Personal websites appear to be a curious hybrid of secret
diary and public revelation. The personal facts and
sentiments revealed are frequently more than many people
would choose to reveal even in private conversations with
friends, and yet they are there for the world to see.
There are websites built by non-profit organisations. In this case
the websites are also aimed to promote an organisation, however the
objective of the latter is to support, or engage in, activities of public or
private interest without any commercial or monetary profit. In other
words, as explained by Campagna, “they all have one main purpose in
common: using their profits to improve the quality of the specific
services involved” (Campagna 2004: 66).
One further category of websites pertains to e-government (also
known as e-gov, digital government, online government). The various
definitions provided for this notion by diverse sources have been
resumed by Palvia and Sharma
1
in the following way:
While definitions of e-government by various sources may
vary widely, there is a common theme. E-government
involves using information technology, and especially the
Internet, to improve the delivery of government services to
citizens, businesses, and other government agencies. E-
government enables citizens to interact and receive services
from the federal, state or local governments twenty four
hours a day, seven days a week. (Palvia and Sharma 2007:
2)
1
Shailendra C. Palvia and Sushil K. Sharma are respectively a Professor of MIS –
Management Information System, a planned system to collect, process, store and
disseminate data in the form of information to carry out the functions of management.
An example of MIS is “ISI Web of Knowledge”, provided by Thomson Reuters at
http://www.isiwebofknowledge.com/ – at the Long Island University, Brookville, New
York, U.S.A. and an Associate Professor of Information Systems and Operations
Management at Ball State University, Muncie, Indiana, U.S.A.
5
Nowadays each major institution, organisation, representative
delegation of a government set up its website. These online, text-based
“windows” presenting the institution can be considered also as “virtual”
counters accessible from all over the world. As Christian Huitema, who
is on the board of the Internet Society, pointed out to Michael Specter –
a New York Times journalist – “the effect of the Internet is to make
information available at minimum cost and effort” (1996).
This dissertation includes a general overview on the use of
language on websites focused on the generally accepted status of
English as leading language on the Web. In Chapter 2 the dissertation
will analyse the main features of the websites of governmental
institutions, focusing on UK e-government. Then, a specific institutional
website will be described: “UK in Italy”, the official website of the British
Embassy in Italy. According to the Longman Dictionary of the English
Language (1991) an embassy consists of “the function or position of an
ambassador”. Ambassador, instead, is defined as “a top ranking
diplomat accredited to a foreign government or sovereign as a resident
representative”. The websites concerning these institutions deal mainly
with the relationship between the country they represent and the foreign
country hosting their offices. In particular, they provide information for
foreign citizens or companies interested in doing business or looking for
a job in their country or, vice versa, for their compatriots who wish to
obtain information about the country in which the embassy’s
headquarter is placed. Therefore, translation is an essential feature in
this kind of institutional websites. The information supplied by
embassies' websites must be provided in the languages of the two
countries concerned. For this reason, the source text found on the UK
Embassy’s website will be compared with its Italian version, referring to
the quality criteria for translations listed by Scarpa (2008: 203-215) i.e.
6
accuracy, usability, adequacy, acceptability. The institutional website
provided by the British government will also be compared to its
counterpart, the website of the Embassy of Italy in London – available in
both Italian and English – in order to check which features are common
to both websites and which characteristics, instead, distinguish them.
7
1. Main features of the language of the Web
1.1 Use of language on websites
Internet linguistics is a subdomain of linguistics suggested by Crystal
because of the impact of the Internet on language. He has provided the
following definition:
I would define this as the synchronic analysis of language in
all areas of Internet activity, including email, the various
kinds of chatroom and games interaction, instant messaging,
and Web pages, and including associated areas of
computer-mediated communication (CMC), such as SMS
messaging (texting) and form that have arisen under the
influence of the Internet and other new communication
media. (Crystal 2005: 1)
The main changes introduced by CMC
2
are not related to
grammar, spelling and vocabulary, the basic properties of linguistics.
The primary “manifestations” of the impact of Internet are instead those
that differentiate this form of communication from traditional
conversational speech and writing.
The properties which differentiate CMC from speech include
its lack of simultaneous feedback (critical to successful
conversation), the absence of nonsegmental phonology (or
tone of voice, which emoticons attempted, but fails, to
2
Computer-mediated communication (or CMC) has been defined by Herrings (1996:
1) as “communication that takes place between human beings via the instrumentality
of computers.”
8
express), and its ability to carry on multiple interactions
simultaneously (in chatrooms). The properties which
differentiate CMC from writing include its dynamic dimension
(through such effects as animation and page refreshing), its
ability to frame messages (as in email cutting and pasting),
and its hypertextuality (only hinted at in traditional writing
through such notions as the footnote). (Crystal, ibidem, 1)
Graham agrees with David Crystal about the specific nature of
CMC:
Human beings throughout the world have become
connected as never before, and new technologies provide
the potential for people throughout the world to interact in
many unprecedented ways. (Graham 2006: 54 - 55)
Nowadays the Web itself includes different peculiar ways of
interaction. The language of the Internet varies according to the context
in which the Internet is used. The current main situations (not entirely
mutually exclusive) are:
a) Electronic mail (e-mail);
b) chatgroups (asynchronous groups);
c) chatgroups (synchronous groups);
d) virtual worlds;
e) World Wide Web (WWW);
f) blogging;
g) instant messaging.
