Internet produces 'local' English
Updated
The Internet, text messaging and social networking websites, new IT technologies have transformed the way we communicate.
Presenter: Sen Lam
Speaker: Professor Joseph Lo Bianco is the Chair of Language and Literacy Education at The University of Melbourne
JOESEPH LO BIANCO: Well it is a phenomenon that is associated with the internet and social networking, which means that basically fewer and fewer young people are gaining the information they get about society, or even about language and about social issues from vertical networks, that is from teachers or parents or structures in society, but rather they're getting a lot of this information horizontally, that is from people who might be their own age but in another part of the world.
SEN LAM: Should this be a worrying factor though, the fact that they do not get it from structures in society?
JOESEPH LO BIANCO: Well I think there is cause for not concern perhaps, but there is cause for being aware about this and making sure that in schools and in families that we attend to the possible misinformation that might come through these sources. But I think it's really important that we acknowledge that this is going to happen and it's going to grow.
SEN LAM: And even so do you think it is positive or could this lead to a breakdown in community and society?
JOESEPH LO BIANCO: Well what we find I think is that these networks actually produce other kinds of communities. It's not like there is an absence of community on these networks and in these processes. We find that they are deeply associated with communities. People form communities before they communicate. Communication in communities are deeply connected with each other and we find that really to communicate effectively, apart from the exchange of superficial information, requires entering into communities. And I think that it's important to appreciate that the internet in its own way does provide people with a sense of community as well.
SEN LAM: So does it provide a cyber space equivalent if you like of the melting pot?
JOESEPH LO BIANCO: Yes I think that is a good way to think about it actually. And in one very important way though its quite different in that its really random, whereas in the melting pot we make more choices about the people we interact with, on the internet it can be extremely random. But it does mean also that we can actually have ruses, it is a bit like a masked ball often in some of the chat groups and rooms that people enter we don't know who the people we're talking with really are. We only know who they want us to think they are. So its actually quite strange in that way.
SEN LAM: So the concept of a masked ball that's quite romantic isn't it?
JOESEPH LO BIANCO: Yes, yes I think it is.
SEN LAM: And do you think we might lose all cultural differences in cyberspace or how do we preserve plurality if you like?
JOESEPH LO BIANCO: Well actually I think that it is a myth to believe that the more we communicate either in English or via the internet in English or shared languages the cultural differences are disappearing. I think what we're finding is I think a growth in cultural differences. I think a lot of people expected that the internet and the greater use of English would lead to more and more homogenisation. What it really leads to is more and more contact across differences and when people contact each other across differences they tend to talk about their differences and negotiate them and what we find is in fact that the vast majority of people in the world who are learning English and adding English to the languages that they know are not losing the languages they have. They're just extending the repertoire of cultural groups they belong to.
SEN LAM: Now all the same do you think English might become even more dominant?
JOESEPH LO BIANCO: Yes I think it will and I think it is because English has got to a point now where it has local identities. I mean I think if you look at the way English works in India and China it is very clear that in those places a lot of people identify with local kinds of English rather than with American or British or Australian English. So English has a local identity and this means that people associate English with their being Chinese as well. So it is a kind of Chinese language now.
