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TED Talk Tuesday: Faculty Respond

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If you read my recent post about TED Talk Tuesday at Chapman, I only discussed my response to the speaker. However we were fortunate enough to have two Chapman professors provide their insight and feedback – Claudine Jaenichen and Kelli Fuery.

Claudine began with a discussion about how we interpret the actual visual aspect of texting. She touched on how people use emojis, smileys, capitol letters, punctuation, and formatting to convey a message. For example, the use of “LOL” and “haha” have evolved over the years. Instead of simply meaning literally “laughing out loud,” “LOL” stands for empathy or a marker of interest. “haha” lightens the tone of a message and indicates that something was amusing, not necessarily something you actually laughed at. We use ALL CAPS to signal excitement or anger. We add in smiley faces and emojis to attempt to portray a facial expression, body language, tone, or feeling. When the communication is simply visual, we create this whole new strategy for portraying our actual attitude. In addition, she highlighted how the language you use varies based on your relationship with the reciever as well as the status/job/personality of the receiver of the message. For example, a parent may appreciate a message such as “Hello! How are you?” whereas a close friend may expect a message such as “hey how r u” – it all depends on who the audience is.

Kelli explained how she had issue with the assumption that “texters” are generally youth. When asked for a raise of hands of who texts, all but one person in the room had their hands in the air. The audience was filled with people of every age group and background. She emphasized that it’s important to not associate texting only with youth because other generations use it as well – meaning a wide variety of strategies, styles, and audiences. John McWhorter explained that speech tends to be looser, more telegraphic, and less reflective. She believes that yes, speech is less reflective, however it is much more genuine, authentic, and natural. It does not make sense to apply formal grammar rules to something so informal such as texting and speech. Texting is a new form of visual communication, not a degradation of language. Both formal and informal writing have their appropriate places and share an equal importance.

Lifestyle

TED Talk Tuesday: “Txting is Killing Language – JK!!”

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Today I had the privilege of attending Chapman University’s first TED Talk Tuesday event – John McWhorter’s talk “Txting is Killing Language – JK!!”

Every other Tuesday, Chapman screens a selected TED Talk and then professors lead a discussion afterwards. McWhorter examines how the development of texting has affected language both spoken and written. Check out the video here:

McWhorter opens with “texting is a miraculous thing.” Later he refers to it as a “linguistic miracle.” All in all, McWhorter has some great points. He addresses many concerns about texting decreasing the quality of writing by pointing out that texting is not about writing, but about simply communicating in a very convenient and efficient manner.

Historically, speech came first and writing followed. Texting revolves around writing how we speak. People argue that we should do the exact opposite – speak how we write. This does happen, but more and more frequently in a formal setting. If speaking how we write is acceptable, then why is the reverse considered less important and less correct? It shouldn’t.

In fact, McWhorter argues it should be considered even more important. He refers to texting as this “emergent complexity.” That texting does not represent a decline in language, but more of a progression. Texting is an expansion of language – if not its own language. So those that can understand and communicate this way could even be considered bilingual – a strong intellectual asset.

I also believe that understanding when it is appropriate to use proper grammar versus slang versus emojis versus full sentences is an important skill to learn. The ability to communicate to different audiences and tailoring your message to them individually creates a social awareness.

All in all, I agree with the majority of what McWhorter discusses. However, I do believe texting has very significant downfalls. For example, texting has a casual air to it and may not always be appropriate. The other would be that texting often results in more misunderstandings than in writing and other forms of communicating. Tone of voice and body language are lost. There are many ways to compensate for this – emojis, punctuation, all caps, etc. However, it is not the same.

The final concern I have around texting is the lack of knowledge of spelling, grammar, and punctuation it has. Yes, many people text with proper grammar and spelling. However, it is more common to let these rules go. There are many different ways to learn these essential skills, so I’m not saying that texting causes people to loose their ability to write properly. I’m just acknowledging that proper writing is no longer required necessarily for every day communications via text. The popularity and frequent use of texting causes people to have a tendency to ignore these rules outside of texting. Also, instead of reading news sources or written information using formal and correct grammar, they are more used to reading news and information with informal and incorrect grammar. The frequency of this is the cause of the problem. Student’s have smaller vocabularies and struggle to learn basic grammar rules because they are accustomed to the short-hand, informal style of texting.

There’s no question about it – texting has changed our language. Some argue it’s for the better, the others for the worse. No, texting is not killing language. It is simply changing it. However, there is no denying that since communication is evolving so quickly with technology, it’s difficult to maintain the “old” rules of language.