Conversations in social networking groups change as the rapport between people in these groups becomes enhanced and as a result users become savvy with each other. Just as an engineer would not understand a doctor and vice versa, if they started to use their own technical language, online users start their own language to create secret groups, be inventive, try to be cool, or hide the meaning of their message from others. For example, an overbearing parent may be wary of their child and try to check up on what they are talking about on the internet. If that parent was to discover their child’s chat conversation they would find it hard to unravel some of the meaning if it is littered with bizarre wording, incomplete sentences, and acronyms such as  ‘PAW’ for ‘parents are watching’.

Moreover, online secrecy has no bounds, instead of saying the actual word like ‘drugs’, the online user can use other words as in this case ‘OG’ being orange juice in the phrase ‘U hv OG’ literally translated as ‘Do you have drugs?’. The effect is a new global language that on the surface is hard to fathom but actually has meaning and ingenuity. The effect is that teenagers can easily make up new words when they need or want without a lengthy, explicit explanation on the internet or not.

Furthermore, the fast pace of information sent and received around the world, and the instant gratification for users telling their friends of their interesting ongoing action highlights the change and creation of new language, be it for the best or not, within online communication. For example, if a new networking user was to receive a message telling them that the sender was ‘Getting MWI’ they would be flummoxed to get to the meaning. The receiver would already notice that the sender has broken many rules of English. There is no subject so we do not who is doing the action. We have to presume it is the sender. The grammar is wrong. The sender uses the acronym MWI which is certainly not easily recognized and where is the punctuation? All these points may be well and good for the grammarians to argue about but a look at the point the sender is trying to make has to be recognized. The sentence, if we can call it that, actually deciphers as ‘I am getting mad with it’ which although is now presented in a more rule-based proper manner still can be misunderstood. “Getting mad with it’ actually means getting drunk.  In all regards, the message starts to belong to a form of an idiom that highlights its ambiguous meaning. The point here is the meaning in the sender’s message which is the only factor they want to portray. In the sender’s mind, they have actually produced a coherent, away from the norm, message albeit a form of stripped-down English.

Messages and instant messaging are not completely dissected English. In many cases, these senders’ sentences and vocabulary allows them to get their point across in a message in as short a way as possible. The message albeit short is just an introduction to more information. The sender and receiver could well be meeting later and the sender will continue the story in more detail. For example, a user’s daily status message may read ‘.. understands that hard work pays off in future but Laziness pays off now !’.  The readers of this, in reality, have not got a clue what this incomplete sentence means and has to imagine what might be happening to their friend but usually it is not the start of a long dialogue on the internet, it shows that talk is rooted in face to face conversation and these online sentences are just sound bites. It shows that instant messaging in some respects does not affect general language use.

In all the movement away from existing parameters of explaining clearly in complete sentences, an observer can recognize there is a transformation of English within internet social networking while one matter of debate is the effect it is having general language use. It has to be stated that there is clear distinction between the virtual internet world and the real world outside. For example, any online user may seem a wise and cool person on the internet but in the real world, this language can make them look silly and continually misunderstood. This illustrates on-line chatting or messaging can seem like two worlds.  The detachability of internet conversing has certainly changed conditions of impersonal contact. While people may spend many hours on the internet, they still have to be in contact with other people face to face in a myriad of social settings and figure out what the other person, close friend or not, is saying.  This is where it could be argued that the distinction between the internet and school or someone’s job can be seen.  So, it could be said informal English that is said online only really works within those constraints or if outside of that within close-knit groups.

Moreover, like-minded groups are not just on the internet. For example, a skateboarder may say I did a ‘bitchslap’ in his group where all understand but would be lost on his mother. ‘Bitchslap’ actually means ‘touching the front wheel of the skateboard with your hand’, but within other circles, it can mean ‘to open handedly hit someone’. So, it is recognized that the internet is not the only place where people change and develop language.  Even so, online users still can take words from the internet such as ‘WTF’ or ‘what the f##k’ and use them in the outside world. The phrase would be understandable in a bar or at school but to just say ‘WTF’ may well seem strange and if ‘WFT’ is used it can cover the rudeness of the full word such as ‘WTF, mum!’.  By the same token, certain acronyms have entered general use. LOL, OMG and WTF have spread from written to the spoken word.  This being said you would more than likely hear a teenager commenting with acronyms on someone’s clothes or haircut than a car crash.

Moreover, the excess of instant messaging and chat talk, problems have become prominent in formal written forms where acronyms and shortened words are being used as the norm as well as other mistakes in assignments. The informal language used in these assignments is preferred where words like ‘dat’ is used instead of ‘that’ and ‘cuz’ instead of ‘because’. There are also punctuation, capitalization and apostrophe errors. The effect of too much internet time is that some of these children do not know the difference which will make it more difficult for educators to change.

In an ever-changing world that includes the changing uses of English, this essay has highlighted how internet language and its use can have an effect on normal speech and writing. It has also been argued that the internet is only a small part of people’s lives and language formality still exists outside of social networking. It has been recognized that people have to communicate in normal grammatical language in real life although there are many specific groups of people that create their own vocabulary. It was also seen that many people nowadays can have virtual relationships on many social networking sites. Most of this talk is of an informal nature. This essay has shown that this raises the level of interest into making new kinds of language and meaning. In addition, it was acknowledged that new words are forever creeping into the English language. The moral of this essay is that if someone starts using social networking language in general use, they should take a step back and contemplate if they are spending too much time logged on.

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