- Jubilee offer: spend £10 or more on any product sold by Amazon.co.uk on or before June 6 and you can buy The Diamond Jubilee A Classical Celebration Album for just £2.50 Here's how (terms and conditions apply)
Language and the Internet
and over one million other books are available for Amazon Kindle .
Learn more
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||
 Trade In this Item for up to £7.25
Get an extra £5 when you trade in books worth £10 or more until June 30, 2012. Trade in Language and the Internet for an Amazon.co.uk gift card of up to £7.25, which you can then spend on millions of items across the site. Trade-in values may vary (terms apply). Find more products eligible for trade-in.
|
Special Offers and Product Promotions
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Author
Product Description
Review
"This book provides an important look at how the Internet has affected our use of language. To my knowledge, there are no other comparable books available on this subject. Issues of language are certainly treated in many other books about the Internet, but this one features linguistics as its main topic. The book will be an important contribution." Patricia Wallace, Ph.D., Director, Information Services and Instructional Technologies Center for Talented Youth, The John Hopkins University Author, The Psychology and the Internet
Product Description
In recent years, the Internet has come to dominate our lives. E-mail, instant messaging and chat are rapidly replacing conventional forms of correspondence, and the Web has become the first port of call for both information enquiry and leisure activity. How is this affecting language? There is a widespread view that as 'technospeak' comes to rule, standards will be lost. In this book, David Crystal argues the reverse: that the Internet has encouraged a dramatic expansion in the variety and creativity of language. Covering a range of Internet genres, including e-mail, chat, and the Web, this is a revealing account of how the Internet is radically changing the way we use language. This second edition has been thoroughly updated to account for more recent phenomena, with a brand new chapter on blogging and instant messaging. Engaging and accessible, it will continue to fascinate anyone who has ever used the Internet.
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
First Sentence
These quotations illustrate widely held anxieties about the effect of the Internet on language an languages. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index
These quotations illustrate widely held anxieties about the effect of the Internet on language an languages. Read the first page
Explore More
Concordance
Browse Sample PagesConcordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product)
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
10 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
This book explores how we use language in the internet. it begins with a general introduction, describing lingusitics in general and sociolinguistics in particular. It discusses the internet in general and four particular aspects - email, chatgroups, virtual worlds (in multiplayer games) and the web.
The author clearly knows sociolinguistics very well and it is worthwhile reading the book just for that. However, his knowledge of the internet is weaker and often he relies on secondhand information that he is not able to evaluate well. This shows up in some of the more extensive quotes, repeated without much critical evaluation. For example, he frequently quotes 'Wired Style', only once (I think) refers to the Jargon File (without even working out who esr is) and doesn't mention RFC 1855.
There is not much original research here. For example, the chapter on email is based mainly on the author's own email correspondence, which is bound to be atypical. It would have been much more interesting to see if different communities, for example sampled from mailing lists, really used different varieties of language.
In some places it would be hard to distinguish between the language used in the internet and the language used by social scientists to describe the internet, between 'trolling' or 'boxen' and 'computer mediated communication' or 'cyberculture'. In others the author seemed unaware of features of the internet. For example, he does not seem to be aware that users can control how web pages appear or list emails by thread. Occasionally he gets terms wrong.
This is not a book to buy if you wish to learn the language (or rather languages) of the internet, but it is a very readable introduction to sociolinguistics applied to technology with some very plausible conclusions about where and how the internet will affect our use of language.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
I have often referred to this book in my studies on computer-mediated communication; because it blends sociolinguistics with case studies (as one reviewer has pointed out, Crystal's own experience), it is useful for those interested in CMC and language use, and a quick look at the bibliography reveals further points of discussion and research. Major theorists, such as Grice (and his maxims of conversation) are mentioned, and even though Crystal says that maxims and conventions are in the process of being adapted and will likely continue to be adapted, it serves as a 'jumping-off point' for what the person's own interests of study are. I, for one, found the tables of spoken and written language criteria, as applied to several "Netspeak" media forms, quite elucidating.
I found this book reasonably approachable, and the examples given help 'bridge the gap' between those in communications or language studies and those who might only have a passing interest or knowledge and are looking for more information.
I found this book reasonably approachable, and the examples given help 'bridge the gap' between those in communications or language studies and those who might only have a passing interest or knowledge and are looking for more information.
4 of 18 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
The areas covered within this superbly authorthed book luckily appeared to match the criteria within my syllabus. The information was well presented with interesting diagrams and information which made it far more easier than other books to understand. Im am sure that this source of information could be credited towards my understanding of the course i was taking at the time.
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
|
|
Look for similar items by category
- Books > Computing & Internet > Digital Lifestyle > Online Shopping > Amazon
- Books > Computing & Internet > Software & Graphics
- Books > Reference > Language
- Books > Society, Politics & Philosophy > Social Sciences > Linguistics > Reference
- Books > Society, Politics & Philosophy > Social Sciences > Linguistics > Sociolinguistics
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
