America’s youth spends an inordinate amount of time text messaging and instant messaging. They constantly feel the need to send every little thing that pops into their head to their friends. As technology continues to grow and develop, the pace of these instant conversations becomes quicker. Today’s youth is becoming more adept at handling the mind numbing speed of the “real world”, but are they also causing the destruction of written language?
You see them at work, in schools, on sports fields, in churches, in grocery stores, and even in your home. They are cell phones; America’s greatest luxury and perhaps the down fall of written language. When cell phones were first produced for the masses in 1982 they were a truly novel idea. Imagine the ease and simplicity having a cell phone could add your life. You could talk to anyone, anywhere, any time. No more missed meetings because you couldn’t get a hold of someone! If you got a flat on the highway you could easily call for help and get back in the fast lane.
Cell phones really helped to improve the lives of millions, and then text messaging was introduced. Now instead of having to dial the number, wait for someone to answer, and then engage your vocal chords to actually physically speak to someone, you could “type” out what you wanted to say. Yes, text messaging saves the trouble of a phone call to say “Meet me at 7,” but it also takes away the person-to-person interaction that a phone call involves.
Ok, so maybe text messaging itself isn’t so bad. It saves costly mobile phone minutes and you can text someone on the go much more discreetly than you can have a conversation with them. That’s all fine and dandy. But teens and tweens (and most twenty-somethings) aren’t using text messaging for short questions. They're using it to have full blown conversations. We’re talking 40 exchanges or more. To have a dialogue like that takes time. So to speed things up shorthand came into use. Ever gotten the message “C U L8r”? How about “g2g”? Or “Don’t 4get 2 bring the snax!” And those are some of the easier abbreviations to decipher!
This commercial demonstrates the lengths to which some texters go in order to speed up a cellular rendezvous. Text messaging has fulfilled our desire to be so lazy that we no longer need to use our voices or write out complete sentences. And don’t think for one minute that instant messaging gets off the hook. It also requires absolutely no personal contact with another human being and no proper use of the English language. But instant messaging takes it one step further and allows us to abbreviate our emotions. We use “emoticons“ to show our feelings; “I miss you :-(", “Can‘t wait for the party! :-D" or my personal favorite “lol“ pop up in our conversations. <3 = love? Is this some new kind of calculus?
These all appear semi-instantaneously on my screen. Well, sorta anyway. AOL Instant Messenger (my program of choice) has this handy feature that lets you see when the person you’re “chatting” with is typing. Well I’m about to one-up them. You know what’s faster than that, AIM? Actually talking to the person in real time!
I’m all for having instant messenger, for the same reason I would rather leave an e-mail than a voice message. I can think about what I want to say before I say it, I never stutter, have a Freudian slip, or mutter when I type. And text messaging sure comes in handy when I’m in class and want to ask my brother to pick up some milk on his way home. But the “terminology” is slipping into our spoken language now too. I cringe a little when someone says “BRB!” And it actually takes longer (more syllables) to say WTF than What the F*@#! (And it carries a lot more meaning when you actually use the profanity.)
And its not just the fact that we compact our words so much that they become meaningless gibberish. All grammar, spelling, and punctuation has been thrown out the window as well. When’s the last time someone put an apostrophe in the word don’t, a period at the end of a sentence, or capitalized the letter I in a text message? You’re simply takes too long to type out, so its no wonder your is used for both the possessive and the contraction (and it explains why kids don’t know the difference). Night becomes nite, before transforms into b4, and any word that sounds like a letter is shortened into a one character phonics lesson.
What will the future think when they look back on logs of text of instant messages? Is our language destined to become the next set of cryptic hieroglyphics? idk but i g2g now prou. c u 2moro! ttyl :-P
I lessthanthree this blog. :-)
I'll admit, I use chat speak in my spoken conversations. Because I think it's funny to say "omg," and "brb mom!" though, not because I'm too lazy to say "mom, I'll be right back."
I also hate talking on the phone. I don't know why, I just do. That's really why I like texting and instant messaging.
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I agree. I know a lot of people that text allthe time instead of talking on the phone. A lot of them say it is cheaper than talking on the phone and using up all the minutes. I hate doing it because it is so time consuming . I am old fashion. But in my state , they have a new phone company called MetroPCS. You can have unlimited talk time for 50.00 a month. 3.00 a month for unlimited texting. But I saw this girl on Dr. Phil who liked to text and drive. Texting is not a need, it is just a convienient want.
