Netspeak: A Virtual Variety Of Language

Approximately 30 million people world-wide use the Internet and online services daily. Internet is growing exponentially in all areas, and a rapidly increasing number of people are finding themselves working and playing on the Internet. The people are not all rocket scientists and computer programmers. They are graphic designers, teachers, students, artists, musicians, and your next door neighbors. What these diverse groups of people have in common is their language; this kind of language is called netspeak in Internet society. The Internet community exists and thrives because of this effective written communication, as all you have available to express yourself on the net are type-written words recently. If you cannot express yourself well in written language, you may get lost in the shuffle. Therefore, on the foundation of sociology and sociolinguistics, the present thesis makes an academic study of netspeak and some related issues; therefore, people could have a brief idea of this new language variety and communicate in Internet society more correctly and freely.Chapter One begins with an Internet chatting sentence, which leads to some background information about Internet and netspeak. Many linguists have showed great interests in this new and challenging field. Some different opinions on netspeak home and abroad are listed then, followed by related questions which will be answered in the thesis from the perspective of different aspects of sociolinguistics.In Chapter Two, focuses are put on the basic knowledge of Internet, English and netspeak. Introductions to the development of Internet and something about Internet society are necessary before the study of netspeak. As Internet communication is computer-mediated and technically supported by virtual reality and cyberspace, it is quite different from the communication in real life. The communities in Internet society are defined as virtual communities, and they have their own virtual speech communities accordingly. English occupies a decisive position at the beginning of Internet and netspeak development. Such relationships not only present another aspectof netspeak's development, but also explain why this thesis only takes English for examples. According to netspeak, there are many different definitions. The author gives her own definition in the end: netspeak is a virtual variety of language.Then, an in-depth study of the linguistic theory of language variety is in Chapter Three. As this thesis explains a kind of variety from soeiolinguistics aspects, language is one of the most powerful emblems of social behavior. The whole world keeps changing, so does the language. The vocabulary, grammar construction and sound of a certain kind of language will change only if great changes take place in its society. There are two kinds of language variety: register, and dialect. Each of them is classified into several types. We look on netspeak as a social dialect in this thesis.In Chapter Four, sociolinguistic theories mentioned before are applied to the identification of netspeak as a virtual variety of language. The development of scientific technology and society; people's desire to acquire maximum information with in minimum time in Internet society; such reasons explained the birth of netspeak as a virtual variety of language. The features of netspeak are: constant change, world simplification, unique non-verbal communication, function and meaning shift. These features clearly illustrate the characteristics of this language variety.The conclusion is in Chapter Five, the findings of this study indicate that on the one hand, the birth of new kinds of language or new kinds of language varieties are closely related to the development of society, and such developments give rise to the language's continually being replaced by new ones; on the other hand, if people adopt a correct attitude towards the new language or language variety, such variety of language will be conducive to the development of language.Netspeak is a new research area. It is of abundant research values. My research is just a pilot study. I hope this thesis can invite more attention from scholars in this field.