Article from The American Prospect

[Beverly Flanigan]

At 10:12 AM 3/23/00 -0800, you wrote:
>"lynnem at cogs.susx.ac.uk-Unverified Address" wrote:
> >
> >
> >    The Internet was basically an American development, and it naturally
> >    spread most rapidly among the other countries of the English-speaking
> >    world. Right now, for example, there are roughly as many Internet
> >    users in Australia as in either France or Italy, and the
> >    English-speaking world as a whole accounts for over 80 percent of
> >    top-level Internet hosts and generates close to 80 percent of Internet
> >    traffic.
> >
> >    It isn't surprising, then, that the Web is dominated by English.
>
>The question is, are folks in English-speaking countries joining the Web
>because
>it is predominantly English, or vice versa?  I would believe the former,
>considering the history of the Web, and the relative affluence of
>English-speaking countries.
>
> >
> >    Then too, it isn't just Anglophones who are using English on the Web.
> >    A lot of the English-language Web sites are based in
> >    non-English-speaking countries. Sometimes English is an obvious
> >    practical choice, for example in nations like Egypt, Latvia, and
> >    Turkey, where few speakers of the local language are online and the
> >    Internet is still thought of chiefly as a tool for international
> >    communication. But the tendency to use English doesn't disappear even
> >    when a lot of speakers of the local language have Internet access.
> >    Since the Web turns every document into a potentially "international"
> >    publication, there's often an incentive for publishing Web sites in
> >    English that wouldn't exist with print documents that don't ordinarily
> >    circulate outside national borders. And this in turn has made the use
> >    of English on the Web a status symbol in many nations, since it
> >    implies that you have something to say that might merit international
> >    attention.
>
>There is another reason why folks resort to English.  They do not know how to,
>or there is no provision for, input of their own language.  And even if
>they did
>know how and there was provision, there is difficulty in receiving/viewing
>such
>input.
>
>As the technology moves towards an large international character set, combined
>with easier and easier installation and input methods for various languages,
>more and more native languages will appear.  It is happening even now.
>
>While some may think of the WWW as an international platform, there are those
>(me) who also consider it a local medium.  I look for local events, local
>phone
>numbers, local maps, etc. on the Web.
>
>
> >    But the Internet blurs this distinction, even as it blurs the
> >    distinction between "public" and "private" communication. The language
> >    of the innumerable discussion groups and bulletin boards of the Net
> >    has much of the tone of private communication--it's informal,
> >    elliptical, and allusive. But it is conversation filtered by a battery
> >    of conventions adapted to its new function. I'm thinking of not just
> >    the rich etiquette for responding, cc'ing participants, including
> >    quotes from other messages you've received, and so forth, but the
> >    subtler ways that the informalities of private conversation are
> >    tailored for use in a semipublic forum. That's why these discussions
> >    can be so difficult for foreigners to participate in, even when
> >    they're entirely comfortable with formal written English. What's more
> >    worrisome still, they can also marginalize native speakers who aren't
> >    privy to the norms of middle-class speech, by which I mean not so much
> >    the forms and spellings of the standard language as the way people
> >    deploy it in the back-and-forth of ordinary conversation. It's one
> >    thing to know when to say, "I'm afraid I have to take issue with Ms.
> >    Price's conclusions" and another--much more difficult to get the hang
> >    of--to know when it's appropriate to say, "You've gotta be kidding."
>
>Oh no!  Them ferners'll never be able to larn that thar kinda language!
>
>Andrea

And neither will them low-class hillbillies and rednecks who ain't hardly
literate.