Abstract:
In the past few years, not only has the Internet been growing, but also linguistic interest in it. Numerous linguistic particularities may be found through a variety of newly developed text genres. One of these new text genres is the personal diary, written for as many people as might be interested in them. These Internet diaries have a writing style which is often influenced by that of spontaneous speech. Secondly, some features of Japanese youth language, such as frequent intensifiers, many abbreviations, and special words created and used by adolescents can be found. Finally, there are some features, for example emoticons, that are special characteristics of computer-mediated communication.
To analyse this new writing style in detail, I collected 160 mails distributed by MagMag, a well-known Internet provider in Japan for mail magazines (mêru magajin), and compiled a text corpus as the basis for my analysis. Three major theses deal with the language style: 1. the closeness to spoken language, 2. the influence of youth language, and 3. the use of a computer. Supplementary to the analysis of the language I also discuss the terms “Internet” and “diary” both of which have different connotations in the cultures of Germany and Japan. The question of the identity and motivation of the authors is also discussed, as far as it is possible, considering the anonymity of the Internet.