Language and the Internet

(Axel Boer) #1

194 LANGUAGE AND THE INTERNET


Cherny did with her fellow-players) or via e-mail, and ask this
character for permission to quote its utterances, and it said no,
could the mere typist David Crystal later complain if someone
made such a quotation? Ethnographers are very familiar with such
issues, which go well beyond language, and Cherny discusses them
at length in her final chapter; but the recency of the medium, and
themanydifferentattitudesbetweenandwithingroups,meansthat
the issue is by no means settled. This is why, out of a general respect
for the emerging nature of linguistic cyberspace,Ihaveinventedmy
own characters in this chapter, and not used online logs (many of
whicharenowadecadeold)formylongerorextendedillustrations.
MUD data is not quite as solid a basis for the kind of general-
ization about linguistic distinctiveness that it has been possible to
make in relation to other Netspeak situations. My impression is
that a linguistic variety has developed here, involving remarkable
ingenuity, but that its defining characteristics are obscured by the
existence of a large amount of individual difference. Until more
material is made uncontroversially public, it will be difficult to re-
solve the matter. And as some commentators are already wondering
aboutthepossibledemiseoftext-basedvirtualenvironments,given
the more powerful communicative options being made available
by new technology (see chapter 8), maybe the matter never will
be resolved, and the subject-matter of this chapter will become an
intriguing historical episode in Internet evolution, showing what
can happen linguistically as people adapt a new medium to meet
their interests and needs. A rather different situation obtains in
the next chapter, where we encounter a domain where the public
status of the data is not in doubt, where there is hardly a shortage
of illustrative material, and where the future of the phenomenon
is assured: the World Wide Web.

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