OMG! Is texting wrecking our language?

How many times have you heard someone say that texting is ruining your spelling? Or, perhaps even more dramatically, the whole English language? It’s a point of debate that has only intensified with the advent of smartphones and permanent connection to the Internet wherever you go, but – as you may not be surprised to hear – linguists find that the situation is actually more complicated than that.

- See you l8er?
- LOL

Sali Tagliamonte, along with various colleagues and students at the University of Toronto, did a study between 2009 and 2010, where they collected almost 200,000 words of data. These were conversations from emails, texts and instant messenger conversations, which mostly came from Facebook – all forms of computer mediated communication, or CMC for short. The students, along with these samples, were also asked to show a piece of formal written work, as a point of comparison. Tagliamonte chose to analyse three different linguistic features across the corpus: acronyms and other short forms, such as lol; intensifiers, such as really or literally; and future temporal reference, or more specifically, the use of go in the future tense. After checking their frequency across the four formats, Tagliamonte found some interesting results.

Unsurprisingly, the formal written work had no acronyms, and very few intensifiers; only very, out of all of them, showed up. As for the future tense, the only attested form was will – bog-standard formal English. So far, so boring. Where the interesting divisions lie is when looking at the different types of CMC.

Emails were found to consistently be the most formal, with writing coming in much larger chunks than their texted or messaged counterparts, and very few acronyms or intensifiers. Then there was a tie between SMS (texts) and IM (instant messages), with more rapid exchange of turns, and far more acronyms and intensifiers. In particular, the intensifier so was very common in the SMS corpus, probably because this was back in the dark ages of character limits on text messages. On the other hand, going to as a temporal marker was actually less common than its other future tense counterparts. This suggests that, contrary to Tagliamonte’s original prediction, the use of going to is actually more conservative than other shortened forms such as i’ll and ima. The upshot of these observations, though, is that the students had stable registers across each form of writing, with the grammar remaining stable in each medium.

Another interesting observation was the trajectory of the acronym lol. Evidence in this corpus shows it is still the most popular of all CMC acronyms, but it has been found to have decreased in use, before increasing again. By examining its placement in the sentence (whether it was used in the middle of a phrase or at the ends), Tagliamonte found that it was usually used at the end of sentences and standing alone, suggesting it is now being used as filler.

Of course, the study still has some drawbacks. For one, as Tagliamonte notes, there was still a strong distinction between texts and instant messages back in 2010, as not everyone had smartphones with full access to the Internet. Now that everyone uses Whatsapp, iMessage, or whatever other messenger app you care to use, the distinction between texting and instant messaging has been blurred. If the study were to be repeated now, therefore, there would almost be no point in separating the two as different categories. There is also the issue of emojis; is it possible that the popular lol has now been overthrown by😃? Regardless, however, it is fairly certain to say you won’t be writing “omg Macbeth was so crazy lol” in an English essay any time soon!

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Tagliamonte, S. A.  in collaboration with Dylan Uscher, Lawrence Kwok, and students from HUM199Y 2009 and 2010 (2016). So sick or so cool? The language of youth on the internet. Language in Society 45: 1-32.

doi: 10.1017/S0047404515000780

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This summary was written by MarinaMerryweather

A little blog about the vlog

You might think the internet consists mainly of cat videos (see our earlier post on Lolcats), but I would like to draw your attention to another online genre which has received much less attention – the video blog (vlog).

Vlogs typically feature a single speaker talking to a camera and can be found on online platforms such as YouTube. Yet, while the speaker addresses a non-present audience, he or she uses many of the features one employs in face-to-face conversation, but with a twist. How exactly do these features differ? And what strategies do vloggers use to involve their audience?

In face-to-face conversation, people can indicate participant roles (for example, addressee or eavesdropper) through the content of their speech, such as using terms of address (Jack, or Jane), personal pronouns (you) and questions. In vlogs, the addressees are not present and the speaker may not even know who they are. Maximiliane Frobenius’ analysis of 30 YouTube videos posted online found that vloggers negotiate this uncertainty by using strategies such as if-clauses (e.g. if you’re interested), medium-specific terms (e.g. vlog fans, youtubers), and the default –general terms of address such as you or you guys).

Such strategies motivate the audience to respond to the vlog and leave comments, which may refer back to the content of the vlog. In one example a vlogger playfully referred to users of digital media that traditionally use keyboards as keyboard cowboys. This metaphorical term motivated the audience to respond: one viewer took up and extended the metaphor to comment in writing that other users “maybe just didn’t like straddling their keyboards”.

In real life, a conversation usually has a history which includes previous conversations between the participants, which may be mentioned or referenced. This is also the case with vlogs (e.g. “If you’ve seen my latest vid…”), but there are several differences. In vlogs speakers talk directly into a camera, and have absolute control over topic and wording. Also, the vlog may remain online until the vlogger removes it.

Another difference is that in everyday conversation people must be physically near each other. In vlogs, on the other hand, the physical space that the speaker/hearer are situated in, is not the space where communication takes place. This property can be taken up creatively by the vlogger, like in the following example in line 5:

1 and it’s four hours and ten minutes in running time.

2 if you want to win a copy of this,

3 all we ask is you tell us your favourite uh,

4 Doctor Who:.. uh dalek uh episode,

5 uhm .t and if you just put it in the comments which is just below down here, {points down}

6 uh and uh the winner will be drawn in seven days from now.

The vlogger, asking the viewers about their favourite Dr Who episode, uses a medium-specific gesture. He points at a comments section, which does not really exist in his physical surroundings. By this creative use of gesture, he demonstrates his ability to imagine the viewer’s perspective.

Unlike face-to-face conversation, gaze shift in vlogs can’t be used to signal to listeners that they are being directly addressed, or to show speakers whether the listeners are following what they are saying, as vloggers usually look into a camera but have no access to their viewers’ gaze. However, gaze can play a role when others enter a vlogger’s surroundings, who may not be seen by the audience. By shifting the gaze away from the viewers and then back, especially when accompanied by comments, the vlogger can signal to the audience that they are the ones being addressed. Obviously in face-to-face interactions this sort of commentary would be unnecessary as participants would be able to easily identify the reason for the loss of attention, such as a flatmate… or a cat!

Frobenius, Maximilane (2014) Audience design in monologues: How vloggers involve their viewers. Journal of Pragmatics 72:59-72

doi.10.1016/j.pragma.2014.02.008

This summary was written by Danniella Samos