This study presents an overview of
cyber Thai language user behavior. The
majority of key informants used social media
and cyber Thai language for contacting
friends. But in the case of contacting a senior
user or unknown user, they tended to use
official Thai language. This is intriguing
because it does not seem to be typical Thai
social communication compared with the
offline, face-to-face or telephone. Therefore,
the social media could be a new alternative
channel of communication at present. This
can be seen as a shift of broadcast
mechanism rooted in the conversations
among peer groups, business users, or even
strangers.
The majority of key informants knew
and learned cyber Thai language from friends
and gave reasons that they used this kind of
language because it was easy to understand
and communicate with others. The result also
supports Mitchell (1986) that cyber language
provided a creative way to communicate
faster.
The findings show that the majority of
key informants did not believe that the
characteristic of cyber Thai language could
reveal true personality and they did not think
that the limitation of devices such as a
mobile phone, a personal computer, a laptop,
etc. could affect cyber Thai language user
behavior. The findings argued Wasow (2007)
that users could identify friends on their
personal profiles without seeking approval.
The results showed that most users did not
believe all behavior and opinions of users on
social media were their true personality.
Finally, trend of cyber Thai language
in the future from key informants’ aspects
seemed to be as follows: (1) More new cyber
Thai language, either words or symbols will
be created, (2) More users will use cyber Thai
language in communication, and (3) Official,
International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences
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conventional Thai language will be more
distorted. The result supports Crystal (2001)’s
idea that cyber language was going to change
the fundamental way of communication,
because it was a linguistic singularity and a
genuine new medium.