DISSERTATION FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS IN LINGUISTICS (BY RESEARCH) STEPHEN TURTON (454123) TITLE Trufax about Discussion Group Netspeak: An Historical Analysis of Semantic Change in the English Slang of Newsgroups and Web Forums SUPERVISOR Dr Andrew Van der Spuy Stephen Turton (454123) LING7010 Page i DECLARATION I, Stephen Turton, state that to the best of my knowledge and belief this dissertation contains no material previously published by any other person except where due acknowledgement has been made. This thesis contains no material which has been accepted for the award of any other degree or diploma in any university. This is my own unaided work. Signed: Date: 27 October 2014 Stephen Turton (454123) LING7010 Page ii A NOTE OF THANKS I should like to thank the Department of Linguistics at the University of the Witwatersrand for the kindness and generosity they have shown to me over the last five years. In particular I wish to thank my supervisor, Dr Andrew Van der Spuy, for the enthusiasm, encouragement, and insight he offered in guiding my research from an inkling of an idea to the completed dissertation. Stephen Turton (454123) LING7010 Page 1 TABLE OF CONTENTS 1 Introduction p. 4 1.1 A Note on the Title p. 4 1.2 Preliminary Remarks p. 4 1.3 Overview p. 6 1.4 Regarding the Presentation of Data p. 7 2 Background p. 8 2.1 Semantic Change p. 8 2.2 Slang p. 8 2.3 Internet Discussion Groups p. 13 3 Literature Review p. 17 4 Methodology p. 21 5 Theoretical Framework p. 24 5.1 Cognitive Semantics p. 24 5.2 Traditional Classifications p. 25 5.3 Categorization of the Analyses p. 27 6 Slang Derived from Offline English p. 29 6.1 Simple Semantic Change p. 30 6.1.1 Troll p. 30 6.1.2 Flame p. 32 6.1.3 Lurk p. 34 6.1.4 Hijack p. 35 6.1.5 Fandom p. 36 6.1.6 Fanboy and Fangirl p. 38 6.2 Compounds p. 40 6.2.1 Headcanon p. 40 6.2.2 Fanwank p. 41 6.2.3 Banhammer p. 43 6.2.4 Permaban p. 45 6.2.5 Postwhore p. 44 6.2.6 Copypasta p. 46 6.2.7 Fest p. 49 6.2.8 Interjectional Compounds p. 51 Stephen Turton (454123) LING7010 Page 2 6.2.8.1 Eyeroll p. 51 6.2.8.2 Facepalm p. 52 6.2.8.3 Headdesk p. 53 6.3 Blends p. 54 6.3.1 Interwebs p. 55 6.3.2 Fanon p. 55 6.3.3 Fangasm p. 56 6.4 Deliberate Misspellings p. 57 6.4.1 Leet p. 59 6.4.2 Krad p. 61 6.4.3 N00b p. 62 6.4.4 Pir8 p. 64 6.4.5 Warez p. 65 6.4.6 N00dz p. 66 6.4.7 Hax and Haxor p. 67 6.5 Acronyms p. 70 6.5.1 LOL p. 70 6.5.2 ROFL p. 72 6.5.3 IMHO p. 73 7 Slang Derived from Trademarks p. 75 7.1 Trufax p. 75 7.2 Spam p. 77 7.3 Smurf p. 79 7.4 Nerf p. 81 7.5 Twink p. 82 8 Onomatopoeic Slang p. 86 8.1 Woot p. 86 8.2 Fap p. 88 8.3 Squee p. 89 9 Slang Derived from the Online Gaming Community p. 91 9.1 Necro p. 93 9.2 Ninja p. 95 9.3 Gank p. 97 9.4 Camp p. 100 Stephen Turton (454123) LING7010 Page 3 9.5 Fail p. 101 9.6 Epic p. 103 9.7 Griefer p. 105 10 Conclusion p. 107 10.1 Statistical Analysis of Semantic Patterns p. 107 10.2 Final Comments p. 111 References p. 113 Appendix: Findings of Semantic Patterns p. 119 Stephen Turton (454123) LING7010 Page 4 1 INTRODUCTION 1.1 A Note on the Title The title of this dissertation is ‘Trufax about Discussion Group Netspeak: An Historical Analysis of Semantic Change in the English Slang of Newsgroups and Web Forums’. Trufax is an example of the very slang here under analysis; it means, in this case, ‘accurate information’, and is a respelling of the pleonastic phrase true facts, while also punning on the name of a now-outdated brand of fax server software, TruFax. (A full account of the word’s history is given in §7.1.) Netspeak is, of course, a compound of net, clipped from Internet, and speak, apparently taking its cue from Orwell’s Newspeak (Orwell, 1949); it signifies the language of the Internet. It has been asserted (Williams, 2002: 278) that the term was coined by David Crystal, who uses it in his book Language and the Internet (2001), though he himself makes no claim to having invented it. In fact, the term Netspeak has existed on the Internet since at least 1983, when it was used (though uncapitalized) in the newsgroup net.arch, where a user jocularly posted, ‘How do you say in netspeak? “:-)”’ in the manner of a stereotypical second-language speaker asking, ‘How do you say in English?’ Netspeak is much broader than the scope of my research, as it includes the language of private e-mails, mailing lists, online games, instant messengers, video- and image-sharing websites, chat rooms, blogs, and social networking websites. However, I have chosen to limit my study to Internet discussion groups—namely, newsgroups and web forums—for reasons that will be expounded upon below. 1.2 Preliminary Remarks What follows in these pages is an examination of the ways in which English writers in Internet discussion groups draw upon techniques of semantic change to create slang words. My hypothesis as I approach my research is that the techniques involved will be similar to those found underpinning semantic change in other, offline varieties of the English language, although the precise constraints of the online platform—its basis in text rather than speech and gesture—will also lead to some differences in how the semantic change is carried out. This gave rise to a number of questions, which I have attempted to answer in my study. Firstly, how (if at all) does semantic change in the English slang of Internet discussion groups differ from semantic change in Standard English? Secondly, how (if at all) does the semantic change in discussion group slang differ from semantic change in the offline varieties of Stephen Turton (454123) LING7010 Page 5 English slang? Finally, are the techniques through which this semantic change occurs explainable within the established theoretical frameworks of semantic change? As I have said, discussion groups are only one of the many media through which people interact on the Internet; some of the other media share certain slang terms with discussion groups, and each of them has a myriad of slang terms of its own. However, the whole range of Internet slang cannot be analysed, or even touched on superficially, within the confines of a single dissertation—as Crystal (2001: 67) points out, ‘The rate at which [Internet users] have been coining new terms and introducing playful variations into established ones has no parallel in contemporary language use.’ Therefore, I chose to focus my examination only on the slang of Internet discussion groups for several reasons. Firstly, newsgroups and web forums have been in existence longer than blogs, video- and image-sharing websites, and social networking websites, and their slang has thus had longer to develop. Secondly, the messages posted to discussion groups are archived, unlike those of online games and chat rooms. Thirdly, their archives are publically available, unlike those of private emails, mailing lists and instant messengers. Yet putting aside the precise focus of the research, a larger question remains: Why research Internet slang at all? The answer should be obvious. As of 2013, the Internet had approximately 2.7 billion individual users (International Telecommunications Union, 2013), and the figure shows no signs of declining. Current statistics of the language makeup of the Internet are not so readily available, but it was estimated in 2011 that a quarter of the Internet’s users were English speakers, putting English ahead of every other language (though Mandarin is in the process of surpassing it) (Internet World Stats, 2011). The Internet is one of the largest media of English communication in contemporary times, and, as Crystal (2001: 5) observes, ‘The linguistic consequences of evolving a medium in which the whole world participates—at least in principle, once their countries’ infrastructure and internal economy allow them to gain access—are… bound to be far-reaching.’ As the medium evolves, so too does its language, and commentators have become increasingly aware of the role of Internet slang and jargon in everyday English. In the past decade, five of the American Dialect Society’s ten Words of the Year have been Internet-related: tweet (‘to post a message on the social networking website Twitter’), hashtag (‘to place the symbol # before a word’), because used before a noun or adjective, app (‘an application on a smartphone’, many of which rely on Internet connections), and occupy (the name of a political movement organized Stephen Turton (454123) LING7010 Page 6 and propagated over social networking websites). The Global Language Monitor’s Top Word of 2013 was 404 (‘an error code displayed when one has tried to access a webpage that cannot be found’), while the Oxford Dictionaries’ was selfie (‘a photograph one takes of oneself’). It is clear that a great deal of interest has been generated around Netspeak. However, the linguistic study of it is still relatively recent.