Are digital media changing language ?
It's natural for languages to evolve. But what should really concern us is the way computers and mobile phones are changing our attitudes toward language
Are instant messaging and text messaging killing language?
To hear what the popular media say, a handful of OMGs (oh my god) and
smiley faces, along with a paucity of capital letters and punctuation
marks, might be bringing English to its knees.
Although journalists tend
to sensationalize the linguistic strangeness of "online lingo,"
quantitative analyses of instant messaging conversations and text
messages reveal that abbreviations, acronyms, and even misspellings are
comparatively infrequent, at least among college-age students.
For example, in a study I did of college students' instant messaging
conversations, out of 11,718 words, only 31 were "online lingo"
abbreviations, and only 90 were acronyms (of which 76 were LOL).
In a study of college students' text messaging, my colleague Rich Ling
and I found a few more lexical shortenings; I yet the grand total of
clear abbreviations was only 47 out of 1,473 words, which is hardly
overwhelming.
Yes, young people sometimes accidentally slip a btw (by the way) into a school essay.
But a recent study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project
confirms that middle school and high school students understand what
kind of language is appropriate in what context (Lenhart, Smith, &
MacGill, 2008). What's more, scholars of new
media language, such as David Crystal and Beverly Plester, remind us
that the new technologies encourage creativity, which can spill over
into school writing (Crystal, 2008; Plester, Wood, & Bell, 2008).
Sample from the text below sourced on Quest.
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