AE-Extra March 2004

Internet Chat Language: A Contact Zone in the Composition Classroom

Seema Mukhi
M.A. candidate: Southern Illinois University--Edwardsville
M.F.A. candidate: University of Missouri--St. Louis
Computer-Aided Learning Specialist: St. Louis Community College--Forest Park
E-mail: seemamukhi@hotmail.com

"sup"
"nm. u?"
"jest chillen"
"me 2… im lazy as hell!!!... neway gtg…work 2 do J"
"kewl ttyl"
"l8r"

This is a typical quick greeting and conversation among college freshmen who have been instant messaging, or "IMing," their friends for four or more years. Instant messaging has become an integral means of communication between high school and college students over the last few years, and instant message software has a language, set of rules, and etiquette of its own. As writing teachers, we tell our students that writing is important because it is a tool for communication and expression, but we fail to recognize that they already successfully communicate through writing. These students communicate more through writing, using instant messenger software and Internet chatting, than they communicate in any other way. High school and college students use instant messaging to make plans, to keep their friends informed about where they are, to set up dates and talk to members of the opposite sex, to have serious political, social, or personal discussions, to express themselves and their opinions, and to keep in touch with old friends. Why, then, do we assume that students do not recognize the value of written communication?

Mary Louise Pratt, in "Arts of the Contact Zone," suggests that in the traditional classroom, "whatever students do other than what the teacher specifies is invisible or anomalous to the analysis," which is especially true in the composition classroom (9). Teachers invalidate Internet chat as a form of written communication and instead conceive of it as something "non-standard" and subversive that has no place in the writing classroom. Consequently, students often do not recognize Internet communication as writing--writing is supposed to be obscure and academic (five-paragraph essays, forced journal entries, and responses to prompts created by someone other than themselves). Students who say in the writing classroom, "I hate writing," often go home or to their dorm rooms and chat online for hours.

Instead of "[feeling] most successful when [we] have eliminated [this non-standard language] and unified the social world," we should recognize this language in our classrooms to help make writing dynamic and relevant for students (Pratt 10). Internet chat language is a distinct written dialect of English, and it functions as a contact zone, an electronic "social [space] where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other" (Pratt 2). It is collaborative, develops itself in an autoethnographic way, uses and parodies the language of standard English, "[reads] very differently to people in different positions in the contact zone," and consciously and cleverly denounces the standard English of the classroom (Pratt 6-7). Writing teachers can use and discuss this contact zone in the classroom to foster a meta-awareness in students of how they write, why they write, and why standard English is still important to them. In this paper, I will examine the features of Internet chat language and define it as a distinct dialect, argue that this dialect serves as a contact zone that should not be ignored in the classroom, and suggest approaches the English teacher might take to recognize and value this dialect.

Internet Chat Language: Not Just "Bad English"

The controversy over Internet chat language, an evolving and unrecognized written dialect, is reminiscent of the Ebonics controversy. Both are heavily debated in the popular media and hold implications about what is recognized in the classroom. However, especially over the last decade, Ebonics has caused a stir in the popular media and in formal scholarship, whereas Internet chat language is just beginning its controversy. Various news articles from newspapers and magazines all over the United States have addressed this issue. Many papers cite English teachers complaining about students' bad grammar, lack of proper punctuation, and inability to communicate in writing, and these articles often blame the Internet.

Despite the raging debate in the news media, however, there is very little formal scholarship on the Internet language phenomenon addressing its validity as a distinct and respectable dialect. We scholars do not yet recognize it, but students who have grown up with the Internet will have seen and used more Internet language than Standard English by the time they reach high school. They will have read more from the Internet than from books, because the Internet serves social purposes in addition to being entertaining and informational.

Neil Randall, in "Lingo Online: The Language of the Keyboard Generation," suggests that the speed and urgency of Internet language gives it its distinct features, which "simulate speech" instead of taking on the characteristics of a formal written language (2). Although this urgency of communication is what drives the development of this language, the language also reveals a certain irreverence for standard English. For example, certain words have alternative spellings that do not necessarily save the writer from typing more characters and have no reason for the abbreviation--the alternative spelling itself often has as many or nearly as many characters as the original word. In the imagined conversation above, the word "kewl" is an example. "Cool" would actually be easier to type than "kewl" because of the repetition of o's. "Wuz" is slightly more difficult to type than "was" because of the use of the letter "z," a letter much more uncommon than "s." However, alternative spellings such as "wuz" (for was), "cuz" (for because), and "wazzup" (for what's up?) use the letter "z" as an alternative to "s" to distinguish themselves from the original word in their abbreviation.

