Internet slang

Internet slang is a non-standard or unofficial form of language used by people on the Internet to communicate to one another. A popular example of Internet slang is lol, meaning "laugh out loud". Since Internet slang is constantly changing, it is difficult to provide a standardized definition. 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. Many people also use Internet slang 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. However, while Internet slang shortcuts save time for the writer, they 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 Many of the expectations and practices which we associate with spoken and written language are no longer applicable.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 identification 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, synchronous 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 is determined by the preassigned characters on a keyboard, and receptive linguistic capacity 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. Audience design occurs in online platforms, and therefore online communities can develop their own sociolects, or shared linguistic norms.
Within the language of Internet slang, there is still an element of prescriptivism, as seen in style guides, for example Wired Style, which are specifically aimed at usage on the Internet. Even so, few users consciously heed these prescriptive recommendations on CMC, but rather adapt their styles based on what they encounter online. 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	Included within this group are abbreviations and acronyms. An abbreviation is a shortening of a word, for example "CU" or "CYA" for "see you ". 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".
Rebuses	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. 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.
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 in Spanish. In Thai, it is "55555" because 5 in Thai 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, 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. More recently than face emoticons, other emoticon symbols such as <3 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 password 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 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.
Prescriptivists tend to have the widespread belief that the Internet has a negative influence on the future of language, and that it could lead to a degradation of standard. Some would even attribute any decline of standard formal English to the increase in usage of electronic communication. It has also been suggested that the linguistic differences between Standard English and CMC can have implications for literacy education. This is illustrated by the widely reported example of a school essay submitted by a Scottish teenager, which contained many abbreviations and acronyms likened to SMS language. There was great condemnation of this style by the mass media as well as educationists, who expressed that this showed diminishing literacy or linguistic abilities.
On the other hand, descriptivists have counter-argued that the Internet allows better expressions of a language. Rather than established linguistic conventions, linguistic choices sometimes reflect personal taste. It has also been suggested that as opposed to intentionally flouting language conventions, Internet slang is a result of a lack of motivation to monitor speech online. Hale and Scanlon describe language in emails as being derived from "writing the way people talk", and that there is no need to insist on 'Standard' English. English users, in particular, have an extensive tradition of etiquette guides, instead of traditional prescriptive treatises, that offer pointers on linguistic appropriateness. Using and spreading Internet slang also adds onto the cultural currency of a language. It is important to the speakers of the language due to the foundation it provides for identifying within a group, and also for defining a person's individual linguistic and communicative competence. The result is a specialized subculture based on its use of slang.
In the workspace, internet slang and abbreviation is becoming more acceptable. People are resonating with each other when they see a quickly jotted down message with lots of contractions and slang added in. As long as 'Sent from my iPhone' appears at the bottom of an email, most people are willing to look the other way when it comes to formal grammar.
In American schools, internet slang has started to become more common in a real-life setting. The current '6-7' trend has spread to most middle schools in America, now being spoken in person. '6-7,' slang initially derived from the internet, has now made its way into the classroom, and people have conflicting views on it. The slang itself does not have much meaning, leaving some teachers confused and angry, while others are just happy that their students are smiling and having fun. Taylor Jones, a linguist and social scientist, attempted to explain what people thought of its lack of meaning: “I think that’s part of what upsets people about it, and I think that’s part of what people like about it.”
Internet slang has borrowed heavily from African-American Vernacular English, which is often seen as an example of cultural appropriation.
In scholarly research, attention has been drawn to the effect of the use of Internet slang in ethnography, and more importantly to how conversational relationships online change structurally because slang is used.
In German, there is already considerable controversy regarding the use of anglicisms outside of CMC. This situation is even more problematic within CMC, since the jargon of the medium is dominated by English terms. An extreme example of an anti-anglicisms perspective can be observed from the chatroom rules of a Christian site, which bans all anglicisms, and also translates even fundamental terms into German equivalents.