Multilingvizam na internetu
Multilingualism on the Internet

Summary/Abstract: It seems to be a standard convention for papers dealing with digital technology to begin or end by warning their readers that everything they contain is going to be soon out of date, and a linguistic perspective on the subject is no exception. Any attempt to characterize the language of the Internet, whether as a whole or with reference to one of its constituent situations, immediately runs up against the transience of the technology. The different fields of communication will not remain for long as they are constantly evolving, putting users under constant pressure to adapt their language to the demands on new contexts, and giving them fresh opportunities to interact in new ways. The readiness with which people do adapt language to meet the needs of new situations, which is the heart of linguistic evolution is going to be fully exploited in the next few decades, with the emergence of yet more sophisticated forms of digitally mediated communication. The Internet has been the focus of this paper within which I have looked of four situations: e-mail, synchronous and asynchronous chatgroups and the World Wide Web. In each case, I have found clear signs of the emergence of a distinctive variety of language, with characteristics closely related to the properties of its technological context as well as to the intentions, activities, and (to some extent) personalities of the users. The Internet is only a part of the world of computer-mediated language. Many new technologies are anticipated, which will integrate the Internet with the other communication situations, and these will provide the matrix within which further language varieties will develop.

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