Texting has been one of the main ways of communicating and staying 'in touch' with friends, colleagues, and even our families. It has affected us in many ways including lack of a greater attention span, a decrease in face to face conversations and one of the more famously debated impacts, the decline in the use of the 'proper' or conventional words of the English language.
Let's look at two very different and interesting perspectives and explanations of this topic, that is 'Does texting have a positive or negative impact on the English language?' These research supported theories are of two linguists generally known in the world, well, at least one of them is. David Crystal and John McWhorter(???). Even though they convey the same message, I found John McWhorter's theory more relatable and interesting to hear. No offense to David Crystal (maybe a little) but his commentary of a poem to me was kind of boring because it had a lot of repetitions and I was like, 'Whoa! I get the point dude!!' Ok now back to the topic. This is a comparison of what both linguists are saying about the impact of texting on language.
John McWhorter
McWhorter believes that texting is not writing at all?!?! He believes that texting is a miraculous new way of communicating in actual speech through a piece of technology. Isn't that great? Think about it. When you speak, do you look back into your mind and articulate what you are about to say? Of course you do when you speak formally but do you articulate when you speak casually, for example with friends? Don't you follow the same principle for texting? So these are the questions McWhorter was exploring when he spoke. Research has shown that people speak casually, at an average, 7- 10 words per sentence.
What he says is that language is speech and not writing. He asks us that if we could speak like we would write, why couldn't it be possible to write like we speak. Seems fair enough right? This is exactly what texting is. Writing like you speak... He also describes texting as 'fingered speech'. Very well articulated and it makes complete sense because you type with your fingers on a piece of technology like an iPad or iPod the same way you would speak casually. This new language, he says, has new structures being formed through continuous evolution. An example of this is the changing of 'lol'- laughing out loud to 'lol'- an expression of empathy and accommodation: lol I have to do this blog, for example. According to linguists 'lol' is a pragmatic particle like Yo! in AAVE or 'ne' in Japanese.
What McWhorter's theory suggests is that the youth is creating a whole new language from English just like French from Latin! Isn't that great!!! A whole new language... WOW. He says that we are experiencing a linguistic miracle right under our noses.
David Crystal
The famous English linguist, David Crystal, doesn't talk much about evolution of the language but rather talks about how using abbreviations in texting is basically to save time and to accommodate the character limits available for a tweet or a text message. He believes that the youth has become very advanced in the language and is kind of doing a balancing act between academic English and social English, which is pretty amusing! He calls texting with abbreviations 'Textspeak' and is characterized by its 'distinctive graphology'. Am I even supposed to know what that means? Do you know it? Leave it in comments please! Anyways, he talks about how something radical has taken place and explores the fact that texting has brought up 'a much more wide-ranging and innovative set of conventions after which he also states that 'textspeak' has its own range of direct address items'. In his commentary, the part I didn't like was his random expansions of abbreviations which was repeated over and over again which all condenses to state that abbreviations can be expressed in many different ways in different circumstances and with different people. For example, CYA can either mean 'see you' or 'cover your ass'. An interesting abbreviation I saw was ROTFLMAOTIME, but who in the whole wide world would say that anyways. I certainly wouldn't and that is for the sole reason that he says we don't do it because it's not cool. However, it's expansion is 'rolling on the floor laughing my ass off with tears in my eyes'? WOW. I would rather say LMFAO and no, I am not going to expand on that in anyway whatsoever.
In conclusion, he says that abbreviation has ergonomic value and that text messaging dialects are already evolving but also states that its too soon to actually predict the future of this new found language and if it might turn into an actual language like French, maybe. He thinks that its a new literary genre with idiosyncrasies which will eventually be accepted in the society on a large scale. I do like how he ends his commentary though: 'It (Textspeak) is the latest manifestation of the human ability- and young human ability, at that- to be linguistically creative and to adapt language to suit the demands of diverse settings'. He also states that it is a language in evolution. Ok fine I take back what I said that he doesn't talk about evolution.......
The two linguists had almost similar interpretations of how texting might affect language and if it has had a positive or negative impact.
Similarities:
I think we can all agree that they think it may as well have a positive impact on language for the fact that a new language could be evolved from texting. They also believe that new words have been created and have evolved from its original meaning throughout such a short span. Basically all their ideas are similar if you think about it.
Differences:
The only actual difference I found was that David Crystal was amused by abbreviations (seeing that he writes a lot about it) and McWhorter doesn't seem to be so amused. Maybe it's the generation gap.........
Interesting......................... hmmm (not actually thinking):
http://www.ted.com/talks/john_mcwhorter_txtng_is_killing_language_jk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h79V_qUp91M
More blogs coming up on Language and Me. Do me a favor, and could you please write any other similarities or differences you observed? Thanks and it is much appreciated!
