The Effect of the Internet on Language and Communication

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This article is about the effect of the internet on language, put together by four classmates at James Madison University for a project in their 'technology and writing' class. The ideas expressed here are culminated from a list of many readings which can be found below.

As long as humans have existed and communicated with each other, they have strived to enhance the methods of doing so. The inventions of the printing press, the telegraph, and the telephone each demonstrate a landmark improvement in long-distance, instantaneous communication. On January 1, 1983, however, the National Science Foundation created the first TCP/IP connection, joining together universities across the United States. Many consider this date to be birth of the Internet, forever changing the way people communicate across the globe. Throughout its more than twenty years of existence, the internet has seen and orchestrated many differences in the way people communicate, including the language they use, the style with which they write, the way they learn new languages, and the format in which they write. In particular, the new media of e-mail, instant messenger programs, and blogging, have greatly affected the way messages are presented and read, introducing new, looser confines of formality, a generally-accepted flexibility in spelling and grammar, and the notion of writing and reading in a nonlinear context. Also, with programs such as Rosetta Stone, Word 2 Word, and Babelfish, a myriad of websites on foreign language help, and instant “translate” buttons with which many internet browsers are equipped, the difficulty of communicating with someone who speaks a foreign language is overcome in many different ways. Naturally, each of these notions brings with it both pros and cons, and many of these will be touched on below.

1 Online Media and Their Effect on Language
2 Netiquette for Non-native Speakers
3 Foreign Languages Online
4 References
- 4.1 Footnotes

[edit] Online Media and Their Effect on Language

The internet has introduced many ways to communicate online, which have greatly affected the languages and styles we use to communicate. Among these media are e-mail, instant messaging, and blogging.

[edit] Email

The first medium to be considered here has almost entirely replaced the postal system in terms of simply communicating (as opposed to transferring materials). Electronic mail, or e-mail, allows people to send letters to each other instantly through an online provider rather than through the postal system. The process itself was so efficient that the nickname of "snail mail" was given to the traditional postal system. For the purpose of communicating with friends and family informal notes and letters have been all but replaced by e-mail. The efficient transfer of e-mails has also created the expectation of equally efficient replies. Also, the formalities expected in letters have been dropped for e-mails, in order to lend themselves to the efficient method of correspondence.

[edit] Instant Messenger Programs

One of the first popular forms of online communication was America Online, or AOL. Originally launched for Macintosh computers in 1989 and expanded to DOS and personal computers by 1993, America Online offered customers online video games, where viewers could play various games online for an hourly fee. They also provided chat rooms of different sizes and subjects where members could enter and type to other members, holding a conversation by means of reading and writing instead of hearing and speaking. Both the video game format and the chat rooms would remain, but they soon gave way in popularity to AOL’s Instant Messaging (AIM) field. Here, members could add other members as friends and put them on a buddy list, and then talk with them one-on-one in real time. Since then, the company and program has dropped its full name and simply goes by the acronym, AOL, but its popularity has also peaked. Instead, a separate program of its AIM software has become popular.

Being able to type to friends at real time has vastly changed the language of every country in which AIM exists. In order to quickly produce a message to be read, typing had to improve, shortcuts had to be found, and rules had to be lifted. It is the abbreviations, internet slang, and loosened grammar rules that have affected languages so greatly. Perhaps the most popular and widely-known internet slang is that which is used to indicate laughter, lol, or “laughing out loud.” This is, however, just one of hundreds of abbreviations in common usage online today. If one is unaware of their meaning, many online conversations would appear to be in a foreign language. The loosened rules of spelling and grammar have also greatly influenced language. Being more focused on the content and subject and having to respond as quickly as possible to friends online has allowed for very common misspellings of words to become acceptable if the message still pulls through. Also, an entire new alphabet, known as leet, or 1337, has been created. Short for “elite,” this alphabet rewrites words using numbers and symbols that resemble the shapes of the letters in the English alphabet. Although this alphabet is more prevalent in online video games, it is making its way into AIM and other online instant message devices as well.

