Internet slang (also known as Internet shorthand, cyber-slang, netspeak, or digispeak) is a non-standard or unofficial form of language used by people on the Internet to communicate with one another. A popular example of Internet slang is "lol", meaning "laughing out loud". Since Internet slang is constantly changing, it is difficult to provide a standardized definition.Yin Yan (2006) World Wide Web and the Formation of the Chinese and EnglishInternet Union". Computer-Assisted Foreign Language Education. Vol. 1. However, it can be understood to be any type of slang that Internet users have popularized and, in many cases, have coined. Such terms often originate with the purpose of saving keystrokes or to compensate for character limit restrictions. Many people use the same abbreviations in texting, instant messaging, and social networking websites. Acronyms, keyboard symbols, and abbreviations are common types of Internet slang. New dialects of slang, such as leet or lolspeak, develop as ingroup Internet memes rather than time savers. Internet slang is also used in face-to-face, real life communication.
Creation and evolution Origins Internet slang originated in the early days of the Internet, with some terms predating it. The earliest forms of Internet slang assumed people's knowledge of programming and commands in a specific language. Internet slang is used in chat rooms, social networking services, online games, video games and in the online community. Since 1979, users of communications networks like Usenet created their own shorthand. Internet slang originated as a way to save keystrokes for users, alongside getting around auto-moderated platforms. If a platform banned users for typing a specific word, they would create new ones that had a communal understanding of the definition, allowing them to avoid the ban filter.
Motivations The primary motivation for using a slang unique to the Internet is to ease communication. While Internet slang shortcuts save time for the writer, they can also take two times as long for the reader to understand, according to a study by the University of Tasmania. On the other hand, similar to the use of slang in traditional face-to-face speech or written language, slang on the Internet is often a way of indicating group membership.
Internet slang provides a channel which facilitates and constrains the ability to communicate in ways that are fundamentally different from those found in other semiotic situations. Many of the expectations and practices which we associate with spoken and written language are no longer applicable. The Internet itself is ideal for new slang to emerge because of the richness of the medium and the availability of information. Slang is also thus motivated for the "creation and sustenance of online communities". These communities, in turn, play a role in solidarity or identificationWei Miao Miao (2010) "Internet slang used by online Japanese anime fans." 3PM Journal of Digital Researching and Publishing. Session 2 2010 pp 91–98 or an exclusive or common cause.
David Crystal distinguishes among five areas of the Internet where slang is used — The Web itself, email, asynchronous chat (for example, mailing lists), synchronous chat (for example, Internet Relay Chat), and virtual worlds. The electronic character of the channel has a fundamental influence on the language of the medium. Options for communication are constrained by the nature of the hardware needed in order to gain Internet access. Thus, productive linguistic capacity (the type of information that can be sent) is determined by the preassigned characters on a keyboard, and receptive linguistic capacity (the type of information that can be seen) is determined by the size and configuration of the screen. Additionally, both sender and receiver are constrained linguistically by the properties of the internet software, computer hardware, and networking hardware linking them. Electronic discourse refers to writing that is "very often reads as if it were being spoken – that is, as if the sender were writing talking".
Types of slang
Internet slang does not constitute a homogeneous language variety; rather, it differs according to the user and type of Internet situation.Hohenhaus, Peter (2005). Elements of traditional and "reverse" purism in relation to computer-mediated communication. In Langer, Nils and Winifred V. Davies (eds.), Linguistic Purism in the Germanic Languages. Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, 203-220. Audience design occurs in online platforms, and therefore online communities can develop their own sociolects, or shared linguistic norms.Pavalanathan, Umashanthi, and Jacob Eisenstein. "Audience-modulated variation in online social media." American Speech 90.2 (2015): 187-213.Lucy, Li, and David Bamman. "Characterizing English variation across social media communities with BERT." Transactions of the Association for Computational Linguistics 9 (2021): 538-556.
Within the language of Internet slang, there is still an element of prescriptivism, as seen in style guides, for example Wired Style,[Hale, C. and Scanlon, J (1999). Wired Style: Principles of English Usage in the Digital Age. New York: Broadway Books] which are specifically aimed at usage on the Internet. Even so, few users consciously heed these prescriptive recommendations on CMC (Computer-mediated communication), but rather adapt their styles based on what they encounter online.Baron, Naomi. (2000). Alphabet to Email. London: Routledge. Although it is difficult to produce a clear definition of Internet slang, the following types of slang may be observed. This list is not exhaustive.
