The language of virtual worlds 189
(cf. p. 90) for correcting some kinds of mistyping, which takes the
form:s/oldstring/newstring.For example:
Langman: you should have given me a week’s notice
Langman: s/week/monthThis says: ‘replaceweekin the previous utterance bymonth’–
thereby avoiding the bother of typing the whole sentence out again.
Other players can intervene. If Proffelt that even a month was not
enough, he might add:
Prof: s/month/yearThis convention is by no means universally used, however, requir-
ing as it does a certain amount of programming awareness.
Variability in usage between MUDs partly reflects synchronic
dialect differences among groups that are extremely identity con-
scious to the point of exclusiveness. Each group will have its
favourite jargon, its ritualized utterances, and its idiosyncratic
commands. The use or non-use of emotes is one major dialect
boundary – what I suppose we could call anisocybe.^25 The range
and frequency of smileys is another. But the variation also reflects
language change. Continual reference is made in the ElseMOO
dialogues to ‘how things were’ – to the linguistic history of the
group, to outdated usage, to the origins of its jargon, to ancient
jokes and stories, and so on – and linguistic metadiscussion seems
to be commonplace in computer-mediated chat situations. It is in
fact a perfectly normal manoeuvre, especially when real content
is lacking, for a group to look in on itself, and start talking about
how it talks. And in listening to these histories, a recurring theme
is the extent to which MUDs have split away from other MUDs,
adopting new linguistic conventions in the process.^26
The idiosyncratic linguistic direction of a MUD is often most vis-
ible in its predilection for language play. All groups play, but some
play more than others and some play with particular linguistic
(^25) For isoglosses, and associatediso-terminology, see Crystal (1997b: 204–5).
(^26) For a range of political, social, personal, and other reasons. See the discussion on MUD
community in Cherny (1999: ch. 6) and the papers in Porter (1996a).