Its become a popular myth that the English language is dying a slow death at the hands of CMC and the “Net generation”, as Thurlow calls them (2003). Before you cry out that grammar, sentence structure, and vocabulary are the innocent victims of a merciless digital villain, I encourage you to read a little Shakespeare. Too much trouble you say? Hard to get through such flowery, overly structured language to really get into the story? There is a reason that nearly every high school student in America has to read Julius Caesar or Macbeth. Not only are the stories great, but its good as students to see how our language has changed, becoming more casual over time. So who has been selling us this myth that our language is under threat? According to Thurlow (2003), “it is not only lay people and journalists who are responsible for this kind of exaggerated and often prejudicial rhetoric” but academics as well (p.3).
This week, much of our readings focused on the study of instant messaging chats. One of the key messages found in our readings is that it is important to view these logs as “conversational”. When studied, these messages act more as a back and worth one would have in person. Despite being exchanged in the form of writing, these interactions did not really resemble the formal writing that is taught in school. The SMS message seems to be something of the next generation of instant messaging. With mobile technology bringing a handheld device that can do much of what our previous desktops (at the height of instant messaging, late 1990s and early 2000s) could do, SMS has become the popular way of exchanging messages that can be both synchronous and asynchronous depending on the attention of the parties involved.
Baron (2008) theorizes that a new form of English is emerging as a result of the adoption of instant messaging and text messaging, and I agree. I can see that the conversational dialogue style that comprises the average CMC exchange is more “speech than writing”, but I think this is an organic change. To say that there is a “new English” makes it seem like something radical has occurred, and I don’t see it that way. CMC technology has allowed us to communicate with each other using the written word in a more immediate way than previous technologies have provided, and we are using this technology in our everyday conversations with friends, family, and coworkers/peers. It seems natural to me that these types of quick, largely casual exchanges would more resemble our speech than our writing. In this way, it seems a more natural progression of change as a consequence of technology, and it seems to follow the natural change of our language becoming less formal over time, per my Shakespeare example.
Gender cropped up again as Baron (2010) look over instant messages exchanged between males and males, and females and females and looked at three key indicators: general discourse scaffolding, utterance breaks, and lexical issues. While male to male interactions more closely resembled their speech patterns, women were more structured with their interactions more closely resembling their writing patterns. With gender differences once again being identified within the scholarly literature, I would like to see a study where professionals try to identify the gender of the sender by only reading their exchanges. This would make a stronger case for the such defined behaviors.
In Jones and Schieffelin (2009), the AT&T commercial and subsequent reactions were explored as a means of studying the power of humor, language, and forms of “text talk” that have emerged out of CMC. The authors concluded by reviewing the reactions on YouTube that textalk is not a signal of the end of language integrity, but as a form of verbal wordplay. In this way, humor is used to poke fun at both those who didn’t understand text talk, and those who had overly adopted it.
Thurlow mentions that acacemics and journalists are extending the myth that CMC is ruining the English language. But this is nothing new. The older generations have always damned the fate of the world, blaming it on the way younger generations did things, whether related to their love of rock-and-roll or their obsession with CMC. I’m sure my generation will negatively react to new technology in ten or twenty years from now, blaming everything on our kids.
Exactly, the parents are already coming out of the woodwork about what kind of “dirty messages” the kids are exchanging on Vine and Snapchat. While I do think that Jay is correct with respect to the overuse of these mediums for sexual content, the reaction of an older generation only adds fuel to the fire and makes the mediums more attractive to “the kids”.
First of all I like your title. I,too, think that CMC killed the English language, and that who ever didn’t get the chance to read Sheakpears wonderful stories is missing alot and cannot tell the difference between the formal, very well structured English language and the informal writing that we use in texting today.I also think that beside the media the education has a big role in the changes in the English writing from formal to informal. Though, we cannot go back and live like people used to live before the innovation of the Computer and the CMC, but what can we do is to be reasonable in using the CMC and not letting it destroy our English language especially the writing part.
I agree CMC has killed the English language because it has made it so easy to forget about all the things you learned in school about sentence structure, vocabulary etc. I agree it is like organic because you get the same produce just by using different language however, this one is not good for you like organic food.
I think the point of Meagan’s post was that it is a popular *myth* that CMC killed English (hopefully she’ll stop by to confirm). Her point about Shakespeare is that language ALWAYS evolves, so it’s hyperbole to say that something is “killing” it. But change is hard, as we have discussed previously, and can cause anxiety.
You’ve managed to say more concisely what I was trying to convey in my post. Yes!
Meagan, I must admit that I was required to read Shakespeare’s work and barely understand any of it. While today’s language is understandable, it isn’t understanding the shortenings and abbreviations that I have a problem with. The issue I have with it is the actual meaning of a fair amount of it. A good percentage of text messages contain sexual references and offensive terminology that would never have gone unpunished in my day. This “text talk” is changing our way of communicating with each other to a concerning degree.
Determining the gender of a text message sender based solely on the message would make an excellent study! After reading this chapter, I started to notice the differences in text message communication between myself, my female friends, my boyfriend and other male friends. There is definitely a difference, although it is less noticeable with my younger brothers and male friends. It would be interesting to see how growing up with the technology has changed the way in which the genders communicate. For instance, my 29 year old boyfriend text messages mainly facts, while my 21 year old brother will hold hour long conversations via text message. Its strange!
Also, I love your title!
I don’t know much about research, but I do think it would be interesting to confirm these studies by doing a sort of cross-check, in reverse order. I would want to see how accurately a participant could decipher what is the gender of the sender of the messages. In traditional studies, I feel like the researchers see patterns and create categories to explain phenomena that the normal person might not detect. If the lay person could detect differences in gender, I wonder what would tip them off. Why they might think that way, without any theoretical framework? Are we semi-consciously aware of these differences based on life experience and intuition? Would that even be valid?