Analysis Of Internet Jargon

Essay by khoaly000 February 2006

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Approximately 30 million people world-wide use the Internet and online

services daily. The Net is growing exponentially in all areas, and a

rapidly increasing number of people are finding themselves working and

playing on the Internet. The people on the Net are not all rocket

scientists and computer programmers; they're graphic designers, teachers,

students, artists, musicians, feminists, Rush Limbaugh-fans, and your next

door neighbors. What these diverse groups of people have in common is their

language. The Net community exists and thrives because of effective written

communication, as on the net all you have available to express yourself are

typewritten words. If you cannot express yourself well in written language,

you either learn more effective ways of communicating, or get lost in the


"Netspeak" is evolving on a national and international level. The

technological vocabulary once used only by computer programmers and elite

computer manipulators called "Hackers," has spread to all users of computer

networks. The language is currently spoken by people on the Internet, and

is rapidly spilling over into advertising and business. The words "online,"

"network," and "surf the net" are occuring more and more frequently in our

newspapers and on television. If you're like most Americans, you're feeling

bombarded by Netspeak. Television advertisers, newspapers, and

international businesses have jumped on the "Information Superhighway"

bandwagon, making the Net more accessible to large numbers of not-entirely-

technically-oriented people. As a result, technological vocabulary is

entering into non-technological communication. For example, even the

archaic UNIX command "grep," (an acronym meaning Get REpeated Pattern) is

becoming more widely accepted as a synonym of "search" in everyday


The argument rages as to whether Netspeak is merely slang, or a jargon

of itself. The language is emerging based loosely upon

telecommunications vocabulary and computer jargons, with new derivations...