I think its important to make some distinctions here. The spoken version and the written version of a language are two separate entities and are not the same. This is most evident with languages with pictoral orthographies like Chinese. But it's also evident with English. Spoken English doesn't have apostrophes and words like "buff" and "rough" rhyme, but have very different spellings.
Linguistically speaking, there is no such thing as "improper use" of a language by a native speaker. Spoken languages are organic and change, not deteriote, over time. As long as speakers of the language can be understand eachother, its considered "proper use".
Linguists develop and use descriptive grammars which are descriptions of languages as they work currently. Educators use prescriptive grammars, which are rules that teach how a language should be used. Prescriptive grammars are the kind we are taught in school and we're taught to apply them to both spoken and written language. Many of the rules are rather strange and arbitrary ( like "you and I" instead of "you and me") and are supposed to be used to "maintain the integrity" of English. It's a kind of "holding down the fort" mentality that you seem to be espousing in your blog.
The way people abbrieviate during texting really has no effect on spoken language. People don't really talk like the girl in the phone commercial. As for the effect on written language. Abbreviations are used for convenience and are only effective in communication among people who know what they stand for. Which is why they work well for personal note-taking or for the texting or instant messenger communities. But its highly unlikely that texting abbreviations with spill over into everyday written communication or literature, because they only work for a handfull of everyday words and conventional phrases.
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All excellent points in your reply, Esuffern. So, text messaging and instant messaging probably won't completely undermine all of our language. You don't really see people use abbreviations like that in literature. And, most people don't use the abbreviations in their every day language.
That said, I personally find the abbreviations kind of annoying. Sort of from the "holding down the fort" mentality that you say I have, but also just because its easier to read a sentence where someone has written out all of the words for you. (Plus, even at 22, I'm stuck trying to figure out some the "translations" for the shortened words.) I realize that language is ever-changing and I don't think we should stop it from changing, I just hope this kind of writing doesn't become the norm.
Also, I think that the the words that are changed for ease (especially when texting) like night to nite and you're to your are really causing our youth to not know the difference. As an educator I constantly see students who don't realize that you're and your mean two completely separate things. Yeah, I'm a bit old-fashioned, but I guess its mostly because of my experience as a teacher. I want to see students write fluently and "professionally" in the English language.
Because you titled your blog "...Destroying Our Language" I figured that's what you actually meant. Instead it seems like you meant that texting abbreviations are preventing teenagers from learning the correct way to use written English. I get that idea from your quote below.
I want to see students write fluently and "professionally" in the English language.
I think that if this had been the central idea of your post, it would have been a lot more sensible and a lot less sensationalist. My response is that there is a time and a place for everything. Teenagers and the rest of the texting/AIM community can use abbreviations for convenience in texting and teachers can firmly instruct them that to be coherent and clear in academic assignments and other forms of written expression, they should use properly spelled and punctuated sentences. That's what I do. As we are all well aware, using texting language on this site makes a person look uneducated.
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I agree whole heartedly however i believe our generation killed language first with im's to this day people can not type complete words,spelling is terrible and sometimes you can't even understand what the person is trying to say with out and internet/slang dictionary
Don't you think people said the same things when telephones were invented?
"Why can't you just walk next door and have an ACTUAL conversation rather than picking up a phone, dialing it, and waiting for them to answer?"
:D
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The telephone is SO impersonal! Tee hee. That said, I text all the time.
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I agree with you. When I text, I do use correct grammer. It's good practice. The only time I abreviate words is when the text is too long and I need to shorten it.
I also "lessthanthree" this blog!
Ugh, I hate IM speak--especially when used in the wrong context. I mean, saying "lol" in conversation is cute and all, but a little annoying. If you are truly "lol" then you're laughing out loud! Then you don't have to say "I'm laughing out loud" after you laugh out loud (in face-to-face conversation of course).
I can't decipher half of IM lingo, and I'm of this generation that understands it most. When I email or IM, I write it all out 90% of the time. Occassionally I'll use numbers by just typing the symbol (7) or shorten words like you hear in "normal" conversation, (like "gonna") but I usually take the time to type it out.
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