A glossary of Netspeak and Textspeak (review)

Most linguists are familiar with the name David Crystal. Once a faculty member at the University of Reading, he decided long ago to give up a university job and earn his living as an author, editor, and lecturer. Having so far written more than fifty books on English language and linguistics, he has also compiled dictionaries and edited numerous works, including more general publications such as The Cambridge factfinder (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).

This book, called a lexipedia—somewhere between a lexicon and an encyclopedia (vii)—is divided into four parts: a glossary of terms (3–115); a dictionary of emoticons (smileys) (119–37), such as:-∼ ‘got a cold’ (121), {:< > ‘Daffy Duck’, and %’) ‘drunk’ (127); a glossary of Textspeak, for example,‘gt = GT ‘good try’ (147); and a glossary of internet domain names, including country codes (ch = Switzerland!) (179–97). Basically, this book is a guide to internet and electronic media terminology, and who can quibble with the author when he proclaims that these terms have begun to permeate English as a whole, although I believe one can change his word ‘usually’ to ‘occasionally’ or ‘rarely’ in his assertion that these terms are ‘usually only a part of the slang of colloquial speech’ (vii). I do take issue with the bold pronouncements that some of these terms ‘may eventually enter the standard language’, and ‘It is never—emphasis mine [ASK] possible to predict the future, with language change’ (viii). I believe most of the terms in the glossary are, in fact, already part of standard English (backup, blog, caller ID, cell phone, download, gigabyte (gig), log on, megabyte (meg), online, pixel, RAM, spam, wireless); and does any linguist doubt that plurals such as oxen will eventually succumb to oxes or whom to who? So much for predicting language change!

I now turn to a few details. C’s definitions are usually crystal [:)] clear. The entry cookie is defined as a ‘unique identifier that a Web server places on a computer’s hard disk, enabling the originating Web site to keep a record of who has visited the site, and of the user’s preferences, such as the site pages accessed or queries made’ (28–29). I agree with C’s remark that the connotation of nerd is ‘strongly positive’ in the computing community, but it often carries negative connotations in everyday speech (77). The same may be said about geek (digital world) and geezer (analog world) (49) and techie (not included).

Turning to a few terms I have not (yet) seen or heard (betraying my lack of experience), let me mention flamer—‘someone who sends an aggressive or inflammatory electronic message … especially someone who does this habitually or for fun’, netizen ‘citizen of the Internet’ (77–78), and Netlish and Weblish, ‘the kind of English found on the Internet’ (78) (for the ubiquitous Netspeak or Cyberspeak).

Since personal computer = ‘PC’ is given (86), one wonders why notebook and laptop (portable PCs) were not, although he uses the term notebook in his definition of PDA = ‘personal digital assistant’ (86). For notebook, however, we note only: ‘A term sometimes used for the indexed store of messages which has been sent to a chatgroup’ (81).

I can highly recommend this lexipedia, not only for all alpha geeks, geezers, and nerds, but also for the rest of us dependent on computers for one thing or another.