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Keeping up with the times Lexical creativity in electronic communication PauIa L6pez Rua
In the last decades mobile phones and the World Wide Web have revolutionised communication, providing fresh evidence that language is a dynamic instrument which can evolve with the times and adjust to new contexts. The purpose of this chapter is to investigate the extent of that capability by examining a corpus of linguistic material used in electronic communication, from ready-made text messages (AFAIK) to lexical creations like WiFi or blog. The analysis shows that electronic communication is a fertile ground for new vocabulary, since it uses productive word-formation processes which already exist in the language (such as compounding, derivation, conversion, or different types of shortening) and contributes to the popularisation of new items which may eventually enter the lexicon (for example, to text: "to send a text message to"). As regards the reasons behind the use of the above mechanisms, .system-derived and user-derived motives are identified and discussed. The former refer to the need to speed up communication by saving time and space, and relate to the features and requirements of the message, the channel and the context. The latter combine ludic and sociolinguistic needs, and are in turn connected with the characteristics of the primary users of the system, in-groups that may be defined by age, occupation and interests.
1.
Introduction
Technology has opened up new channels of comrrlUnication which have become popular among young and old in record time. Having a mobile phone or a laptop is no longer the privilege of businessmen or scientists but simply a sign that one is keeping up with the times. The natural outcome of the universalisation of digital jewellery (high-tech handheld devices like pagers and cell phones) is that users approach electronic communication with different aims and degrees of expertise. Consequently, there are occasional users who benefit from the main asset of
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the new "medium"! (i.e. speed), although they do not change the code: in other words, their e-mails and SMS messages do not greatly differ from conventional letters or notes. Others (amateurs or average users) may modify the code slightly so as to adjust it to their needs, thus creating subcodes to be used by in-groups with the aim of saving time and space while creating or reinforcing bonds. Lastly, there are expert users (adepts and specialists) sharing computer-related interests or jobs, for instance programmers, technicians, people in e-business, designers and regular chatters. These users develop their own jargon, their main motive being exclusivity, since by means of the jargon they strengthen their bonds and exclude outsiders. . There are many previously existing lexical items whose "sense-spectra" (Cruse 1986: 71) are enriched with added senses to refer to new realities developed in the world of electronic communication. Some of those derived senses have spread into the general language: even someone who is new to the Internet or to computers in general knows the meaning of items like mouse, refresh or surf in the context of computers, and novices in mobile phone communication will have little difficulty in deciphering abbreviated formulas like txtme ASAP or RUOK? Besides, there is a great number of pre-existing shortened items (particularly items constructed from initials, clippings and abbreviations) which have been simply adopted by the electronic code. Along the same lines, average Internet users may be familiar with the computer-specific meanings of server, bug, cookie, bookmark, or hard copy; however, they may not be so well acquainted with the meaning of thread (a chain of postings on a topic) or flame (an insulting or controversial message sent bye-mail or posted on a newsgroup) unless they are subscribers to newsgroups or mailing lists. Likewise, they will probably be at a loss as to the meaning of hamster (tailless mouse), handle (on-line nickname), bit bucket (the place where lost e-mails and documents end up), skyscraper (an on-line ad which is vertically taller), or vanilla flavour (standard hardware or software), since those items belong to the jargons of more specialised users, and they will be unable to make sense of items belonging to the jargon of 'sub communities: for example people working for research laboratories of a certain company or university: thus double DECkers are married couples where bOtll partners work for DEC ('Digital Equipment Corporation), and to be hosed means to be down (Le. not operating) in the jargon of Unix programmers.
Computer networks are, according to Herring (2001 :614), a new "medium'; in between speech and writing but different from both. In this respect, see also Collot and Belmore (1996: 14) or Crystal (2001: 28). As used here, medium comprises all types of electronic devices that allow text-based exchanges. 1.
Lexical creativity in electronic communication
Linguistic specificity and geographical variation are other aspects which should be mentioned when discussing electronic communication. Although Internet exchanges have certain conventions and formulas which are respected across languages (the rules of netiquette), each language exhibits its own particularities, especially when it comes to shortening mechanisms. Therefore; as described in L6pez Rua (2005), English text mess aging favours initialisation and tends to abbreviate words by using letter and number homophones, whereas Spanish, a language with different phonotactic constraints and a tendency towards polysyllabism, often resorts to abbreviation by letter reduction (particularly consonant elision). Local varieties must also be taken into account: the distinction between British and American English or between American and Commonwealth English also extends into electronic channels. Thus, for example, American and British Hackish exhibit lexical differences: hamster is a tailless mouse, but in British hackish it is also any item of hardware made by Amstrad; similarly, the word proglet is only used by British programmers to refer to a short program written to meet an immediate but temporary need . . The aim of this chapter is to examine lexical creativity in text-based electronic communication via mobile phones and the Internet, since, as Crystal (2004: vii) points out, terms initially belonging to these fields "have begun to make their appearance in the language as a whole" (though usually as part of slang or informal language). One example is the verb click, Le. 'to press a key on a computer mouse': outside computing, this term is used as a noun meaning 'very short distance' (as in 'it is just a click away'). Although there is obviously more lexical innovation in the jargons of specific groups ofInternet users (hackers, web designers, computer scientists and technicians, programmers or people involved in e-commerce), it was felt that a thorough description of particular jargons would be both overly lengthy and impractical, as these are restricted codes with numerous terms which do not come into general use. The chapter thus offers a survey of common methods and sources of lexical creativity and illustrates them with examples taken from different jargons, particularly focussing on those items which have achieved mainstream currency (blog, adware, e-comm, etc.). The analysis of mobile phone communication via text messaging has been chosen as the starting point in the description of lexical creativity in electronic contexts for two reasons: first, because the code is less sophisticated, as it is fundamentally devised for informal exchanges on a small scale; second, because lexical innovation is far more restricted than in on-line communication, since it is basically a system of shorthand. Besides, it must be noted that the abbreviations and shortening mechanisms resorted to are also used on the Web, particularly in e-
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mails and different types of on-line chat (Internet Relay Chat or IRC, newsgroups, mailing lists, bulletin boards, etc.).