Another notable feature of Internet "lingo" is numbers within words. Any word that has a syllable which sounds like a number can be abbreviated. In the above conversation, "l8r," a very common abbreviation of "later," works in this way. One might use "sum1" to say "someone," or "2" for "to" or "too." "2" and "4" are common as complete words, but more interesting are the hybrid words of letters and numbers like the above "l8r" and "sum1." A person can turn any word or name with a numeric syllable into a hybrid, regardless of how common or simple the word is. "2nite," "h8r" (hater), and "un4given," for example, are still valid in Internet chat language.

Just as they use numbers within words, Internet chatters also abbreviate with letters within words. If ever there is a syllable that sounds like a letter, the letter alone will suffice. Simpler letter abbreviations include "u," "r," "y," and "c." As with numeric abbreviations, one can break apart a complicated word and use the letters within it; "neway" and "neways" are often-used as alternative spellings for "anyway" or "anyways." The N-E sounds like "any," so even though the typist is only saving himself or herself one keystroke, the abbreviation stands. With short words that sound like individual letters, one might combine a few words into one, like "oic" for "oh, I see." Finally, using letters within words is in no way mutually exclusive to any of the other alternative spellings--"ne1" uses both interior letter abbreviations and numeric abbreviations.

Of course, some of the abbreviations that run rampant in Internet chat language are simple acronyms. These acronyms, as well as the more complicated abbreviations, "serve two functions: they allow for greater speed, and they let users demonstrate their belonging to the communities that use specific abbreviations" (Randall 2). Shared online communities are major reasons why this language and these abbreviations have developed, as these communities consciously try to define themselves. Some online acronyms have been around for longer than other features of this language. For example, I heard about the acronym "LOL" for "laughing out loud" in 1994, well before I had ever been in a chat room or done anything on the Internet. Randall puts forth some of the most common acronyms, including "LOL" (laughing out loud), "ROTFL" (rolling on the floor laughing), "ttyl" (talk to you later), "brb" (be right back), "IMHO" (in my humble opinion), "rtm" (read the manual), "b4n" (bye for now), "jk" (just kidding), and "nm" (never mind) (32). Others include "afk" (away from keyboard), "gtg" (got to go), "wu" (what's up?), "pos" (parent over shoulder), and "nm" (for not much instead of never mind, depending on the situation). As a member of this online community for over four years now, I have encountered the most common abbreviations but have not been submerged enough to recognize some of the features of communities with younger chatters.

Internet language has other specific features that do not necessarily have anything to do with spelling. The pointed lack of formal punctuation defies Standard English, saying silently "'we dont need apostrophes or capitalization cuz we understand each other just fine.'" Often chatters do not use apostrophes, interior commas, periods at the end of lines, or any capitalization; in this shorthand, they increase their speed. Emoticons, smiley-faces and faces with other expressions, provide a tone of voice to the written word on screen. Randall explains that "emoticons simulate speech--and in fact some of the bodily communication that accompanies speech--by providing physical expressions (mostly facial) that would be apparent in a spoken conversation" (2). He makes a distinction between Internet chatting and e-mail, observing that "emoticons are used much less in email…email is seen as more serious a mode of communication by many onliners, and emoticons are not considered serious at all" (29). In the speedy world of chatting, though, emoticons lend tone to the flatly-written comments.

Is Internet chat language a dialect of standard written English, "one of the subordinate forms or varieties of [English] arising from local peculiarities of vocabulary, pronunciation, and idiom [or] a variety of speech differing from the standard or literary 'language'" (OED online)? If a dialect is necessarily spoken, then Internet chat language is not a dialect. However, with the changing modern situation, the electronic world is a community of people who use writing as their primary mode to communicate with each other. Consequently, this kind of communication serves the function of speech. This dialect has "[arisen] from local peculiarities of vocabulary…and idiom," if one can accept that the Internet is a locality without a physical location. This dialect is certainly a "variety of speech differing from the standard or literary 'language'," which purposefully and consciously differs. Internet chat language has all the features of a dialect--a specific code of communication, the community that owns it, patterns of linguistic features, and a shared understanding among those who use it--except for this dialect being spoken. Because of its nature, Internet chat language is still a dialect, and it is perhaps the first true written dialect.

