Abstract:

Language, like any other natural element, experiences the action of external agents; influences that led it to mature or deteriorate or even modified. The Spanish language is not an exception to this phenomenon.

The recent spread of information technology and communications has introduced deep changes in the way young people communicate.

The registers used by young people are several, the formal one employed at the university and at work, and the informal one used with their peers in familiar contexts. The way in which they speak change from generation to generation and it is influenced by several factors: media, newspapers and the world around them.

The purpose of this work is to investigate the Spanish language on the web, that is to say the new youth language generated by the use of Internet, and how these phenomena can operate an enrichment if used uniquely for recreational purposes, or an impoverishment of the language if we lose the true linguistic construct and the lexical competence.

In this work the characteristics of CIBERESPAÑOL will be also explored: a heterogeneous and extremely creative linguistic diversity, characterized by the absence of rules and rich in abbreviations; the fundamentals of the colloquial language used in chat and its hybrid state between oral language and writing. Finally, two linguistic phenomena will be described: the Malapropism, that is to say, a word switching due to an error in the interpretation of one word and the Sesquipedalism that is designed to be a derivation of a word, not necessary and in many cases incorrect, of a verb, an adjective or a noun.

Keywords:

Ciberespañol.