Language and the Internet

David Crystal

doi:10.1017/CBO9781139164771

David Crystal investigates the nature of the impact which the Internet is making on language. There is already a widespread popular mythology that the Internet is going to be bad for the future of language - that technospeak will rule, standards be lost, and creativity diminished as globalization imposes sameness. The argument of this book is the reverse: that the Internet is in fact enabling a dramatic expansion to take place in the range and variety of language, and is providing unprecedented opportunities for personal creativity. The Internet has now been around long enough for us to 'take a view' about the way in which it is being shaped by and is shaping language and languages, and there is no-one better placed than David Crystal to take that view. His book is written to be accessible to anyone who has used the Internet and who has an interest in language issues.

‘This is the first mainstream book of its kind, a real achievement. Anyone who works in this field will surely refer to it, gratefully, on many future occasions.’

John Morrish Source: Independent on Sunday

‘A welcome reminder of an important truth about the Internet … provides us with the first comprehensive survey of how we behave in our new environment.’

Source: The Times Higher Education Supplement

‘The first sustained treatment of an engrossing and important subject.’

Source: The Times Higher Education Supplement

‘… fascinating new book … Language and the Internet is a pioneering work, an exploratory work, in no way definitive … here is material for a thousand theses.’

Source: Panorama - Canberra Times

‘On no account should this book be dismissed as a curious ‘popsci’ compendium of informative and entertaining tidbits. On the contrary, it is a serious and essential linguistic record of these early days of ‘computer mediated language’, and one that we would all do well to read.’

Source: ELT Journal

‘Any medium of communication as revolutionary as the Internet is bound to have a profound effect on language. Though many have noted the linguistic changes emerging in online communication, few have studied the phenomena and fewer yet have written about them in a clear and cogent manner. David Crystal’s volume on the topic presents a well-organised and highly readable overview of value to both specialists and non-specialist alike.’

Source: Education, Communication and Information

‘… does an excellent job and will have to be read by everyone who wants to put a toe in the water on the way to serious empirical study of the Internet.’

Source: Linguistics

‘… a readable and entertaining overview that situates computer-mediated communication within established linguistic frameworks of analysis and points the reader to much of the extant research addressing language use online.’

Source: Education, Communication and Information

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Language and the Internet

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Contents

Frontmatter
pp i-iv

Contents
pp v-vi

Preface
pp vii-x

1 - A linguistic perspective
pp 1-23

2 - The medium of Netspeak
pp 24-61

3 - Finding an identity
pp 62-93

4 - The language of e-mail
pp 94-128

5 - The language of chatgroups
pp 129-170

6 - The language of virtual worlds
pp 171-194

7 - The language of the Web
pp 195-223

8 - The linguistic future of the Internet
pp 224-242

References
pp 243-252

Index of authors
pp 253-255

Index of topics
pp 256-272

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Language and the Internet

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