[edit] Blogging

In the mid 1990s, various people started writing their journals and diaries online, publishing them not only for personal use, but placing them in the public domain. This small and simple notion, known as blogging (blog being short for “web log”), has grown to become one of the Internet’s most popular and powerful forms of communication. Blogging is now a main attraction of the internet, and is used for journals, political polls, news reports, photo albums, travelogues, and a general respository of information and opinions. Keeping a blog affects language similarly to how keeping a journal affects language: it invokes practice. As opposed to instant messaging, blogging has no time restraints, therefore the common slang found in instant messaging is not as prevalent in blogs. Instead, people practice their writing and reading skills using a language that is more grammatically correct. Another important aspect to consider, however, is the legal ramifications of putting explicit descriptions of one’s life into the public domain. As the popularity of blogging has increased, so have cases of libel. For instance, employees have been fired for discussing their employers in blogs.

[edit] Netiquette for Non-native Speakers

One of the major issues surrounding current internet technology is the lack of paralinguistic tools available to online users. This becomes particularly apparent when studying the online communication of users that are using English despite the fact that it is not their native language. In one of the first studies done of non-native speakers communicating in their second language, Hartford and Bardvi-Harglig compared the email communications of native and non native speakers in various graduate programs. They discovered that in non-native speaker’s emails there was an overall lack of socio-culturally accepted guidelines.^[1] This is most likely due to the fact that online communication requires more than simply language proficiency. It requires users to have an intimate sense of not only how language is used but also to have a sense of the culturally accepted standards of that language that many native speakers are still not aware of.

The fact that not all native speakers have been apprised of the etiquette required on the web can bee seen in the numerous web pages and texts devoted to the subject. So called Netiquette is the umbrella term used to describe the rules and policies to follow while online. For example, when typing, refrain from typing in all capital letters as this is an indication that you are screaming at your correspondent. While some rules appear to be obvious there are others that are far more intricate, such as the fact that while netiquette does not discourage flaming (heated online messages) it does discourage flame wars (repeated, back and forth flaming). In addition, although the web appears to be developing its own set of rules, many traditional rules of etiquette are also being upheld concurrently.

It is obvious that these newly-presented rules would present challenges to a non-native speaker. Whereas most native speakers are at least moderately aware of social norms and etiquette, it is much more difficult for non-native speakers to pick up on these idiosyncratic rules. This can be seen in many of the studies done on non-native speakers’ e-mail communication. Generally speaking, non-native speakers were far more likely to use want statements over query preparatory (terms in a study by Blum-Kulka, House, & Kasper, 1989).^[1] While want statements utilize phrases such as “I need” or I want,” symbolizing their desire that the reader carries out a direct request, query preparatory statements utilize phrases such as “would you” and “could you please.”^[1] While a native speaker can almost immediately sense the differences in the two types of phrases, it would be difficult for a non-native speaker to sense the fact that preparatory phrases are less direct and therefore considered more appropriate.

However, despite the fact that there are difficulties for non-native speakers in learning to communicate in an online environment, the benefits far outweigh the costs. For instance, without this online technology it would be almost impossible for non-native speakers who have never lived in the United States to infer the intricacies of the language. Through online communication individuals now have the opportunity to experience and practice immersion in a language and culture without ever leaving their living room.

[edit] Foreign Languages Online

Before the internet, communication amongst different countries was limited. Only those who visited other countries or were fluent enough in another language to write or speak on a telephone could communicate. With the birth of the internet, all of that changed. Suddenly communicating with the world was virtually at everyone’s finger tips twenty-four hours a day. Now the only problem standing in everyone’s way was the language barrier amongst countries. Not everyone had the time to enroll in classes with their busy lives in order to learn new languages. With this need for the world to start communicating and break the language barriers, the internet seemed to once again come to the rescue when it began creating online foreign language programs to start teaching people other languages. Through these programs, people could pick any language they wanted to learn and learn it right there in their own homes, at their own pace, any time of day. There are now countless such products on the market, most of them available on the online forum. It has now become increasingly easier to avoid the traditional methods of actual courses or self-help tapes and books to understand other languages. As in any new program though, there are both negative and positive factors to learning languages through the internet, but no one can doubt that these programs have definitely made it possible for many people to learn different languages who would have never had a chance to do so otherwise.

