Without a Traceroute

I saw this ad a few days ago in Ushuaia. Apparently there was a city council election there back in November (either that, or they’re starting pretty early for next year). Two things about it caught my eye. The first, is if you’re going appear in a photo on your political ads, you should try to look like a friendly, honest, guy. To achieve this effect, it helps if you’re not actively making the Shifty-Eyed Dog look in your photo.

The second thing I noticed was the overexuberant use of exclamation marks in the headline, which reads “Ahora sí!!!” (Now yes!!!). This is decidedly not standard Spanish exclamation point use (¡No!), nor is it really standard English usage. Of course, advertisements and signage have long adhered to their own standards for punctuation, everything from the grocer’s apostrophe to the humorously misplaced “quotation” marks used for emphasis. Nevertheless, I’m inclined to agree with this recent Guardian piece pointing to the Internet as the source of an exclamation point resurgence.

The Internet is changing the way people use language in all sorts of fascinating ways. Crucially, the Internet reasserts the primacy of the written word in communication. For most of the 20th century, written exchange had taken a backseat to other media: radio and television for public discourse; the telephone for private communication. The rise of the internet reversed that trend.

As a result, millions of people who probably would never have done much writing outside of mandatory school assignments are expressing their thoughts and ideas in text. It’s up for debate whether this is good thing or not, but it’s certainly a marked change from earlier generations. Never before in human history has such a large percentage of the population been literate (for varying degrees of the term), and actively using their literacy to create new content. And, somehow, the internet is a medium large enough to accommodate both the grammar pedants and YouTube commenters.

I’m sure it’s both an exciting and frustrating time to be a linguist. This may be the first time the emergence of a new argot is being self-documented in real time. It’s also the first time that a new dialect is emerging simultaneously worldwide, and almost-exclusively in written form. The development of pidgin and creole languages typically takes place in situations where diverse linguistic communities interact, and the internet probably qualifies on that front. However, historically this development has happened with spoken languages.

Somebody once told me that “The First Language of the Internet is bad English,” and this is still largely true, but the internet is increasingly inspiring linguistic changes in other languages as well. The combination of 321 million Chinese-speaking internet users and the PRC’s absurd, draconian censorship has given rise to intriguing homophonic formulations. In Spanish, I’ve noticed forum and chat users writing “k” in place of the word “qué” (what/that), which is especially interesting because in Spanish the letter “k” is named “kah”, so this use probably represents a cross-fertilization from English.

Many people are understandably dismayed by what they see as abysmal standards of language use on the internet. However, it’s worth noting that increasingly malleable notions of spelling and syntax actually mark English coming full-circle. Before about 1700 or so, the language hadn’t really been standardized, and everyone pretty much spelled and punctuated however they felt like it. It’s not like there wasn’t some good stuff written back then. Furthermore, I’m not too worried that standard usage is going to be bastardized into irrelevance. Whether you’re trying to get a job, or win an argument on the internet, there are still some times when proper English really helps.