The Online Contact Zone

Internet chat language developed collaboratively, between a community of people that grows larger daily. We (sometimes unknowingly) adopt the dominant mannerisms in order to fit in, and as we learn the finer points of this communication, we feel more of a sense of belonging. However, like any "social [space] where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other," Internet users do not only set their writing apart from Standard English. Within the language, there are peculiarities that belong to particular sub-communities within this online mass of people--some users set themselves apart from others. Age, specific chatting practices, and common interests all influence how one uses Internet communication. We make conscious decisions about chatting the way we do--accept some communities' quirks and reject others--and in this way, Internet communication is inherently autoethnographic, "a text in which people undertake to describe themselves in ways that engage with representations others have make of them" (Pratt 3). This "text" responds not only to standard written English but also to other forms of Internet communication.

The age of the person chatting plays an important role in the way we represent ourselves in this writing. As someone who grew up with Standard English and only became a fluent Internet user as a college student, I accept certain characteristics of Internet chat language and reject others. For example, I use apostrophes and all interior punctuation, but I end my sentences just by pressing "enter," not with a period. I rarely capitalize, and I usually spell out entire words correctly ("you," "why," "later," and "see," for example). However, I use abbreviated phrases, like "LOL," "brb," "ttyl," and "oic," and I also use emoticons but do not depend heavily on them. Why have I picked up these particular characteristics and rejected others? I still hold to a certain standard, and I cannot bring myself to use "l8r," "neway," "kewl," or "wuz." I argue that it takes more effort to consciously type an alternative spelling than to spell the word correctly. Others my age (early to mid-twenties) have similar quirks. Some always capitalize, holding to a Standard English ideal. Many spell words out rather than abbreviating them. Most of the chatters my age have not wholeheartedly embraced chat language and, instead, reject features from it as a reaction to this supposed bastardization of Standard English. "l8r" is an abbreviation that children use, according to many in their twenties, and in this way, we ally ourselves partly with standard English and its traditions and partly with this progressive new language. We are reacting "in response to or in dialogue with [representations of us]" (Pratt 3).

The younger people chatting online, in high school or freshmen in college now, who have used Internet chatting as a primary form of communication throughout high school and possibly middle school, have developed these chat skills at the same time that they have cultivated their more sophisticated language skills. Perhaps because the Internet has been so pervasive in their development, many younger people online have embraced this language, defining themselves then as Internet-savvy and part of a certain "in" group. Randall, in his study, found that "80% of the 16-19 [age] group uses IM, as compared with 50% of the 20-34 group and far fewer people 35 or older" (21). Few people in their thirties or older use Internet chatting as a primary means of communication, and often they treat instant messages as letters, complete with sign-offs. Anyone who is part of this online community already enters a chat room or an Instant message conversation with certain mannerisms that betray his or her age. Especially concerning age, chat language "[reads] very differently to people in different positions in the contact zone" (Pratt 6-7). Those who have fully embraced chat language can easily spot someone who does not know the accepted abbreviations and who holds to standard English conventions in chatting; people who use some traditional English in their chatting might think of a person who uses all of the abbreviations, acronyms, emoticons, and other characteristics of the language as young and frivolous.

More than just age distinguishes different communities within this contact zone, which makes it clear that Internet chat language is not a "discrete, self-defined, coherent [entity], held together by a homogeneous competence or grammar shared identically and equally among members," but a sophisticated, dynamic form of communication (Pratt 7). The communities themselves exist for specific reasons, and people within them have different purposes. Some use chat rooms to talk to strangers with common interests, and some people only use instant messaging software to chat with people they know. Particular trends and common interests influence some chatters' abbreviations and emoticons. Notably, with the recent rise in the popularity and acceptance of animé and video-gaming, the communities who share this interest have developed their own emoticons that resemble Japanese animated cartoon faces. According to avid video-gamer Max Sullivan, the smiley face, rather than being a version of ":)", is "^_^"; the winkey-face, rather than ";)", has become "^_-". "There are things like 'dead' x_x. ~_~ is basically someone with their eyes closed, so whatever that would represent in normal human interaction…Oh, there's incredulous: O_o (or surprised: O_O)" (Sullivan). I, an outsider, was unaware of these alternatives to traditional emoticons, and if I chatted with those in the animé, video-gaming community, they would clearly recognize me as an outsider. Randall brings up regional differences in chatting, too, which allow physical communities to remain distinct in the online mass; in the Canadian regions he studied, he found significant differences in acronym recognition and in how they value emoticons (39-40). Even the smallest abbreviations, variations in emoticons, and written mannerisms set people and online communities apart from one another.

