7ThelanguageoftheWeb
‘The vision I have for the Web is about anything being potentially
connected with anything.’ This observation by the Web’s inventor,
Tim Berners-Lee, on the first page of his biographical account,
WeavingtheWeb(1999), provides a characterization of this element
of the Internet which truly strains the notion of ‘situation’ and the
accompanying concept of a ‘variety’ of Internet language.After all,
language, and any language, in its entirety, is part of this ‘anything’.
The Web in effect holds a mirror up to the graphic dimension of our
linguistic nature. A significant amount of human visual linguistic
life is already there, as well as a proportion of our vocal life.^1 So can
it be given a coherent linguistic identity?
‘Graphic’ here refers to all aspects of written (as opposed to
spoken) language, including typewritten, handwritten (including
calligraphic), and printed text. It includes much more than the
direct visual impression of a piece of text, as presented in a partic-
ular typography and graphic design on the screen; it also includes
all those features which enter into a language’s orthographic sys-
tem (chiefly its spelling, punctuation, and use of capital letters) as
well as the distinctive features of grammar and vocabulary which
identify a typically ‘written’ as opposed to a ‘spoken’ medium of
communication. Most Web text will inevitably be printed, given the
technology generally in use. Typewritten text (in the sense of text
produced by a typewriter) is hardly relevant, belonging as it does
to a pre-electronic age, though of course it can be simulated, and
(^1) Anything that can exist as a computer file can be made available as a Web document –
text, graphics, sound, video, etc. There is no theoretical limit to the size of the Web,
and new sites are being added to it so rapidly that no reliable statistics are available; but
growth in the late 1990s was c.40% a year, with the number of pages rapidly approaching
a billion. See the review in Lawrence and Giles (1999).
195