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[xelastarkly]

Gonna play this song over and over until I hate music

[yanneism-blog-blog]

[kcb206group4]

Online 'NetSpeak' - The Hybrid of Written and Spoken Mediums?

Online communication is a fascinating element of new media culture which has developed and evolved in response to it’s growing pervasion of society. Millions of people are now regularly communicating online which has generated a new form of social practices and ‘netiquette’ specific to the myriad forms of online communication and more importantly, based on the limitations and facilitations of this medium and the people who have adopted it. (Crystal, David. 2006) Which invites the question, how exactly do we communicate online, and how is it different from previous methods of communication?

Personally, I mainly use new media platforms to communicate with friends I’m unable to see regularly enough, to simply keep in contact with them. The majority of our communication is very conversational, essentially as if we were talking face-to-face. However, there are a few distinct differences between online and direct conversations. Many people complain about the Internet’s impersonal and shallow afforded connection, which I do agree with to an extent, however I relate more to the argument made by David Crystal who explores the hybridisation of written and spoken linguistic practices inherent in the online mediums new media enabled platforms have created.

Crystal begins by recalling an essentially accurate, core principle of online communication, ‘write the way people talk’, and highlighting a critical flaw with this statement, “But to what extent is it possible to ‘write speech’, given a keyboard restricted to the letters of the alphabet, numerals, and a sprinkling of other symbols, and a medium which - as we shall see - disallows some critical features of conversational speech?” This question is especially poignant as it points out that these online mediums share the physical limitations of writing while trying to imitate the fluidity and spontaneity of speech, which is obviously problematic but is what led to the innovative hybrid we have adopted today. For example, instances such as instant messaging that require active participation in a conversation and maintain a fast pace, “though expressed through the medium of writing… display several of the core properties of speech. They are time-governed, expecting or demanding an immediate response… and their utterances display much of the urgency and energetic force which is characteristic of face-to-face conversation.” (Crystal, David. 2006) I really agree with this point, as I think instant messaging is a clear blend of written and spoken mediums, and is essentially ‘written speech’.

However, there are exceptions to this suggestion, as Crystal goes on to point out, one of the major flaws being that the participants obviously are unable to communicate much of nuanced complexity of everyday conversation. He also notes that we are forced to receive information in chunks of text which is also quite limiting, “When we send a message to someone, we type it a keystroke at a time, but it does not arrive on that person’s screen a keystroke at a time… There is no way that a recipient can react to our message while it is being typed.. Correspondingly, there is no way for a participant to get a sense of how successful a message is, while it is being written - whether it is being understood, or whether it needs repair.” Which I think is another fundamental disparity between the two mediums. 

My final comment is that all mediums of communication are constantly undergoing development and being revised by the collective population, so as new media technologies develop, affording us with even greater ways to communicate, I look forward to future forms of communication with nothing but cautious optimism. 

References: Crystal, David. 2006. “Chapter 2 : The Medium of Netspeak” In Language and the internet, edited by David Crystal, 26-65. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Accessed April 9, 2014. https://qutvirtual3.qut.edu.au/qv/olt_material_search_p?p_unit_code=KCB206

[2014soundslikethis]

"Echo" - Architecture In Helsinki

[golddesert]

#AIH4EVA

[electroniggaa]

AIH!

[muchpreferredcustomers]

Architecture In Helsinki - Echo - from NOW+ 4EVA, due April 1. see also "I Will Survive" and "Dream A Little Crazy". album is shaping up to be a promising slice of indie pop goodness; "I Will Survive" has been on heavy rotation for the last several weeks