The Internet communication contact zone is essentially the reaction of a marginalized set of people, where "members of subordinated [and] marginal groups select and invent from materials transmitted by a dominant…culture" (Pratt 5). The subordinated communities are often young people embracing a new form of communication and reacting to social norms of their world. Internet chatting is another outlet, a new way of making friends outside our physical communities and engaging with people who share our interests. The alternative spellings of words and the rapid development of this dialect is a reinvention of a standard language that has been taught in schools for hundreds of years. This new speech-mimicking, free-flowing, speedy communication is without the same rules and judgments as the classroom--the placement of a comma, the proper use of the semicolon, impeccable spelling, or a coherent paragraph--but a new way to understand our world through dialogue with others. This is not the world of the academy.

Acceptance and Discussion: the Online Contact Zone in the Composition Classroom

Students come to the college composition classroom apprehensive, and many of them already believe that they are not "good" writers. The introductory composition sequence at the university or college level may be the only required course sequence the student takes in all his or her years of college. Students can choose their majors and choose between courses to fulfill other requirements, but every student must take composition. Some students may resent the composition requirement, be intimidated by the course, and have the ultimate objective to pass only to get to their other courses. These students have been exposed to academic writing throughout high school, to the five-paragraph essay, grammar teachers, and the prewrite-write-rewrite model of writing. They have written countless "My Summer Vacation" essays, have done literary analysis, and have responded to prompts that teachers handed them.

We tell our students that writing is about communication and expression, but the traditional kinds of writing many students have done in classrooms have little to do with communication or expression. Many communicate and express themselves daily, however, by chatting on the Internet. Chatting does not feel like classroom writing--the student gets no grade for the use of proper punctuation, elaboration on ideas, paragraph coherence, word choice, or sticking to the thesis statement--but it is still a legitimate form of writing. These students already write to communicate and express themselves in different ways. As composition teachers, rather than ignoring the students' experiences with writing outside the classroom, we can discuss and recognize their knowledge to make writing less daunting, more relevant, and more significant for them.

The first step is to allow this "text" into our classrooms, and for many composition teachers, it will be difficult to legitimize this grammarless, non-standard communication. In "Contact Zones: Composition's Content in the University," Katherine K. Gottschalk asks, "How do we use increased understanding of interactions to break the powerful hold of a homogenous view of the nature of writing or of text most appropriate for teaching, whether held by a university's board of trustees or the faculty of the chemistry department or the writing program director?" (62). Her question is particularly relevant in the case of online communication--we first have to reject the "homogenous view" of "appropriate" texts and realize that if we can help our students look critically at the majority of the writing they do outside the classroom, we can show them the existence of this "communication and expression" about which we rave.

One way to incorporate this knowledge into the classroom is to take a cultural studies approach to teaching, which justifies allowing this radical new "text." Students would actually study how they communicate on the Internet and reflect upon the outside-of-class writing they do: why is it easier? Why is writing for a class more tedious? Does Internet chatting make writing for class easier? What do the students gain from chatting on the Internet? Examining Internet communication with a linguistic approach, students could study the dynamics of language and discuss how language is never fully formed. Most critical here is the question of value: does Internet communication, this thing that is such an important part of these students' lives, have value in this institution? Ideally, validating their communication will help students develop their writing skills in all arenas of their lives, not just in the classroom, and will consequently help them improve their academic writing.

