66 LANGUAGE AND THE INTERNET
The approach is not quite as experimental as the authors think. It
is standard lexicographical practice to check observed neologisms
against a corpus of data, however it is derived. Some dictionaries,
such as theAmerican Heritage, have long used panels of advisers to
judge the acceptability of contentious points, and in the late 1990s
thepagesofEnglishTodayprovidedpreciselysuchaforumforanew
style guide.^5 But it is good linguistics to make the effort to supple-
ment one’s own intuition with the intuitions of others. Obtaining
opinions about usage does not imply an abdication of editorial re-
sponsibility, of course. Once the expert reactions have come in, the
editors have still to impose order on what is always a miscellany of
reactions, and make decisions over coverage and treatment. This is
where intuitions about ‘actual usage’ are sorely tested, and where it
is easy to allow decisions about what to include to be influenced by
such considerations as personal taste, personality, and marketing.
The lack of consensus can be easily seen from a comparison of the
coverage of any two Internet dictionaries.Cyberspeakalso claims
to be a guide to common usage:^6
The lingo you’ll find here is all in common currency, I assure you,
and you’ll find none of the faux-hipsterisms which would only
have marked you as a hapless wannabe. I’ve also skipped over the
mountains of slang which, while absolutely authentic, aren’t in
common use outside of a few specific research labs.But it turns out that less than 25% of the headwords are shared
byCyberspeakandWired Style. Dictionaries are never identical in
their coverage, but when three-quarters of the words in one are
different from the other – yet both claim to be surveying the same
phenomenon,atmoreorlessthesametime(mid-1990s)–itisplain
that factors other than frequency of use are very much involved.
There would seem to be some difference of opinion, even among
the experts, as to what counts as acceptable Netspeak. And the way
manuals do not shirk condemning certain usages as unacceptable
suggests that the spirit of prescriptivism is more strongly present
(^5) See Peters (1998) and subsequent issues ofEnglish Today. (^6) Ihnatko (1997: iv).