The Globe Keeps Texting
When it’s not busy making us drowsy, the Globe appears to have named itself steward of the English language. Back in April, the paper editorialized about a study that reveals that kids these days don’t understand standard English because they communicate mainly in text shorthand by writing their opinion in the same pseudo-language. Kind of silly, if you ask us.
Today, the Globe reports that rumors of English’s death have been greatly exaggerated.
OMG.
A recent survey, by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, found that a quarter of teenagers sprinkled emoticons like the well-worn smiley face into schoolwork, while twice as many flouted capitalization and punctuation rules.
But others are not so quick to write the obituary for coherent language.
A growing body of research shows electronic communications channels like instant messaging have created a kind of semi-speech - language that is between talking and writing. Some say it is evidence of evolution, not of decay.
Srsly, you guys. This is not that big a deal. For generations, people have feared that their spawn would be the ones to kill off the English language.
Back when I was in high school, you still had to explain what ROTFLMAO meant, but grammarians worried that our inability to speak a complete sentence without dropping a “like” every other word meant our generation would ruin America’s ability to, like, communicate. But a decade later, we still continue to understand one another.
However, we completely support reinstating corporal punishment in our schools if kids think it’s a good idea to put smiley faces in their papers. We even knew to keep the “likes” at bay when writing about The Scarlet Letter.
June 16th, 2008 at 3:47 pm
The English language has been in decline since William Shakespeare first put his pen to parchment or when Noah Webster was first trying to turn English into an American language.
Like all trend stories, these are compelling because they’re easy to write and fun to read and rail against. You too can generate your own bogus trend from the comfort of your own easy chair.
1) Cull an anecdote from your friends and family. “Wow, my son keeps text messaging and that bill is driving me crazy. It’s probably responsible for his moral decline.”
2) Find someone that agrees with you and call them an expert. “Hey Joe, I saw you wrote a column about this, can I quote you on it?”
3) Insert controversy/insanity. “Hey, text messaging is going to kill us all.
4) Profit.
Plus, when someone calls you on your bullshit the paper can always print a new trend story about the exact opposite phenomenon.