The influence of internet English on the language culture of internet Lithuanian

Abstract

The article focuses on how Internet English shapes Internet Lithuanian, fostering the acquisition of new cultural features in the Internet Lithuanian language. The theoretical overview deals with research on the Internet language and online communities. The research focuses on the newly-acquired specific cultural features that are in play in the Internet Lithuanian language, such as the increasing preference to be less reserved and more expressive when signifying one’s current state of mind. The article carries out the research of a number of popular social networks, blog sites, and forums of the Internet. Due to the sheer vastness of the cyberspace, openness and freedom of communication, anonymity, and blurred lines between the different languages and cultures, it is difficult to accurately discern and describe all of the possible ways of how the Internet English language influences the new cultural features of the Internet Lithuanian language. The analysis of a number of examples reflecting the sudden transition from the primary Lithuanian language to the secondary English language reveals the more frequent and elaborate use of a certain type of irony, satire, sarcasm, Western and American humour, and memetic phrases of mainstream Internet culture origin that are considered to be associated with the Internet English language (and also the English language in general). These observations suggest the idea that, to certain Lithuanian-speaking Internet users, the English language is associated with the modern Western and American culture and acts as a tool of absorbing, approving of, replicating, and spreading its various elements in their messages, proving its immense significance and power to many speakers of the Lithuanian language.