Is the Internet a Global Threat for Language Linguistics?

Abstract

The growth of the Internet and social media in the 21st century has created a new communicative space where oral and written forms converge, profoundly influencing linguistic practices worldwide. In the Uzbek linguistic context, this transformation has introduced challenges such as abbreviations, mixed alphabets, emotive symbols, and stylistic inconsistencies, which erode traditional literary standards and complicate accurate translation across languages. Although Internet-mediated texts have become the dominant form of communication, there remains limited systematic study of how these linguistic shifts contribute to the spread of language crimes, extremist propaganda, and the weakening of established linguistic norms. This study seeks to analyze the distinctive features of Internet and social media communication, evaluate their impact on Uzbek language norms, and highlight their role as both a linguistic resource and a site of potential crime. Findings show that social networks function as hybrid spaces blending speech and writing, producing coded communication and violations of phonetic, lexical, syntactic, and stylistic norms. Official data indicate that between 2016 and 2018, 658 individuals were prosecuted for disseminating illegal materials online, underscoring the scale of linguistic violations and their social consequences. The study demonstrates that Internet language is not merely a stylistic innovation but a parallel digital language requiring its own descriptive and regulatory framework. The results emphasize the need for interdisciplinary collaboration among linguists, psychologists, lawyers, and policymakers to preserve linguistic integrity, detect extremist discourse, and balance the opportunities of digital communication with its risks.