Monash University chair of linguistics Professor Kate Burridge said internet communication, or

"e-communication", on social networking websites was loosening the "straitjacket effect" of written English.

Like it or not, some changes are here to stay.

Professor Burridge said writing was like a straitjacket that kept language in line, because people had to follow rules in dictionaries and grammar books.

"On the internet, people are writing as they are speaking and putting their own personality and spelling into their writing with no editing, which leads to different dialects

and regional variety.

"Before dictionaries and grammar books, there was no right way to speak, so all the variations were used. In a way we're returning to earlier times."

Acronyms such as LOL (laugh out loud), A/S/L (age, sex, location), AFAIK (as far as I know), were another variety of jargon, she said.

"There is already an incredible variation in English: professional jargon, age-related jargon, gender-related jargon. This is just another variation.

"LOL has gone into ordinary use. I find that uninteresting, though, because vocabulary will change all the time. What is interesting is the idea of change taking hold more rapidly."

Professor Burridge said e-communication was speeding up the rate of change.

"In earlier times, change took many years. 'Gonna' is a word used so frequently that it will replace 'going to', just as 'will' replaced 'shall'.

"'Will' took many years to replace, but 'gonna' will happen much more quickly because, if we're using e-communication with small keyboards and screen sizes, we're going to use 'gonna'. It's also becoming true of words such as 'wanna' and 'hafta'."

Professor Burridge describes herself as a "laid-back linguist".

While some people might feel the changes are polluting the English language, she is fascinated by them.

"Standard mainstream language today was often the bugbear of people in the past," she said.