{"id":653740,"date":"2013-04-22T10:28:35","date_gmt":"2013-04-22T14:28:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.ted.com\/?p=74982"},"modified":"2013-04-22T11:18:03","modified_gmt":"2013-04-22T15:18:03","slug":"texting-as-a-miraculous-thing-6-ways-our-generation-is-redefining-communication","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/653740","title":{"rendered":"Texting as a “miraculous thing”: 6 ways our generation is redefining communication"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"John<\/a><\/p>\n

John McWhorter asks us to think of texting less as “written language” and more as “fingered speech.” Photo: James Duncan Davidson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Texting is not a blight on the English language, says linguist John McWhorter in today\u2019s talk<\/a>, given at TED2013. Rather, texting is a \u201cmiraculous thing\u201d: a novel linguistic mode that\u2019s redefining the way we communicate with each other — for the better.<\/p>\n

\"JohnJohn McWhorter: Txtng is killing language. JK!!!<\/span><\/a>McWhorter points out that texting shouldn\u2019t be categorized as written language –but as speech. This shift makes the apparent problem of grammatical errors seem misplaced and unimportant.<\/p>\n

If we think of texting as \u201cfingered speech,\u201d as McWhorter puts it, it also opens our eyes to texting\u2019s distinct linguistic rules, structures and nuances. McWhorter dives into the example of \u201clol,\u201d which originally stood for \u201claughing out loud.\u201d But over the past few years, \u201clol\u201d has \u201cevolved into something that is much subtler,\u201d signifying empathy and accommodation.<\/p>\n

As the mediums through which we communicate quickly multiply, our modes of communication are following suit. After you’ve watched the talk<\/a>, here are some more examples of new linguistic forms that have developed in tandem with technology.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Like \u201clol,\u201d hashtags<\/b> started out with a literal function: making topics easy to tag, and thus search for, on Twitter. But in 2010, Susan Orlean, a writer and avid tweeter, pointed out that hashtags had taken on an emotional resonance<\/a>. Orlean gives this (dated, sorry) example: \u201cSarah Palin for President??!? #Iwouldratherhaveamoose.\u201d She writes that, while no one would search for \u201cIwouldratherhaveamoose,\u201d its use here \u201cmakes it look like it\u2019s being muttered into a handkerchief; when you read it you feel like you\u2019ve had an intimate moment in which the writer leaned over and whispered \u2018I would rather have a moose!\u2019 in your ear.\u201d Hashtags can also be used to indicate a joke, or even — when employed back-to-back –comment on the hashtag that came before. \u201cAmazing how rich and complex 140 characters with a few symbols thrown in can be,\u201d Orlean writes. And how much richer they are now, three years later.
    \n.<\/span><\/li>\n
  2. GIFs<\/b>, those omnipresent video loops, are nothing new: they date back to 1987<\/a>. But in recent years, they\u2019ve started to populate blogs and articles, standing in for written descriptions, often to hilarious effect. Take #WhatShouldWeCallMe<\/a> (there\u2019s that hashtag again!), a Tumblr started by two friends in law school on opposite sides of the country<\/a>, where Austin Powers stands in for the boundless joy of discovering your roommate has cleaned<\/a> and a panda illustrates massive post-party regret<\/a>. Or this personal essay<\/a> about a New Yorker\u2019s experience during Hurricane Sandy, where the accompanying GIFs help make the horrifying event lighter and easier to process.
    \n.<\/span><\/li>\n
  3. \u201cFingered speech\u201d though it may be, cellphone communication is generating new avenues for writing, too. In 2008, The New York Times <\/i>reported from Japan that cellphone novels<\/b><\/a> (what they sound like: novels written on cellphones) had dominated the previous year\u2019s list of best-selling books. One woman wrote hers, which hit number five on the best-sellers list, during her commute to work. \u201c[M]any cellphone novelists had never written fiction before, and many of their readers had never read novels before, according to publishers,\u201d the Times <\/i>article notes. (A 2010 Los Angeles Times <\/i>article indicated the trend was still in full force.<\/a>)
    \n.<\/span><\/li>\n
  4. More recently, Twitter, too, has been coopted as a tool for fiction. Last year, Jennifer Egan wrote a short story in 140-character nuggets, which were posted on Twitter<\/a> before they were published in The New Yorker<\/i> as \u201cBlack Box<\/a>.\u201d A few months later, novelist Elliott Holt wrote her own Twitter story<\/b><\/a>, creating three different avatars\/characters and posting from \u201ctheir\u201d accounts. \u201cThe three characters have distinct voices\u2014and by telling the story through them, Holt embraces Twitter for what it is, rather than trying to bend it into some tool that it isn\u2019t,\u201d Slate <\/i>opined<\/a>. \u201cWith its simultaneous narrators and fractured storyline, this is not the kind of tale that could march steadily across a continuous expanse of white space. It\u2019s actually made for the medium.\u201d
    \n.<\/span><\/li>\n
  5. Email signoffs<\/b>, as all things, have their haters: many a screed has implored humanity to dispense with these vulgar written appendages. (Admittedly, this rant<\/a> in Slate<\/i> is hilarious: \u201cMy transition from signoff submissive to signoff subversive began when a former colleague ended an email to me with \u2018Warmest regards.\u2019 Were these scalding hot regards superior to the ordinary \u2018Regards\u2019 I had been receiving on a near-daily basis?\u201d) But others among us appreciate the space for expression that signoffs offer. Sadie Stein, in the Paris Review Daily<\/i>, explains her own choice, \u201cAs ever<\/a>.\u201d And a few years ago, The New York Times<\/i> offered this survey<\/a> of signoffs from a bishop\u2019s \u201c+\u201d to Norman Mailer\u2019s \u201cCheers\u201d to the author\u2019s own \u201cCarpe Diem.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    John McWhorter was a part of TED\u2019s worldwide talent search<\/a>, giving a shorter version of his talk at the New York stop of the tour. After the talk, he sat down with the TED Blog for this short Q&A \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n

    McWhorter would also like to thank his students at Columbia University for teaching him about the new world of texting: specifically Yin Yin Lu, Sarah Tully, and Laura Milmed for the miracle of “slash.”<\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    John McWhorter asks us to think of texting less as “written language” and more as “fingered speech.” Photo: James Duncan Davidson Texting is not a blight on the English language, says linguist John McWhorter in today\u2019s talk, given at TED2013. Rather, texting is a \u201cmiraculous thing\u201d: a novel linguistic mode that\u2019s redefining the way we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7342,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-653740","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/653740","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7342"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=653740"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/653740\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=653740"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=653740"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=653740"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}