ARE YOU WITH ME? HOW ONLINE CONVERSANTS MAKE L33T CONNECTIONS C. Anne Engert R yuo a l33t h4x0r? Can j00 pwn n00bs? sites, l33t has been used to help identify its “1|=\| 0u |{4N r34|) t|-|15t|-|3N\| 0u i5 t3|-| user communities in an environment with |_337” (Blashki 81). If the preceding puzzles unique linguistic needs. Remarkable the reader, I can understand. My first especially for its streamlined nature, online encounter with l33t—a shortened form of conversation strips communication of all its elite, alternately written 1337, leet, or leet physical properties—gesture, inflection, and speak—left me feeling much the same way facial expression—so that text must stand about this online linguistic phenomenon. I alone. Of course, communication by the old- wanted to know more. As a student of fashioned written letter also uses only text, English literature and a lover of language, but that form of exchange does not operate what I found sent shivers up my spine: an with the immediacy of online communication alternate alphabet with as many as a dozen where real time, turn-based conversations options for each standard letter; a wildly between two or more persons, some half a shifting substitution-cipher approach to world apart, take place regularly. spelling that mixes letters, numbers, and other Furthermore, where letter writing allows for keyboard characters; a new morphology more expansive expression, online (patterns of word formation) with its own conversation favors quick, concise response. unique word endings; a dizzying array of Internet communication channels such as acronyms for conversational use. I had the Twitter actually limit users to messages of impression that a whole new language was one hundred forty characters or fewer. In forming before my eyes, or rather behind my such an environment, l33t has become one back, for I could make little sense of this new available tool for satisfying that need as well and unfamiliar linguistic arena. I had been as several others. Although L33t-users do left behind on the information superhighway, employ this linguistic tool for a range of and I could not even read the signs! As I purposes—from password creation to word began to investigate further, I soon realized filter avoidance—my research centers on the that l33t, while generally not as difficult to ways that certain Internet communities use decipher as I had initially feared, presents a l33t to determine in-group and out-group fascinating and rapidly evolving status and to strengthen social connections, all sociolinguistic development in certain online within the context of written language. These communities. functions are under ongoing continual evolution, even as l33t itself changes in From l33t‟s origins in hacker and gamer response to the needs and demands of Internet communities to its present-day use in online culture. discussion forums and social networking I am focusing primarily upon two l33t rapidly invading the offline world as well. using communities: gamernode.com, a That means, as they say in l33t, „irl‟—in real gamer‟s discussion forum, and digg.com, a life. L33t may now be found in a variety of social networking site, as well as including a non-Internet media as well as online. The limited number of examples from other l33t word “pwned” was prominently featured sources. I chose gamernode.com because its in a print ad for the University of Advancing user base participates heavily in the gaming Technology that appeared in the October community, and they frequently use l33t in 2008 issue of PC Gamer. The NBC show their forum posts. As part of my Numb3rs uses l33t spelling in its title, and the investigation, I read archived threads show Kidnapped recently featured an episode extensively and researched posters‟ self- that flashed a screenshot of a l33t email, generated forum biographies. I chose followed by a brief explanation of l33ts‟s digg.com as one of my primary locations for origins as part of the plot. Automobile observing l33t for similar reasons—the users owners are buying vanity license plates often include l33t expressions in their posts, printed with l33t meanings. A l33t word, although l33t is by no means dominant on “W00t!” has been accepted into Webster‟s either website. Rather, l33t augments the canon for its dictionary. Recently, even TV posters‟ usual English communication in commentators can occasionally be heard to ways that I will argue are employed to include in their news analysis words and enhance their sense of community. I spent phrases that have become part of the l33t many hours reading and scouring both these vocabulary. sites for examples of l33t usage that illustrate my thesis. Actually, such examples are not The study of l33t and its communities difficult to find. I selected conversations for falls under the discipline of sociolinguistics: analysis based upon their clear use of l33t as the study of language in its social context. in-group/out-group