The Internet as an information and communication platform has become essential in our daily life. Existing side by side with other media, the latest mass medium has changed our communicative behavior enormously. (The European English Messenger, 2005). Personal
Computer (PC) Internet users know that it is possible to find different kinds of texts in it: fiction, academic writing and mass media - practically all possible existing types of texts. Of special interest is communication between people in the Internet and the different types of
Websites. The so-called electronic language has aroused great linguistic and psychological interest and attracts more and more attention of the linguists and psychologists who are really concerned with its possible influence on language and psychology in general.
Linguists are concerned with the influence this system may have on a living language.
The Internet, in conjunction with radio and television, telephone communication and printed materials, creates the universal information net, which is called "Cyberspace" and
Received July 22, 2008
24 A. NAZARYAN, A. GRIDCHIN all the people using the online communication are "Netizens" in this net (the word is easily associated with "citizens"). The regular users are "Webies", the new ones -"Newbies".
The language we use in the net is "Netspeak" 1
People, unfamiliar with the mechanisms of Online Communication and familiar with the conventions of offline communication, think that there can be no analogy of online communication with speech. Chatrooms and the like are too constrained by their response times and the slow speed of typing to be considered as a good analogy of speech. Regarding some broad pragmatic themes (communicative effectiveness, spamming, lurking, emoticons and abbreviations), the comparative