Many studies have been done in the United States following people in this country who are limited in their English proficiency and are trying to learn English through technological tools such as the internet. One particular study was done following limited English proficient Latino students. Researchers studied how well a group of Latinos were grasping English by using instructional technology. The research highlighted many benefits to learning a language online such as, “It allows students to have the most control over the direction of their learning by controlling their time, speed of learning, autonomy, choice of topics or even their own identity.”^[2] In a classroom these Latino students would have had to go at the pace of their English teacher, where online each student could choose his/ her pace. This allows the students to really grasp a concept before they move on. Also they do not have to be worried about being embarrassed in a classroom if they are called on and do not know the answer. Research has proven that students involved in the online learning process have more confidence in their abilities because they do not feel pressured with the rest of the class’ abilities and are able to solely focus on their own.^[2] Online programs also offer immediate feedback that many students benefit from rather than awaiting a teacher to grade papers. The computer tells its students right away which answers were wrong, allowing the students to go back and fix mistakes. This helps limit the amount of time that students go having misconceptions about the new language they are studying.

However, even though there are a lot of positives to online learning, research also has indicated that technology really shouldn’t be used without the integration of professional assistance. Technology is most useful when it is, “integrated into a teaching program as a whole.”^[2] Interaction with a teacher when learning a foreign language at a certain point becomes vital in order to have someone to communicate with and practice speaking to. Students can not correct their own speaking in a new language. Also online learning can cause lots of frustration to students when there is a subject that they come across that is unclear to them. It is almost always more efficient for students to spend one-on-one time with a teacher when they don’t understand something rather than trying to solve his/her problems for himself. Students teaching themselves material without interaction with a teacher only promotes passive learning, which could backfire once a student is forced to leave their computer with the new knowledge and go out into the world communicating with others. It seems that the internet’s foreign language programs may not be the big hero in breaking language barriers that at first glance they seem to be.

[edit] The Rosetta Stone

One such online program that is currently being used to teach thousands of people different languages is called the Rosetta Stone. This program offers 30 different languages to choose from spoken by over 90 percent of the world’s population.^[3] The program focuses on tapping on individuals’ “innate ability” in order to learn another language. It associates new words with familiar objects and ideas and avoids having people memorize. It also focuses on the, “use of gradual repetition providing real learning rather than having to study rules to grasp the material.”^[4] This program is one of the many now offered online and as time passes there will be more technological advancements geared towards helping people pick up new languages and continuing to break the language barrier. The only question is: Is learning languages through the internet really effective?

[edit] Word 2 Word

Word2Word.com offers a website where people can learn other languages online, and there is no shortage of languages available.^[5] The site covers everything from English to Afrikaans,^[5] with each language available through a separate online thread. There are multiple ways to view such availabilities. Some would argue that this is a fantastic innovation, allowing for people who are unable for whatever reason to take an actual academic course to learn another language to do so “on the fly” at their own convenience. Technophiles who prefer to achieve knowledge through the internet have the ability to do so with sites like Word2Word. Critics, however, may argue that this takes away from true understanding of language. For instance, how can someone truly master a language without engaging in discourse with peers with the use of the language? Can a person truly understand Ukrainian^[5] without hearing others speak the tongue and communicating with them one-on-one? One cannot argue, though, that in a short time-frame such technology can be infinitely beneficial in that a person could pick up the language very quickly if they are devoting their free time to it constantly. One can learn a language while on a cross-country flight, for instance. Nonetheless, the lack of interpersonal contact while learning a foreign language will always be a drawback to such technological advances.

[edit] Babelfish

Online translation services, like AltaVista’s Babel Fish and other such websites, are cutting even more out of the process of learning a foreign language. In fact, there is no real learning to be done. A person can simply log onto this site and either copy and paste or retype a passage and choose the language in which it’s currently in and in which they wish for it to be translated to.^[6] It’s that simple, and it makes learning other languages almost unnecessary in a limited capacity. The point must then be considered: is this a great tool for those who are looking for a quick translation for understanding purposes, or a way for students to skirt the requirement to actually comprehend foreign language and their corresponding words and phrases in their native tongue? This is a very accessible, easy-to-use free tool that many sites offer,^[6] which means it takes nothing for a person to search the web instead of actually studying another language and beginning to understand it. In this way, technology has changed the speed and accessibility of translations and made it nearly unnecessary for an individual to study and understand the nuances of other languages.

Obviously, online tools geared towards making it simpler to learn^[5] and translate^[7] other languages offers benefits and problems to the study of language. Their speed and accessibility make it simple for someone who is finding him- or herself in a time constraint of sorts and needs to rapidly understand a foreign tongue. However, it seems to take the comprehension and research portions of other cultures’ languages out of the equation. While the reality of these tools is that they are not going to go away, it is important to note that the use of them can sometimes stunt the growth of someone trying to truly understand another written or spoken word.