Language; please donât die.
Death of a Language
âCMN m8 ur respzibl fr al diz. Dnt act lk yu knw nuttin abt it. ygm. but still lop yuâ
Forgive me, even my poor siri couldnât figure out what the heck this meant.
NETSPEAK, NETSPEAK, NETSPEAK. I know you have read the comment and if you are such a user of that type of language, please donât send me that shit.
As David Crystal suggested, language change is an inevitable process. The Internet is slowly changing the way we write and speak. Hence, netspeak is a language in itself that is used mainly online. It features the use of emotions, compounding, coinage, backformation and blending of words to create meaning. Most of this language is very informal, with the user often lacking face to face communication. Hence, computer mediated communication can become hyperpersonal.
So the main question arises, how is netspeak encouraging the death of a language?
Netspeak, which is quite similar to textspeak, is encouraging the death of a language because it promotes the use of nonstandard forms of language, such as slang. These are unique to particular social groups, leading to a great amount of audience segregation since not all understand different forms of slang. Also, young people have the freedom to challenge linguistic norms which is the standard form of language. They want to diverse by creating their own language (e.g. netspeak) by being informal TO exclusively appear as cool/gangsters. Not only that, statistics have shown that using netspeak has a negative impact on students academic writing, leading them to use bad grammar, poor punctuations and improper abbreviations. Students are the future of every human population, imagine what a country would look like with such leaders?
Just like the Jean Aitchison language metaphors, language is now slowly catching the infectious disease where young people are specially creating new words that are getting passed on easily due to computer mediated communication having lower transaction costs.YGM MY G. DUNNO?
Therefore, it is stabbing the standard language in the heart and encouraging non standard language. The pure form of language is slowly crumbling apart just like the crumbling castle view.
On the positive side, descriptivists such as John Henry have suggested that netspeak allows language to be more creative as a means of communication.It encourages phatic communication and helps the people to build interpersonal relationships. However, it is also important to note that  sometimes context collapse can happen when exchanging messages on group chats for different audiences at the same time.
Language is also a part of an individualâs identity, so people must be allowed to express themselves in the same way, right? In the same way, be prepared to get a big fat 0/100 on your exams and rejection in interviews for potential jobs unless youâre looking to do an unskilled job in the future from the way youâre using language BABES.










