Do
we communicate differently online than in person? Do we write differently from how we
speak? Are online communications
different than penning written litters or writing books?
Of
course, to all of the above. A new book examines how we are now influenced by
the Internet’s use of language and how our language is becoming more fluid than
ever before.
Because
Internet: Understanding the New Rules of
Language presents the view that the rules of language get bent by the Internet and
therefore, rather than chide these violations, we must go with the flow. Accept the changes at rapid speed or remain
on the sidelines, voiceless and frustrated.
Gretchen
McCullogh, a linguist with a podcast who writes a column for Wired magazine,
highlights in her book just how the digital world will transform the English language. In fact, it already has and will continue to
do so.
You
may not lol after reading her book. You
may want to tweet something with the hashtag #EnglishScrewed. But you will feel like you understand the
world that now lives on new words spurred by new technologies to describe a
cyber-human experience.
The
world is changing – quickly. Perhaps no
faster than in how we communicate online – and what we say – with letters,
words, emojis, and punctuation (or their lack thereof).
“Linguistically
inventive online communities spread new slang and jargon with dizzying speed,
while we adapt our conversations to meet character limits and conduct our
public debates via @replies," says the book's jacket copy. "But social
media isn’t just an engine of linguistic change – it’s also a vast laboratory
of unedited, unfiltered words where we can watch our language evolve in real
time,” says the bock’s jacket copy."
Indeed,
who needs a dictionary, grammar or style book anymore. Just let the world
collectively show us, in everyday usage, how we should speak properly Emoji
here, acronym there, cap letters, or slang there and look, you have shared what
you wanted and someone understood you. Or
did they?
I
agree that English and writing styles evolve over time but I don’t believe that
we crash the system to evolve and pay hefty weight to how the ignorant choose
to grunt at us. Take your misspelled,
emoji-laced, unedited, incoherent word vomits and filter them until they
conform to not only the standards of English, but of how normal, sane,
reasonable people talk!
Some
sample excerpts from the book include these:
1.
“The
Internet, then, makes language change faster because it leads to more weak
ties, you can remain aware of people who you don’t see anymore, and your angst
to know people who you never would have met otherwise. The phenomenon of a hashtag or funny video
going viral is an example of the power of weak ties when the same thing is
shared only through strong ties, it ends up merely as an inside joke.”
2.
“The
first year that over half of Americans used the Internet was 2000, according
the Pew Research, although usage rates were already over 70% for those that
were college-educated or between the age of eighteen and twenty-nine. In 1995, a mere, 3 percent of Americans had
visited a web page, and only a third had a personal computer.”
3.
“The
first iPhone come out in 2007, and American smartphone sales first surpassed
sales of non-smart cellphones inn 2011, with the same shift happening globally
in 2013. Most of us find
that it’s worth trading away some privacy for the sake of having a life. Instead of embracing hermithood, we seek a
balance: one study found that people differentiated between the kind of
information that they’d share in a post versus in a chat message rating
information about their hobbies or favorite TV shows as less intimate and
therefore more likely to be shared in a post than their fears, concerns, and
personal feelings, which they preferred to share in a private message, if at
all. In other areas people disagreed,
such as about the privacy of political or religious opinions and life events
like births or marriages, which probably explains why it sometimes feels like
others are oversharing or overly reticent.”
4.
“We’re
used to the idea that language changes, at least somewhat. One generation’s new slang is another’s tired
cliché. We don’t talk like
Shakespeare. And so on. But what’s less apparent is that macrolevel
conversation norms have changed and will keep changing. Sometimes they change because new technology
arises; sometimes the underlying technology is practically unchanged but its
social context is different. Telephones
changed our greetings, and smart-phones changed them again. Business communication spent a whole century
getting less ornate, from memos to emails to chat. Posts have a long and complicated
relationship with the public sphere.
Chat became more intimate and conversational as more people started using
it. Videochat may be switching in the
opposite direction: becoming more like a third place hangout with the rise of video
“chilling” apps like Houseparty, which lets you drop in on a group videochat
with whichever of your friends happen to be around. The current configuration of sites that
provide us with first and second and third places has changed before and will,
in all likelihood, change again, but the appeal of having friends in your
pocket is unlikely to go away.”
5.
“We
know that language as a human ability is so very old – some hundred thousand
years older than any form of writing – and what that means is that language is
incredibly durable. We know that we’ve
met many societies without any form of writing system, but we’ve met any
without spoken or signed language at all.
Furthermore, linguistic complexity is unrelated to the complexity of the
material culture it comes from. Language
has existed with or without all kinds of technology – writing, agriculture,
aqueducts, electricity, industrialization, automobiles, airplanes, cameras,
photocopiers, televisions – and the internet is no exception. In fact, language’s only known predator is
other people: many languages have been
stamped out or imposed on others through war or conquest.”
6.
“The
changeability of language is its strength:
if children had to copy exactly how their parents spoke in order for
language to be transmitted, language would be brittle and fragile. It would be losable, the way that ancient
techniques for art or architecture can be lost.
But because we remake language at every generation, because we learn it
from our peers, not just our elders, because we can make ourselves understood
even though we all speak subtly different personal varieties, language is
flexible and strong.
“But now that we
can think of language like the internet, it’s clear that there is space for
innovation, space for many Englishes and many other languages besides, space
for linguistic playfulness and creativity. There’s space, in this glorious
linguistic web, for you.”
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Brian Feinblum’s insightful
views, provocative opinions, and interesting ideas expressed in this terrific
blog are his alone and not that of his employer or anyone else. You can – and
should -- follow him on Twitter @theprexpert and email him at
brianfeinblum@gmail.com. He feels much more important when discussed in the
third-person. This is copyrighted by BookMarketingBuzzBlog ©2019. Born and
raised in Brooklyn, he now resides in Westchester. His writings are often
featured in The Writer and IBPA’s Independent. This was named one of the
best book marketing blogs by Book Baby
http://blog.bookbaby.com/2013/09/the-best-book-marketing-blogs and recognized
by Feedspot in 2018 as one of the top book marketing blogs. Also named by
WinningWriters.com as a "best resource.” He recently hosted a panel on
book publicity for Book Expo America.
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