2.
Lokinln2Txtin: Devices and trends
Text mess aging - also called texting or p2p (person-to-person) messaging - is the activity of sending and receiving short electronic messages via handheld devices, basically cell phones but also pagers or PDAs ('Personal Digital Assistants', i.e. handheld portable computers). Text messages can 3J.so be exchanged on-line in real time by means of IM ('Instant Messaging'). Although SMS ('Short Message/ Messaging Service') was originally created to allow operators to inform their customers about the network, over the last few years it has become the main channel of communication for a whole generation of mobile phone users. Typing on a mobile keypad is convenient in many ways: it is fast, cheap and discreet, it can help people express things that they would not dare say face to face, and it can even contribute to the reinforcement of group bonds. All that is required is to stay within the limits of around 160 characters per message; for this reason words are multifariously abbreviated and combined with symbols intended to express feelings or tones, the so-called emoticons.
2.1
Shortening devices in text messaging
Since mobile phone texting is severely constrained by space requirements, shortening devices are the main sources of lexical innovation. However, not all shortened items can achieve the status of new words because very often they are just cOhvenient written abbreviations. In contrast with what happens in on-line communication, productivity at the level of major word-formation devices is quite limited. Only a few cases of affixation (for instance polytone}2 and compounding (jaceplate, handsfree, voice mailbox), together with occasional instances of conversion (as in to text meaning 'to send a text message'), seem to have entered the lexicon, but most of these refer to technical specifications and cell phone accessories. Following is a summary of the analysis of a corpus of abbreviated words, phrases and complete text messages in English, compiled from specialised books
2 . Following Quirk et al. (1985: 991) and Adams (2001: 41, 116), po/y- is regarded here as a "number prefix': although it could also be classified as a borderline case between the category of affixes and that of combining forms.
Lexical creativity in electronic communication
and articles, guidebooks, dictionaries and on-line glossaries (see References) and classified according to the shortening devices used. Out of a common core of abbreviated words and expressions in both mobile phone communication and the Internet, a selection was made so as to focus on those items most commonly used in the former,3 although in the case of initialised expressions there is a high degree of overlap between the two contexts. The Internet has undoubtedly furnished a number of shortened items used in texting (basically items built out of initials and combinations with letter and number homophones like AFAIK, BTW, RUOK?, F2F, or CU lBr, that is, 'as far as I know: 'by the way', 'are you OK?: 'face to face' and 'see you later') as well as conventions such as the avoidance of capital letters except for established items and for rules occasionally ~pplied. As Crystal (2001:229) points out, this overlap may partly be due to the fact that the users - a "generally youthful population" - form quite a homogeneous group. As regards the abbreviating methods used in mobile phone texting, the analysis shows that all the shortening mechanisms which are already established in the language are extensively used. This implies that, besides resorting to conventional abbreviations like hr (,hour'), fwd (,forward') or wk ('week'), conventional clippings such as hols (,holidays') or sec ('second'), and existing initialisms (i.e. expressions reduced to initials) like ASAP ('as soon as possible') or SWALK ('sealed with a loving kiss'), texting productively uses abbreviation, clipping and initialisation for the creation of new items. Some of them are rapidly attaining the status of accepted conventions judging by their frequency of occurrence in the sources consulted. A few examples of new but already popular items are abbreviations like pis ('please'), spk ('speak') or hv ('have'); clippings like cell (cellular phone) and handy (,handheld device, i.e. cell phone, actually a combination of clipping and suffixation); and initialisms like HAND ('have a nice day'), PAL ('parents are listening') or TTUL ('talk to you later'). Initialisation is by far the most productive of these devices, which is not surprising since English has always employed the reduction to initials and is in fact one of the languages (or rather the language) bearing the highest number of initialised expressions. The result of the process may be an acronym (an initialism read in accordance with the rules of orthoepy such as KISS: 'keep it simple, stupid'), an alphabetism (an initialism read letter by letter, like TTFN: 'ta ta for now'), or an abbreviation composed of initials and read by retrieving the original expression it replaces, for example AFAIK). In texting, the abbreviations which are not composed of initials often result from eliding certain mid-letters (usually vowels and double consonants).
3.
As the analysis was intended to focus on linguistic signs, emoticons were likewise ignored.,
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