A escrita do jovem usuário de internet em contextos com motivação oral: comparação com a formação histórica das línguas românicas e dos crioulos de base românica

Abstract

The popularization of the internet, mainly among the youngest users, has developed the netspeak,

a new kind of writing which is common in websites with oral

motivations, such as chats and online communities. Netspeak has many

characteristics, and one of these is the attempt to reproduce phenomena based on speaking. This paper aims to analyze the netspeak data collected in Orkut communities and to compare it to phenomena found in the formation of romance and creole languages. The comparative analysis allows us to conclude that the variation phenomena found in the writing of Brazilian young internet users, in contexts with oral motivation, follow well known linguistic patterns, which seems to show that netspeak is not a cause of degradation of the Portuguese language, as some say, but it is only one more context of variation and language change.