Cyberculture Taking Over

The increasing use of the Internet in the modern world has invented, so to say, a new culture of its own, which is nothing but a mix of all the cultures, and is being referred to as Cyberculture. The most prominent part of this new culture is the new language, called to as “cyberspeak”, which has created a new revolution of its own in language. The increased use of the mobile phone to send SMS messages also led to the creation of this new language.

In short, Cyberspeak allows one to break the rules of grammar and punctuation without penalty. Language, especially English, has always been an organic substance. In other words, the diction, syntax and rules of any natural mode of communication, such as English, have always morphed and evolved as humans put input into it.

Strict, mechanistic rules in language are only formalized in order to ease communication among the elite. The important thing to remember is that certain individuals are naturally elected the right to challenge this order. They do so by being creative.

If we are going to fertilize this organic thing called English, then we have to be willing to see through to the real meaning of the shackles of formalization, and see that these strict rules are really a form of enslavement. Particularly what is enslaved is your creative spirit.

Of course, average ordinary casual speakers know instinctively that language is organic. There are zillions of microcosms, families, sub-families, neighborhoods, clans, groups, sub-cultures, elite and scrubbers, all of which secretly defy convention. Human beings, lurking in their sub-culture, decide willy-nilly to make their own personal language

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The most spectacular recent examples of sub-cultures that have gone far beyond the casual and ordinary in language refinement are the hip-hop culture and the cyberculture.

The language wizards in hip-hop are creative creatures morphing vocally inside your ears. Your average rapper says defiantly, "I make my own world. I/We live by my/our own rules. If you dig us, join our party, help us create a new way to talk, listen and understand the way we talk, rap with us and be free in body, spirit, mind and soul!"

Purveyors of cyberspeak are very similar in their sentiments. Countless kids can break every English rule in the book behind their teachers' backs and be rewarded for their intelligent creativity at inventing new language terms and acronyms. By being hip to the standard argot of particular chatters, a cyber-geek gets instant status.

Language is a give-and-take game. If what you write is cool and others like it and decide to create a world of communication around your introduced terms and styles, then they will have organically taken what you have offered and helped you to grow a new branch on the language tree. What is so great about such givers like cyber-heads and rap-geeks is that they are bringing much-needed foliage to a tree with a big, fat (not phat) trunk that has grown from the soil of the powered elites, such as traditional novelists, bureaucrats, lawyers, editors, politicos, etc.