9
1.1.1 The language of e-mail
Electronic mail has acquired functions and formal features associated
with spoken language as well as formal writing (Davis and Brewer 1997,
Maynor 1994, Murray 1996). The discourse structure of electronic
messages has become increasingly standardised over the past twenty
years. On the other hand, there is a broad range of different opinions
about the purpose of e-mail, as a communicative medium, and about
the most appropriate and effective language to achieve that purpose.
This is due to the great amount of e-mails sent each day by a huge
variety of users (Crystal 2006: 99). For 2008, it has been estimated an
average of around 210 billions of e-mails sent everyday from 1.3 billion
of e-mail users
3
.
E-mails are usually composed of functional elements similar in
purpose to those typical of traditional letters. The header (upper area) is
commonly composed of:
a) E-address of the addressee;
b) e-address of the sender;
c) subject of the message;
d) date and time of sending.
Moreover, the header includes optional elements such as the
Cc:
4
and Bcc:
5
fields including further addresses that receive a copy of
the e-mail. The body (lower area) includes the main text, frequently
preceded by greeting followed by a farewell.
3
Estimate provided by the Radicati Group, Inc. (www.radicati.com), a firm providing
market research for the computer and telecommunications industry.
4
The abbreviation Cc: stands for “carbon copy” and indicates secondary recipients of
a message (who receive a copy of a message directed to another).
5
Bcc: is the abbreviation of “blind carbon copy”. The recipients listed in this fields are
not shown on any other recipient’s copy.
10
From a stylistic point of view, although distinctive features of the
variety have not yet been thoroughly demonstrated, McCormick and
McCormick (1992) and Wallace (1999: 62-4) stress a potential for
significant group differentiation – e.g. between undergraduates or
between teenagers – through a growing conformity to specific stylistic
norms for each group. Even if e-mail is currently perceived as an
informal and temporary medium not yet colonized by rigid norms
(Herring 2001: 618), in its infancy from a stylistic point of view, linguists
expect a growth in the immediate future, resulting in a medium
portraying a wide range of “stylistic expressiveness”, from formal to
informal (Crystal 2006: 133).
1.1.2 The language of chatgroups (asynchronous groups)
Each asynchronous chatgroup consists of a multi-party electronic
discourse in postponed time. The purposes of these groups can vary
widely, as well as the topics of the conversations. It is possible to
identify a sort of ideal message schema comprised of three functional
moves: “an introduction, a contentful message body, and a close”
(Herring 1996: 90); three further typical elements have been found
within the body: link to earlier message, expression of views, appeal to
other participants (Herring, ibidem: 90-91). Other features frequently
found in asynchronous chatgroups are conciseness, unpredictability of
the subject matter, consistency of the topic, accommodation
6
between
users.
6
According to the theory described by Giles, Coupland and Coupland (1991)
“accommodation” consists in adjusting the communicational behaviour to the requisite
roles that participants are assigned in a given context e.g. using grammatically simple
language when speaking with babies or with foreigners.
11
From a linguistic point of view, the most common features are:
very frequent use of the pronoun “I”; high frequency of “it” to introduce
personal comments, reliance on private verbs
7
(Davis and Brewer 1997:
85); use of rhetorical and tag questions in order to express a personal
attitude and to emphasise a sentence. The language of these groups
can be considered as “a mixture of informal letter and essay” – from a
stylistic point of view – “or a mixture of spoken monologue and
dialogue” (Crystal 2006: 156) since the discourse does not happen
synchronously, but in postponed time.
David and Brewer (ibidem: 34, 157) and Crystal (2006: 156)
cautiously expect that an in-depth study of this field will possibly result
in the emersion of asynchronous chatgroups as a distinct variety of
language.
1.1.3 The language of chatgroups (synchronous groups)
Synchronous online chat includes communication in real time between
two users or among several users. In both situations, chat is
differentiated from face-to-face conversation by various features. First
of all, in this case the concept of turn-taking is not applicable, since
often the parties involved in a chat conversation overlap their
messages, without waiting for a reply. This results in a sort of parallel
communication retaining full mutual understanding. A second feature of
synchronous chatgroups is the tendency of succinct utterances:
according to Werry (1996: 53) the average number of words per online
contribution is 6, an amount much lower than journalism but higher than
everyday conversation. According to Crystal (2006: 163) the most
7
Private verbs “express intellectual states (e.g. believe) or nonobservable intellectual
acts (e.g. discover)” (Biber 1988: 242).
12
distinctive characteristic of synchronous chatgroups is its participant
overlap, due to the fact that messages are typically short, rapidly
distributed, and coming from a variety of sources. Another highly
distinctive feature is the use of nicknames (nicks), chosen with a ritual
act demanded by the culture to which the individual aspires to belong.
Usually, the quickness of the decay of topics is much higher than the
one found in asynchronous groups.
Formal features frequently found in synchronous chatgroups
include:
a) Nick-initiated lineation, with names in angle brackets:
each first line of a chatgroup message starts with the
nickname of the user;
b) identification of the types of message generated by the
software with specific conventions;
c) use of smileys, that is to say of stylistic representations
of a smiling human face;
d) rebus-like abbreviations that is to say very short
abbreviations to be interpreted like in a rebus, e.g. “CU” –
to be understood as “See you” – a common greeting in
synchronous chatgroup;
e) colloquial elisions, e.g. “r” instead of “are” or “til’” instead
of “until”;
f) transcription of emotional noises, that is to say sounds
that convey feelings;
g) comic book style interjections, e.g. hey!, ouch!, yow!;
h) missing internal and final punctuation, with the
exception of question marks and exclamation marks;
i) frequent avoidance of capitalisation (except for nicks).
13
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