Visões da língua(gem) em comentários sobre internetês não é língua portuguesa

This paper aims to discuss the representation that university students of letters and pedagogy courses use in the so-called “internetês”, a grapholinguistic form which has been spread in digital genres such as chats, blogs and social networks as the orkut. Popularly, the “internetês” is known as “portuguese language as written on the internet”, characterized by word simplifications that would consider, in the formation process, the spoken genre (the non-standard and stigmatized varieties) of language, rather than the written genre (the standard and prestigious varieties). By means of a textual composition activity, the students were supposed to discuss the relevance of the statement internetês não é língua portuguesa, paying attention tosome theoretical conceptions about language (both in idiomatic and systematic terms), speaking – writing relation and literacy, assessed in a reading and writing practice course. This paper seeks to discuss, mainly, university students’ representation of their own language. The hypothesis is that those students who think that internetês não é língua portuguesa conceive portuguese language as a set of grammatical rules which must be followed whatever the circumstances might be, especially concerning written language. Based on the reflections of Corrêa (2004) – o modo heterogêneo de constituição da escrita – this paper attempts to show that language is heterogeneous in its conception, which makes it impossible to think “internetês” as a simple representation of speech or as textual composition influenced by spoken language