We’ve all seen a sentence like this: “luv u gurl , cant wait 2 c u”
And many of us hate it. It grates on the nerves of English teachers everywhere. Scrolling through facebook, people are often convinced that the internet is populated by uneducated, lazy people who can’t be bothered to take the time to spell-check or put thought into what they write. But whether we like it or not, this “internet speak” is predominant online, and the internet has become a central aspect of our lives, social and otherwise.
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Let me take you back to the early 1600’s, when Shakespeare was avidly writing and performing plays. His well-known works, like Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Henry V…I could go on…were performed for the lay man. At this time, many low-class citizens couldn’t read or write, and even if they could, most of their time was spent working. Nevertheless, Shakespeare’s plays were widely received and enjoyed, and considered by clergymen and religious authorities to be bawdy and low-life. Yet today in high school and college classrooms, students struggle through Shakespeare’s texts which seem archaic and dense. How is it that language which was once considered basic and lowly is now high-level and obscure? Well, most simply, language evolves, and English is no exception.
It is certainly true that automatic tools on our computers like spell-check and autocorrect take some of the burden off of us to learn spelling and syntax rigorously. I rely on spellcheck to correct the trickiest of English words, instead of taking to memorize all the rules. But the phenomenon of internet speak, I believe, is subtly distinct from this.
I’m a grammar and syntax nerd through and through. I relished the grammar sections in middle school that my classmates dreaded. I dig into Latin and Greek Syntax and write papers arguing that the syntactical variations of different languages add color to these languages, rendering them untranslatable. So, when I see internet speak, I see it not as a blatant disregard for language rules and syntax, but a dialect with its own variations and aesthetic.
English has been evolving since it first came to be—in fact, the nature of language (and therefore English) is that new languages evolve from other older ones. Today we see a rapid evolution of English because of the rapid means communication the internet offers. We read almost constantly, though we don't always realize it. Scrolling through facebook or our favorite news sites, we are exposed to slews of comments written in intent speak, and there are thousands of shortcuts and variations. Though we may not realize it all the time, these shortcuts make up a new dialect of English, similar to the phenomenon of shorthand, which was widely learned and implemented by secretaries and workers across the US.
Being attentive to the modes and tones of internet speak, we can detect the subtle differences in communication. Just as writing a sentence in archaic English gives it a different color than using modern English, writing in internet speak does the same. There is a different tone in the two following statements:
“That sounds great. I will see you then.”
and,
“cool, see u l8r”
These two convey largely the same message, but they address different audiences. Writing is first and foremost communication. In an email to my boss to set up a meeting time, I would definitely choose the first statement. But setting up a coffee date with a friend would prompt me to use the second—not because I am lazy, but because of the aesthetic. The second statement is chill and casual, perfect for a casual date. It is short and looks different on the page (or, the screen, as the case may be) than the first. Every little detail, subconsciously or not, enters the mind of the reader and affects how they read and receive the communication offered by the text. In a space like the internet, where you don’t have body language or voice inflection to go by, the way something is written is crucial to how it is received.
This phenomenon is clearly exemplified in the use of capitol letters. We know, when we receive a message in all caps, what tone is implied. If I get a text from a friend that says “LOOK AT THIS” and is accompanied by a photo or video, I can use that conveyed tone combined with the context of the attached media to deduce that my friend is either very excited or very upset by what they sent me. Contrarily, if someone sends me the message “look at this,” the sense of urgency and intense emotion is not present.
It’s true that “times are changing.” They always are. And it may be true that the literacy rate of the average “youth” today is different than it was X years ago, but I would attribute any decline in aggregate grammar and English proficiency to a lack of reading, not a habit of using internet speak. As someone who is quite attentive to grammar and to the visual and tonal aesthetic of whatever I write, I enjoy crafting instagram captions and facebook stati with every comma, space, capital and lowercase letter, spelling, etc. chosen with intention. I know that most internet communicators do not view a text box as a canvas for an artistic, crafted text, but I do know for certain that I read internet speak differently than I do other texts. There is some riddled, interwoven rhyme and reason to it.
Rather than crusading against the “lazy” English of today’s youth, I view internet speak as a fascinating evolution of my native tongue. I try to articulate to myself what I am picking up on when I read internet speak. In short, I try to figure out how it works. Just as an author might choose to write a Southern accent into a character’s dialogue, in order to tell the reader something about that character, I look to this internet dialect as a subtly different form of communication from the formal English we use in speech and professional documents. Rather than a degradation of language, it is an evolution. Change is inevitable, and is not inherently bad.
