University of Berne, Switzerland,
Department of English Literatures & Languages
Seminar Paper, completed 9/5/2004

How R U 2day? Features of Netspeak –
Acronyms, Rebus Techniques and Emoticons

by: Christian Moser

Table of contents

1. Introduction 3

2. Netspeak 4

3. Material 5

3.1 Note on the reproduction of data 5
3.2 ASL – The problem of speaker identity on the Internet 6

4. Analysis of the collected data 7

4.1 Acronyms 7
4.2 Rebus Technique 11
4.3 Emoticons 14

4.3.1 Smileys 14
4.3.2 Shorthand Expressions 15

5. Conclusion 16

6. References 17

6.1 Regular text references 18
6.2 Electronic references 18
6.3 Picture 18

7. Appendices

7.1 Acronyms 19
7.2 Chat Sessions 20

7.2.1 Yahoo Chat: Movies: Harry Potter 20
7.2.2 Yahoo Chat: Music: Hip Hop & Rap 22
7.2.3 Yahoo Chat: Family & Home: Parenting 24
7.2.4 Yahoo Chat: Small Business 26

1. Introduction

In the course of this paper I shall analyse abbreviations found in four chat sessions. My main hypothesis is that Internet users have adopted several ways of abbreviating in order to make their contributions more efficient. Furthermore, a great number of these abbreviations indicate, or are trying to render, the emotional state of the speaker and in doing so make the interpretation of an utterance easier. In addition, it appears that another reason for abbreviating is to compensate for a lack of information, such as tone and mood of a speaker. This deficit arises, possibly, from the lack of personal contact between the speakers and is characteristic of the use of abbreviations as used in English on the Internet. Taking a more general approach, Crystal included the computer mediated variant of English in his term “Netspeak”; firstly, in his Language and the Internet (Crystal 2001: 17) and, three years later, in The Language Revolution. (Crystal 2004: 65) I shall take a slightly closer look at the concept in section two.

Section three deals with two issues connected to the material I collected. Firstly, I comment in section 3.1 on how I reproduced the logged chat sessions and most importantly why I deleted certain contributions I identified as not being part of the ongoing conversation. Section 3.1 also contains a short description of the chats I used as the data for my analysis. The following subsection 3.2 deals with the problem of the anonymity of the Internet users and the resulting problems for research. Section four consists of the analysis of the collected data. I decided to deal only with abbreviations as they occur in written Internet communication, whereas I use written here in its literal meaning, i.e. in the sense of typed in via keyboard. I divided these abbreviations into three types, namely acronyms, rebus techniques, or phonetic spellings, and emoticons. These are discussed in the respective subsections. In addition to this, I divided the subsection on emoticons into two parts, discussing the absence of both smileys and shorthands. The last section presents my conclusions for this analysis of three features of Netspeak. Furthermore, I shall point out further possible directions for research.

2. Netspeak

When using a keyboard, messages are typed in and it seems obvious that it should be a form of written communication. In Herring’s words: What is interesting about CMC [Computer-mediated communication]? … The first issue concerns the language of CMC: it is typed, hence like writing, but exchanges are often rapid and informal, and hence more like spoken conversation. (Herring 1998: 3) Crystal (2001) takes this notion up and coined the term Netspeak, which he maintains and expands three years later by the following: [I]t still has no generally agreed on name. … [C]omputer-mediated communication and electronic communication are two which have been suggested – nor is there an accepted term for the kind of language it manifests (the term I used is Netspeak¹). (Crystal 2004: 64-65; the footnotes are not reproduced here) Furthermore, Crystal shows that it is a revolutionary new form of language, since it is unlike speech, yet, also unlike written language (2004: 69-80). Crystal and Herring’s observation that there were elements of spoken language in the, technically, written languages used on the Internet, have been questioned in earlier studies. The more sceptical researchers include Runkehl (1998: 63) who comments on the issue of this dichotomy as follows:

[A]ngesichts der vorliegenden Analysen [verwundert es] doch, dass in der Literatur der Bezug zur gesprochenen Sprache derart hoch eingeschätzt wird. … die Kommunikation ist in erster Linie … schriftsprachlich geprägt und weist in der Schriftsprache Besonderheiten auf die dem Cyberslang zugeordnet werden. (Runkehl 1998: 63) Despite Runkehl’s criticism, I shall follow Crystal with respect to the use of terminology in this paper. Crystal re-states his point in his recently published work The Language Revolution (2004) while also re-addressing the terminology problem: The Internet is providing us with a further alternative to the mediums (sic) through which human communication can take place… . (Crystal 2004: 64-65) I intend to show some of the features via my analysis of abbreviations in the following section. The origin of Crystal’s term can be found in the popular novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. George Orwell coined the term Newspeak, whose purpose is “to make all other modes of thought impossible” (Orwell 1987: 312). Although Crystal alludes to Orwell, the prescriptive notions of Newspeak cannot be found in Netspeak.

3. Material

3.1 Note on the reproduction of data

The chat sessions I logged are attached in Appendix B. The popular website http://www.yahoo.com served as the main platform for the collection of my data. Although Yahoo requires its users to sign up in order to be able to join these chatrooms, no restrictions are made and they are open to anyone. I chose three chatgroups from http://chat.yahoo.com. The first chat I logged can be found in the section dedicated to the discussion of movies and serves as a forum for the fans of the Harry Potter film series. The second chat is from the music section and there people subscribing to the genre of Hip Hop & Rap music can chat with each other. The third chat I recorded is from the Family & Home section, providing a chatroom for people interested in issues of Parenting. The fourth and last chat I logged is meant for people with an interest in Small Business affairs. I choose this variety of topics in order to get a broad set of speakers, with regards to age. My hypothesis was that the first two chatrooms would be preferred by younger Internet users, whereas the last two would feature more aged ‘chatters’. The problem involved with discerning the age of an Internet user, as well as other factors concerning the identity of him or her, is addressed in the following section.

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