Most of our discussions around here often include some sarcasm or ironic statements, and alas! Many are missed because of the text based system we use, and those emotions (amond others) are based on large part on the perception of body language, obviously absent in a online situation.
We try to alleviate the situation with those little smily faces we all see, to show anger, frustration, embarassement, or whatever. But obviously those fall short of expression the range of emotions available in face to face speach.
So the question- Do you think the advent of the internet, along with textual communication becoming more and more common online, will result in our written language changing in a noticable way? Will our language become more emotivally descriptive to pick up the slack of not having a visual link to the reader? Will our vocabulary improve?