status identifier or as Sociolinguists recognize that language is not community affirmation expressions. “a simple, single code” but a deeply “variable phenomenon, and that this variability may The use of l33t has generally been the have as much to do with society as with purview of young, educated males who are at language” (Trudgill 32). Researchers in least sufficiently affluent to have access to the sociolinguistics concern themselves with the necessary electronic hardware that gaming, ways in which language reflects users‟ hacking, and being online require. The online physical environments, social environments, linguistic quirks and creations of hackers and and values, recognizing that changes in any of gamers have perhaps been considered by the these factors may produce “corresponding academic community as a passing fad or a linguistic change” (27-9). L33t is a linguistic minor Internet phenomenon of little change that has grown in the rich soil of an significance. L33t may have been fostered in altered physical and social milieu—the marginalized communities, but the Internet computer-mediated environment—and in this provides a rapid-growth medium for such context, l33t performs many of the same social developments. L33t has already functions that language always performs. transcended its beginnings in hacker and gamer culture and has filtered out into the At its most fundamental, the function of Internet community at large—sometimes to language is to express the thoughts of be embraced and sometimes disdained. The speakers. Most languages have a range of use of l33t has spread worldwide to be used in styles for expression that vary in formality. variation by diverse language groups, and it is At the outer end of the scale in informality is the linguistic style termed slang (Trudgill 83). and cues about themselves through their Slang develops, in part, as a way for speakers linguistic choices, and to examine l33t users‟ to stretch the capacity of their language to attitudes toward its use. Blashki observes that accommodate their thoughts. Such change is among the l33t-using members of the an “unstoppable given in linguistics” (Pinker university discussion board which was the 149). Slangs commonly evolve among those focus of her study, “certain „rules,‟ or who “consider themselves members of a boundaries, were imposed (although select or separate group. […] [The slang] tests unwittingly) by the group to determine correct who belongs to the group and who is an usage and to monitor „trolling‟ (abuse)” (84). intruder, [and is] fully intelligible only to only Many l33t users claim that l33t is a joke, but the initiated.” According to Peter Farb, these their use of it and their reactions to it belie groups often have extremely severe standards that assertion. Rather, l33t seems to be quite for the use of such slang—more than “any serious linguistic business. schoolmarm or grammarian” (78). In describing the study of “special parlances,” L33t has its beginnings among hacker classical languages, “craft jargons, secret communities during the early days of the argots, and the like,” John Gumperz observes Internet. The hacker group Cult of the Dead that these linguistic constructions may result Cow is widely credited with originating the from “seemingly intentional processes of term l33t or 1337. Their Windows 95/98 distortion. He cites the examples of tribal hacking program Back Orifice preferred to secret languages and the child‟s play language access systems through UDP 31337. These Pig Latin, which both may involve “phonetic numbers correspond to the letters e-l-e-e-t, or and grammatical elements […] systematically leet/l33t/1337. The use of certain l33t reordered. Similarly, Gumperz explains that terminology and the substitution cipher, “thieves‟ argots, the slang of youth gangs, however, predate these late 1990s events. [and others], obtain similar results by The 1988 hacker e-zine Phrack references the assigning special meanings to common nouns, even earlier use of “ELITE” as a password. verbs, and adjectives” (117). At a somewhat For a self-proclaimed “1337 hax0r,” the more complex level, the restricted use of appellation connoted mastery of the arcane classical languages such as Latin and Sanskrit world of computer code and the ability to use can be noted. Historically used by scribes and the complex systems of electronic technology clerics to record legal, historical, and with skill and finesse. By 1997, hacker theological documents, these languages have newsletters were featuring extensive use of served a comparable purpose in maintaining a alphanumeric substitution and other display restrictive “social status . where their use is alterations in their text: limited to a relatively small [group of] elites” We ArE tHe HaX0R bRoThErZ, AnD (117). SiNcE aLl oF yOo aRe LaYmOrS aNd WeRe k-RaD HaX0Rz wE dEcIdEd To From creative informality to playful TeAcH yOu Of OuR k-RaD wAyZ.