Moyra Haslett, in "Cultural Studies," defends the use of non-canonical texts in the classroom, giving as a reason that "the study of popular culture calls into question the ways in which we define and isolate 'high' culture, striking at the heart of arguments concerning literary 'value'" (155). Although she cites movies, romance novels, thrillers, and comics as popular culture "texts" to use in the classroom, Internet chatting fits this rationalization--to value the knowledge the student already has and to build on that, rather than to put forth obscure poetry or a historical essay prompt as the only knowledge worth knowing. This is also a perfect opportunity, whether the class studies the "text" socially, linguistically, experientially, or any combination of them, to discuss the idea of value. If we include Internet communication as a topic of study in our classrooms, we will have to justify it not just to our administrations and departments but also to our students. Examining the writing they do outside the classroom and talking about its value, students will be able to engage with the idea that "value is not a property of the text alone: 'Texts do not have value; they can only be valued; (in Mulhern 1992, 295). The question we need to pose is not which is more valuable, but 'valuable to whom and in what conditions?" (Haslett 158). Students might discuss how staying in touch with old friends is more valuable to some than reading classic literature and reflect upon why chatting often comes so much more easily to them than writing academically. In this reflection and discussion, students will be forced into meta-cognition about their own writing, and they will gain confidence about themselves as writers in the process.

Another way to use this communication in the classroom, along with some reflection on the language itself, is to set up chatting communities among students, where the students can discuss the assignments, the discussion topics, and their writing processes in a less threatening venue than the classroom. They might then study their communication as a text, or they might just use this way of talking to each other to engage differently in their assignments. It is important to note, however, that grading the Internet chat communication in any way will take away Internet chat's greatest asset: a person can make a mistake and will not be judged for it. Leave out a comma, and no one will notice. As when speaking, these students will not fear writing something "wrong" if they are not being judged for the written outcome of the chatting itself. Ideally, in a writing classroom, chat discussions will lead to formal writing, but only as enrichment, not as the assignment itself.

By discussing Internet communication in our classrooms, we let students know the voice they have in their daily lives is important to us and is important to their academic writing. In this way, we may be taking a step towards making writing something more to these students than just a requirement. We talk about writing as a form of communication and expression because we have understood, in our own ways, that writing has value, and now we have the opportunity to help our students appreciate writing as we do. Allowing Internet chat communication into our classrooms--whether we discuss it as a social construct, analyze it linguistically, talk about students' experience, or look at it as an actual text--will only help our students gain confidence and interest in their own writing. Composition is not merely a gatekeeping class; it is a class that helps students in their academic careers and their lives, a class that examines the fundamentals of communication. Writing is a relevant, exciting way of understanding one's world, and we should build upon the knowledge and experience students already have rather than ignoring it.

Perhaps we can make the students' communication with each other through the Internet "not only a celebration of [this] genre previously derided, but a transformation in the ways in which we approach 'high' culture itself" (Haslett 155). In thirty or forty years, Internet communication may be a phenomenon studied historically and linguistically, just as the popular culture of the 1960's and 1970's is revered now. We should give this communication its due in our composition classrooms today and should give our students credit for being fluent in a dialect that will make history, perhaps as the first written dialect, as a defiant subculture, and as the voice of an electronic generation.

Works Cited

The links in the following references will each open a new window.

Gottschalk, Katharine K.: "Contact Zones: Composition's Content in the University." Professing in the Contact Zone: Bringing Theory and Practice Together. Ed. Janice M. Wolff. Urbana, IL: NCTE, 2002. 58-78.

Haslett, Moyra.: "Cultural Studies." Marxist Literary and Cultural Theories. New York: St. Martin's, 2000. 126-162.

Oxford English Dictionary: Online ed. 6 May 2003. <http://www.oed.com/>.

Pratt, Mary Louise.: "Arts of the Contact Zone." Ways of Reading, 5^th ed. 5 May 2003. <http://web.new.ufl.edu/~stripp/2504/pratt.html>.

Randall, Neil.: "Lingo Online: The Language of the Keyboard Generation." 11 June 2002. University of Waterloo, Canada. 29 March 2003. <http://www.arts.uwaterloo.ca/~nrandall/LingoOnline-finalreport.pdf>.

Sullivan, Max F.: "Re: Question about gaming." E-mail to author. 6 May 2003.

Academic Exchange Extra invites reader responses to any writings in this issue--especially articles advancing the scholarly debate of issues raised.

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