A Study Of The Web-chat Language

With the increasing use of computers in information exchange, computer has become a replacement for writing and speech. And computer-mediated communication 'has emerged as an important new communication modality that is increasingly permeating everyday life in industrialized societies.'(Herring) Undoubtedly, the most obvious difference between this new mode of communication and others is the medium. Also, the medium has contributed- to many particular features of the new modality of communication. The communication via the Internet, the networked computers, is strengthened version of the new modality of communication. The surprisingly rapid speed of the Internet also alleges that the new modality of communication should become our legitimate objective of inquiry.This paper, has examined a representative mode of the computer-mediated communication via the Internet, the web-chat, dealing with some distinctive features of the web-chat language. This paper is an attempt to provide readers with some medium-related features of the web-chat, and further to enable them to have a picture of the computer-mediated language in general. It also intends to be an invitation for readers to think over questions such as: Could this new mode of communication possibly bring about changes in the traditional means of communication and eventually our language on the whole? If so, then to what extent is the change attributable to the new medium, and 'to what extent do people simply map their existing patterns of behaviour onto communication in the new medium?'The web-chat language is defined as a variety of our language. The main part ofthis paper is devoted to the analysis and abstraction of the unique features^theweb-chat language. The analysis and abstraction was carried out on the basis of the web-chat data and some plausible explanations have been given. Both stylistic andsociolinguistic perspectives are applied.The web-chat is a kind of 'talking in writing'. The unique features of the web-chat language are best manifested by some non-standard or ill-formed orthographic and grammatical strategies. Such as the capitalization, the reduplication of letters and punctuations, the introduction of digits, the deletion of the subject pronouns and the code mixing of English and Chinese. All of these have challenged our imagination and could be regarded as the most bold deviation of language ever since. But take another closer look at them, we could find that all these strategies are designed to either compensate for or adapt to the unique communication context and the corresponding constraints. The most concern of the user is to make the conversation function as much speech-like as possible. And thus the 'time-economy principle' plays an important role to this end.Moreover, the web-chat language has developed into a badge of the membership of particular group of the web-chat users.The last part of the paper has a tentative discussion of the potential impacts of the web-chat language on our language change. Limited by various reasons, this issue has not been fully developed but just touched upon. The paper has not given a definite answer to the question whether the web-chat language is a degradation or not, but leave it to readers.In conclusion, the study of the web-chat language and the computer-mediated language on the whole is still at infant stage. And the time could make its judgments. This paper is a summary of what I have perceived and I hope it could serve as a window through which readers might acquire a better understanding of the language use on the Internet.