[Air-l] Leet Speak

joshua raclaw Joshua.Raclaw at colorado.edu
Sat May 6 13:18:53 PDT 2006


I haven't been able to find the interview online, but were the sexual predators
actually using leet (characterized by particular kinds of morphosyntax, lexical
items, cypher-type spellings, etc.) or just using an informal register that uses
conventions like 'lol' and 'cu l8r'?  I know MSN and the various watchdog groups
use the label 'leet' to identify ANY type of CMC-specific speech style.

Looking at the conversation transcripts from pervertedjustice.com doesn't show
much leet being used by the predators anyway, and most of the ones that are 30
and older speak fairly formally to the kids.

Joshua



Joshua Raclaw - PhD student
Department of Linguistics
University of Colorado at Boulder
http://ucsu.colorado.edu/~raclaw/


Quoting Gail Taylor <gdtaylor at uiuc.edu>:

* CNN had a guest this morning who was talking about the manner
* in which sexual predators are using Leet Speak in online
* conversations with children. This information might be of
* interest to those of you who are tracking the migration of
* leet speak from gaming environments to online conversation
* spaces. The person who was a spokesperson from
* pervertedjustice.com which maintains a web site designed to
* deter sexual predators.
*
* Prior to seeing the news story, I wasn't aware of the
* existence of this grassroot organization which is using the
* web site as a way to gather information to assist law
* enforcement agencies in identifying and arresting suspects.
* The information in the FAQ is quite interesting. There is
* information indicating this  organization has been dragged
* into court on several occasions by citizens concerned with
* civil liberty violations.
*
* Interesting site from a lot of different angles.
*
* -- Gail
*
* *****************************
* Gail D. Taylor, M.Ed.
* University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
* Human Resource Education Ph.D. Student
* Educational Psychology Teaching Assistant
*
* "The beautiful thing about learning is that no one
* can take that away from you." -- B.B. King, Blues Musician
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