Let's look at two very different and interesting perspectives and explanations of this topic, that is 'Does texting have a positive or negative impact on the English language?' These research supported theories are of two linguists generally known in the world, well, at least one of them is. David Crystal and John McWhorter(???). Even though they convey the same message, I found John McWhorter's theory more relatable and interesting to hear. No offense to David Crystal (maybe a little) but his commentary of a poem to me was kind of boring because it had a lot of repetitions and I was like, 'Whoa! I get the point dude!!' Ok now back to the topic. This is a comparison of what both linguists are saying about the impact of texting on language.
John McWhorter
McWhorter believes that texting is not writing at all?!?! He believes that texting is a miraculous new way of communicating in actual speech through a piece of technology. Isn't that great? Think about it. When you speak, do you look back into your mind and articulate what you are about to say? Of course you do when you speak formally but do you articulate when you speak casually, for example with friends? Don't you follow the same principle for texting? So these are the questions McWhorter was exploring when he spoke. Research has shown that people speak casually, at an average, 7- 10 words per sentence.
What he says is that language is speech and not writing. He asks us that if we could speak like we would write, why couldn't it be possible to write like we speak. Seems fair enough right? This is exactly what texting is. Writing like you speak... He also describes texting as 'fingered speech'. Very well articulated and it makes complete sense because you type with your fingers on a piece of technology like an iPad or iPod the same way you would speak casually. This new language, he says, has new structures being formed through continuous evolution. An example of this is the changing of 'lol'- laughing out loud to 'lol'- an expression of empathy and accommodation: lol I have to do this blog, for example. According to linguists 'lol' is a pragmatic particle like Yo! in AAVE or 'ne' in Japanese.
What McWhorter's theory suggests is that the youth is creating a whole new language from English just like French from Latin! Isn't that great!!! A whole new language... WOW. He says that we are experiencing a linguistic miracle right under our noses.
David Crystal
The famous English linguist, David Crystal, doesn't talk much about evolution of the language but rather talks about how using abbreviations in texting is basically to save time and to accommodate the character limits available for a tweet or a text message. He believes that the youth has become very advanced in the language and is kind of doing a balancing act between academic English and social English, which is pretty amusing! He calls texting with abbreviations 'Textspeak' and is characterized by its 'distinctive graphology'. Am I even supposed to know what that means? Do you know it? Leave it in comments please! Anyways, he talks about how something radical has taken place and explores the fact that texting has brought up 'a much more wide-ranging and innovative set of conventions after which he also states that 'textspeak' has its own range of direct address items'. In his commentary, the part I didn't like was his random expansions of abbreviations which was repeated over and over again which all condenses to state that abbreviations can be expressed in many different ways in different circumstances and with different people. For example, CYA can either mean 'see you' or 'cover your ass'. An interesting abbreviation I saw was ROTFLMAOTIME, but who in the whole wide world would say that anyways. I certainly wouldn't and that is for the sole reason that he says we don't do it because it's not cool. However, it's expansion is 'rolling on the floor laughing my ass off with tears in my eyes'? WOW. I would rather say LMFAO and no, I am not going to expand on that in anyway whatsoever.
In conclusion, he says that abbreviation has ergonomic value and that text messaging dialects are already evolving but also states that its too soon to actually predict the future of this new found language and if it might turn into an actual language like French, maybe. He thinks that its a new literary genre with idiosyncrasies which will eventually be accepted in the society on a large scale. I do like how he ends his commentary though: 'It (Textspeak) is the latest manifestation of the human ability- and young human ability, at that- to be linguistically creative and to adapt language to suit the demands of diverse settings'. He also states that it is a language in evolution. Ok fine I take back what I said that he doesn't talk about evolution.......
The two linguists had almost similar interpretations of how texting might affect language and if it has had a positive or negative impact.
Similarities:
I think we can all agree that they think it may as well have a positive impact on language for the fact that a new language could be evolved from texting. They also believe that new words have been created and have evolved from its original meaning throughout such a short span. Basically all their ideas are similar if you think about it.
Differences:
The only actual difference I found was that David Crystal was amused by abbreviations (seeing that he writes a lot about it) and McWhorter doesn't seem to be so amused. Maybe it's the generation gap.........
Interesting......................... hmmm (not actually thinking):
http://www.ted.com/talks/john_mcwhorter_txtng_is_killing_language_jk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h79V_qUp91M
More blogs coming up on Language and Me. Do me a favor, and could you please write any other similarities or differences you observed? Thanks and it is much appreciated!
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