Class Description Rebuses (Homophones & homographs) Included within this group are abbreviations and acronyms. An abbreviation is a shortening of a word, for example "CU" or "CYA" for "see you (see ya)". An acronym, on the other hand, is a subset of abbreviations and are formed from the initial components of each word. Examples of common acronyms include "LOL" for "laugh out loud", "BTW" for "by the way" and "TFW" for "that feeling when". There are also combinations of both, like "CUL8R" for "see you later".Mostly a puzzle device, but it can be used as Internet slang using Unicode characters like emojis or letters. Examples include "Ỽ", Latin letter V shaped like an egg in the Middle Welsh language and "ꙮ", Cyrillic letter Multiocular O shaped like grapes. Heterographs Using one word in place of another, different but similarly sounding, word. Alternatively, a deliberate misspelling. For example, using "sauce" instead of "source" when asking for the source of an image or other posted material online. Barseghyan, L. (2013). On some aspects of Internet slang. Graduate School of Foreign Languages N, 14, 19-31. For example, TikTok algorithms monitor 'explicit' content by censoring certain words or promoting videos based on the inclusion of certain hashtags; the intentional misspelling of words bypasses censorship guidelines and subsequently creates a range of platform-specific slang, renders trigger warnings as ineffective and can end up promoting harmful content (e.g. misspelling anorexia, pro-eating disorder content can be featured on the For You page via algorithms that promote popular content). Punctuation, capitalizations, and other symbols Such features are commonly used for emphasis. Periods or exclamation marks may be used repeatedly for emphasis, such as "........" or "!!!!!!!!!!". Question marks and exclamation marks are often used together in strings such as "?!?!?!?!" when one is angry while asking a question. Grammatical punctuation rules are also relaxed on the Internet. "E-mail" may simply be expressed as "email", and apostrophes can be dropped so that "John's book" becomes "johns book". Examples of capitalizations include "STOP IT", which can convey a stronger emotion of annoyance as opposed to "stop it". Bold, underline and italics are also used to indicate stress. Using a tilde ~ can be a symbol of sarcasm, like "~That was so funny ~". The period can also be used in a way to symbolize seriousness, or anger like "ok." Onomatopoeic or stylized spellings Onomatopoeic spellings have also become popularized on the Internet. One well-known example is "hahaha" to indicate laughter. Onomatopoeic spellings are very language-specific. For instance, in Spanish, laughter is spelled as "jajaja" instead because J is pronounced as (like English "h" in "hahaha") in Spanish. In Thai, it is "55555" because 5 in Thai ("ห้า") is pronounced . Keyboard-generated emoticons and smileys Emoticons are generally found in web forums, instant messengers, and online games. They are culture-specific and certain emoticons are only found in some languages but not in others. For example, the Japanese equivalent of emoticons, kaomoji (literally "face marks"), focus on the eyes instead of the mouth as in Western emoticons. They are also meant to be read right-side up, as in ^_^ as opposed to sideways, :3. Kaomoji are used to convey a wide range of statements about the tone of an accompanying message, such as seeking to soften a message that may otherwise be read as overly strict or formal.Sugimoto, T. and Levin, J. A. (2000), Multiple Literacies and Multimedia: A Comparison of Japanese and American Uses of the Internet, In C. Self & G. Hawisher (Eds), Global literacies and the World-wide Web, London: Routledge More recently than face emoticons, other emoticon symbols such as <3 (which is a sideways heart) have emerged.EmojisEmojis are relatively new to internet slang, and are much like emoticons in the way that they visually convey messages. However, while emoticons create an image using characters from the keyboard, emojis are a whole new level of communication and slang that portray messages in small cartoons. With culture comes different meanings for different emojis. For example, in 2016, Emojipedia and Prismoji took 571 peach emoji tweets and associated them with six different meanings varying from the fruit, feeling peachy, or sexual connotations. Leet <1p3[)14". It originated from computer hacking, but its use has been extended to online gaming as well. Leet is often used today to set up effective security passwords for different accounts. Leet is also used on social media platforms that employ content control algorithms to censor topics that may be controversial or inappropriate; using leet for potentially problematic terms (e.g. "k1ll"; "s3x"; "ant1s3m1t1sm") can avoid censorship. Novel syntactic features Unusual syntactic structures such as "I Can Has Cheezburger?" and "You are doing me a frighten" have been encouraged and spread by highly successful memes. Pluralization of "the internets" is another example, which has become common since it was used by George W. Bush during a televised event.
Views Many debates about how the use of slang on the Internet influences language outside of the digital sphere go on. Even though the direct causal relationship between the Internet and language has yet to be proven by any scientific research, Internet slang has invited split views on its influence on the standard of language use in non-computer-mediated communications.