The linguistic future of the Internet 239
developmentofmillennialsignificance.Anewmediumoflinguistic
communicationdoesnotarriveveryoften,inthehistoryoftherace.
As a new linguistic medium, Netspeak will doubtless grow in its
sociolinguistic and stylistic complexity to be comparable to that al-
ready known in traditional speech and writing.^23 Butitistoosoon
to be certain about the form these new varietieswill take. Even the
ones identified in this book are somewhat tentative, in view of the
difficulties of researching them. Studies of Netspeak are in their
earliest stages. Part of the difficulty is finding extensive samples
of usable data, relating to each of the Internet situations. We saw
in earlier chapters how there is still a great deal of sensitivity over
using logs of chatgroups and virtual worlds, and the issue of e-mail
sampling has hardly been addressed. Uncertain copyright and pri-
vacy issues embattle the Web. Even when good data samples are ob-
tained, there are immense problems over displaying their discourse
structure, given the number of participants involved and the dif-
ficulties of monitoring turn-taking.^24 Each situation also presents
problems arising out of the transitional nature of the medium:
Netspeak is still in an early stage of its evolution, and generaliza-
tions are difficult to make. I am under no illusion, therefore, that
this book can only provide a somewhat blurred snapshot of how
things appeared at this particular point in time.^25
Another reason for the difficulty in predicting Internet language
development is the existence of so many conflicting trends and
pressures. The Net is an immensely empowering, individualistic,
creative medium, as can be seen from the numerous experimental
ways in which people use it. Writers are exploring new ways of
structured or not. Herring uses the phrase ‘text-based CMC’ (Herring, 1996a: 1); Collot
23 and Belmore (1996) use ‘electronic language’.
24 A conclusion also of Collot and Belmore (1996: 27).
An interesting attempt to display chatgroup conversational structure is Donath, Kara-
halios, and Viegas (1999). They use a system of chat circles, which grow in size depending ́
on how much text there is. The postings are shown for a few seconds, and then gradually
fade – as if in real-life conversation, where the focus is on the words of the person who
spoke last. They introduce a ‘zone of hearing’ which mimics the way a participant stays
25 with one conversation or switches between different conversations.
For other linguistic snapshots, and a similar plea for empirical research, see the intro-
duction and papers in Herring (1996a).