MASARYK UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF EDUCATION Department of English Language and Literature Internet slang in the online community Bachelor Thesis Brno 2014 Supervised by: Mgr. Martina Malášková Written by: Marek Hlaváč Bibliographical Description HLAVÁČ, Marek. Internet slang in the online community : bachelor thesis. Brno : Masaryk University, Faculty of Education, Department of English Language and Literature, 2014. Supervisor Mgr. Martina Malášková. Anotace Bakalářská práce se zabývá analýzou jazykových prvků Internetového slangu v online komunitě. Cílem je vytvořit průvodce problematikou řeči mainstreamové Internetové společnosti a také dokázat, že problematika Internetového jazyka je něco, čím je nutno se v budoucnu zabývat. Jako corpus zkoumání práce využívá reálnou komunikaci především ze sociálního média 9gag.com, který svým průřezovým složením uživatelů představuje typického zástupce online komunity. Annotation This bachelor thesis deals with analysis of language features of Internet slang in the online community. The aim is to create a guide through the issue of a language in a mainstream community and to prove that the issue of the Internet speech is something which needs to be dealt with in future. As a corpus of research the thesis uses real communication situations mostly from a social media website 9gag.com which is, thanks to its wide compilation of users, a typical species of an online community. Klíčová slova Internet, Internetová lingvistika, Internetový slang, Online komunita, Kyber postor, Netizen, Meme, Spam, Flame, Spoof. Keywords Internet, Internet linguistics, Internet slang, Online community, Cyberspace, Netizen, Meme, Spam, Flame, Spoof. Declaration I hereby declare I have worked on this thesis on my own and that I have used only sources listed in the Bibliography. Brno, April 20, 2014 Marek Hlaváč Acknowledgement I would like to express my grateful thanks and recognition to my supervisor, Mgr. Martina Malášková who had the never-ending patience to see the thesis through with me. Content INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................................................................... 1 THEORETICAL PART ............................................................................................................................ 3 1. .................................................................................................. INTERNET LINGUISTICS ..................................................................................................................................................................... 3 1.1 PERSPECTIVES ................................................................................................................................ 4 1.1.1 SOCIOLINGUISTIC PERSPECTIVE ................................................................................................. 4 1.1.2 EDUCATIONAL PERSPECTIVE...................................................................................................... 5 1.1.3 STYLISTIC PERSPECTIVE ............................................................................................................ 6 1.2 SITUATIONS .................................................................................................................................... 8 1.1.1 WORLD WIDE WEB ................................................................................................................... 8 1.1.2 E-MAIL ...................................................................................................................................... 9 1.1.3 VIRTUAL WORLDS ................................................................................................................... 10 1.1.4 CHAT GROUPS .......................................................................................................................... 11 1.1.5 SOCIAL MEDIA WEBSITE/FORUM .............................................................................................. 11 1.3 TYPICAL TYPES OF INTERACTION .................................................................................................. 13 1.3.1 GRAMMAR NAZI PHENOMENON ............................................................................................... 14 1.3.2 SPOOFING ................................................................................................................................ 14 1.3.3 SPAMMING ............................................................................................................................... 15 1.3.4 FLAMING ................................................................................................................................. 16 1.3.5 TROLLING ................................................................................................................................ 17 2. ............................................................................................................ INTERNET SLANG ................................................................................................................................................................... 18 2.1 LETTER HOMOPHONES .................................................................................................................. 20 2.2 PUNCTUATION, CAPITALISATION AND OTHER SYMBOLS ............................................................... 20 2.3 SPELLING SHIFTING ...................................................................................................................... 21 2.4 EMOTICONS .................................................................................................................................. 22 2.5 L33T ............................................................................................................................................. 23 2.6 INTERNET MEMES ......................................................................................................................... 24 PRACTICAL PART ................................................................................................................................ 26 METHODS, MATERIAL AND GOALS ............................................................................................... 26 CORPUS ................................................................................................................................................... 26 CONCLUSION ........................................................................................................................................ 40 REFERENCES ......................................................................................................................................... 41 Introduction Probably as a majority of my generation I spend substantial amount of my time online. This requires basic knowledge of how the Internet works and awareness of the cyberspace as it is. For several years I have been part of the Global Internet Village1 and saw how communities emerged, developed and, in a way, became part of them. One of the goals of this thesis is to create a sort of a guide through the Internet slang of mainstream online communities which could help for further research on the topic of Netspeak. The Internet is the most contemporary technology of communication and is surrounded with controversy. The Net enables us to transmit information through great distances almost immediately. Only this reason would suffice to declare the Internet to be the king of communication but there are many other reasons why it rules over other technologies. As well as its predecessors, such as the printing press or the radio, the Internet has a great influence on language itself, shaping it and even changing some fundamental views on how language and communication should be defined. These are all reasons why “Netspeak” is a valid topic for research and analysis. In regard to my field study and to the fact that English is considered being a lingua franca of the Internet I will deal only with slang in English and no other languages, despite the fact that the Internet is overflowed with various languages and their varieties. This thesis deals with a particular topic within the Internet linguistics, the English slang with regard on its use in a representative sample of online communities. As the Internet emerged and the World Wide Web became its medium it was just a matter of time when people started to form interest groups that were connected with the Internet and now we have a plethora of them divided into various subcultures. Needless to say, this process of creating the global Net society resulted in plenty of situations not known to communication yet. This means changes in language used as well, at first within the communities and afterwards even outside of them amongst other users. The most suitable descriptive method for processes during information exchange on the internet is to think of the information as a unit which is replicated with each user and might be changed, that is it might mutate and become something else during the 1 http://projects.chass.utoronto.ca/mcluhan-studies/v1_iss2/1_2art2.htm 1 process. For this purpose theory of memetics will be devised to quite often during this work. The main aim of this thesis is to prove that the Internet slang as a sociolinguistic phenomenon must be thought of as a part of register variety of English and deserves a place amongst other such varieties and, as I have mentioned to create a guide for orientation though cyberspeak. To