face of communication completely giving us the ability to “talk” instantly and giving a vast nhe whole of time, from great carvings on dingy cave walls, to the printing press in the 15th centuryew lexical and grammatical look on language…for better or for worse. From the text we’ve been given we can clearly see the effects of technology on language, but not just this, an effect on people lifestyle to a vast level; from young children aged 13 to older generations, struggling to cope with the change.…

    • 842 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Multi-Modal Essay

    • 1036 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Over the past ten to fifteen years, there has been a major change in the way people communicate to each other due to the development of the internet. Because of this, there has been a massive effect on the amount of socialising between friends and family; using technology in online social messaging websites such as Bebo, MSN, Facebook and many more. Through these social messaging websites, more and more people can interact with their friends and family all over the world. An expert professor David Crystal has supported the idea of web-based messages and disagrees with the view that slang and contractions leads to a lower English standard of language. Although this is a benefit to most people, it has been abused by some people by overusing it and different ‘language’ while typing, which cause differentiation in the way we speak and the way we write. The current views are pointing at the fact that this is causing a pejoration in this generation’s language which could badly affect their and our future; destroying the conventions of Standard English. This essay will evaluate the similarities and differences between spoken language and web-based messaging such Facebook and many more.…

    • 1036 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Between e-mailing, texting, video conference, and social media, people can connect anywhere with anyone. The theory that the use of computers represents a cultural technique emphasizes the great significance computers have in today’s world and offers numerous connecting factors for evaluations of philosophical, sociological and linguistic nature (Ruda, S & Rothkegel, A, 2012, page 177). Having access to the Internet helps to see and relate to different cultures. The most significant impact of technology on communication is the spread of the Internet and the possibility of sending emails and chatting. In the pre-information technology days, a document often required re-typing on the typewriter before the final version.…

    • 738 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Paper 3

    • 863 Words
    • 4 Pages

    With the breakthrough in technology, communication seems to be changing drastically. Communication began face-to-face; over time, easier means of communication were developed and revolutionized our culture. The culture of communication was reformed by technological developments such as: the cell phone, e-mail, and social networking websites. These technological developments are so common that many people from recent generations could not imagine what they would do without them. Fawzia Kalek, a middle aged computer science major, has experienced both cultures and the transition from old fashion communication to modern communication. In an enlightening interview, Fawzia describes the revolution from her educated perspective.…

    • 863 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Cosmopolitanism and People

    • 1125 Words
    • 3 Pages

    The Internet is playing a very important role in the evolution of digital technology, but although it has seen remarkable growth over the last few years, its dispersion remains highly asymmetric. It is widely believed that the so called information age will bring radical change and improvement, and countries all over the world are busy with constructing the necessary infrastructure, the "information superhighways," in order to meet the challenges of the information society of the twenty-first century. Kwame Anthony Appiah’s essay “Making Conversation” tell us about human’s conversation is better expressing themselves in person. Marshall Poe said in his article “The Hive” talks about the evolution of Wikipedia and how people are interacting online. The internet serves a purpose for research, schoolwork, and connections. However, the result from the internet age is loosing communication,lack of social interaction, and the unreliable nature of websites.…

    • 1125 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    The piece of language that is being analyzed is a conversation between two teenage girls. In a brief discourse many different feature make themselves present, I will be talking about four of them. The features noted are abbreviations/contractions, letter/number homophones, deviant spelling, initalism, reduplication of letters and phonetic spelling. Gender and age will also be scrutinized to justly evaluate the benefits of web based interactions and texting.…

    • 1394 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Miss

    • 405 Words
    • 2 Pages

    * In this essay, you will also consider how different factors influence the language used in web-based messaging and its closeness to spoken communication. Examples of this include: age, gender, hobbies/interests, social class, etc. This is basically summed up as context – i.e. the purpose of the message & relationship between the recipients.…

    • 405 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    3. Varnhagen, C. K., McFall, G. P., Pugh, N., Routledge, L., Sumida-MacDonald, H., & Kwong, T. E. (2009). lol: new language and spelling in instant messaging. In Springer Science and Business [Article]. (02 May 2009 ed., pp. 1 – 15).…

    • 3720 Words
    • 15 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Internet Slang

    • 403 Words
    • 2 Pages

    On one hand, internet slang is believed to have a negative influence on the future of language, and that it would lead to a degradation of standard. Some would even attribute any declination of standard formal English to the increase in usage of electronic communication, as shown in figure 8.…

    • 403 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Language plays an important role in human life. One tries to acquire, learn and use language as a means of communication, and simultaneously as social symbol of humanity. By using language someone could make statements, convey facts and knowledge explain or report something, and keep social relations among the language users. These indicate that by means of language, people can express their ideas, feeling, information etc through communication.…

    • 376 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays

Related Topics