Alinguistic perspective 23
on language in general and on their own language in particular –
as the quotations at the beginning of this chapter suggest – a first
step is to explore Netspeak in its various situational manifestations
to see what actually happens there. As John Paolillo puts it, in his
introduction to a paper on the virtual speech community:^32 ‘If we
are to understand truly how the Internet might shape our language,
then it is essential that we seek to understand how different varieties
of language are used on the Internet.’ Chapters 4–7, accordingly,
investigate the kind of language used in each of the five situations
described above. But all five have certain linguistic properties in
common, and these form the subject-matter of chapters 2 and 3.
(^32) Paolillo (1999).