3Findinganidentity
The uncertain linguistic identity of Netspeak, in its various Inter-
net manifestations, is presumably why so many usage dictionaries,
guides, and rule books have appeared in recent years. People seem
to have begun to sense that they are dealing with something new,
as far as their linguistic intuitions are concerned. They are realiz-
ing that their established knowledge, which has enabled them to
survive and succeed in spoken and written linguisticencounters
hitherto, is no longer enough to guarantee survival and success on
the Internet. Perhaps they have encountered the ‘painful and awk-
ward lessons’ in social interaction which Patricia Wallace talked
about (p. 16). Perhaps they have been misunderstood, misper-
ceived, or attacked (flamed) because they have failed to notice the
differences between this new medium of communication and the
old. David Porter sums it up this way:^1
There are words, but they often seem to be words stripped of
context, words desperately burdened by the lack of the other
familiar markers of identity in this strange, ethereal realm. It is no
wonder that these digitalized words, flung about among strangers
and strained beyond the limits of what written language in other
contexts is called upon to do, are given to frequent misreading, or
that they erupt as often they do into antagonistic ‘flames’. In a
medium of disembodied voices and decontextualized points of
view, a medium, furthermore, beholden to the fetishization of
speed, the experience of ambiguity and misreading is bound to be
less an exception than the norm.Whatever the reason, people seem to want guidance, and those with
a track-record in using the Internet have not been slow to supply
(^1) Porter (1996a: xi–xii).
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