Aulino, Biagio, Bergami, Roberto and Klimova, Blanka Frydrychova (2011) The Czech Republic Languages in Cyberspace: An evolutionary phenomenon for English as a second language. Journal of the Worldwide Forum on Education and Culture, 3 (1). pp. 34-43. ISSN 1949-2774

Abstract

This paper reports on a pilot study, conducted in the Czech Republic during 2011, on the influence that cyber language is rapidly gaining on linguistic communities of adolescents using virtual social networks, such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. This study focuses on the use of cyber language (also known as cyber speak; net speak; text speak; net lingo; linguanet; and internetese) and how this is responding to new technologies. Data for this study were gathered through the administration of a voluntary written survey. An analysis of the data reveals a framework of linguistic strategies used by adolescents for both on-line and off-line communications. The use of this framework is used to analyse communication styles of Czech adolescents studying English as a second language (L2). The adolescent speech varieties discovered in this project correlate with observations reported in literature by other researchers in Europe and North America. These authors highlight the existence of a distinct and recognizable speech code that adolescents have developed and use among their peers. The paper concludes by highlighting a pedagogical rationale on the importance of including cyber language in the design of the curriculum, to ensure it is relevant and of interest to the contemporary L2 learner in the context of classroom teaching and learning.

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