Grammar and everyday life

[Jabberwocky]

I have gone back and forth on if this is Second Opinion or Words, if I chose poorly apologies . I found a blog post I liked on the subject & thought I'd see what anyone else thought.

http://blog.philippahammond.net/2008/07/15/is-text-speak-really-so-bad/

However, there is a difference between the language we use in official publications and translations, and the language we use to communicate via instant, informal methods such as text messages, social networking sites and emails. Think about it: in speaking on the phone to friends and relatives, only the proudest people would claim to be able to hold conversations free from mistakes in word order, use of the possessive, tense etc., every single time they pick up the phone. We must all accept that we are human, that instant communication methods require us to think on our feet; our brains simply don’t have time to focus on the message of what we’re saying and the grammar within it. We have moved far beyond the era of telegrams and communicating solely by posted letter and we have adapted accordingly, as humans are so adept at doing.

 

[thujone]

i don't understand. there is no new thought in this latest iteration on the topic. it also doesn't make any sense at all to mention telegrams alongside written letters in such a context since telegrams were pay-per-word and thus contained more syntactic issues than the average text message.

 

[Jabberwocky]

telegrams affected culture syntax and usage stop people had to compose messages with a limited number of characters stopmuch like text having a limit of 140 characters stop used abbreviations like wx for weather and dx for distance that made it into regular usage stop some people thought such influence from tech was unsightly stop

And yes the blog post was a synthesis of others ideas with links. 92.7850 % of the web is such and the remainder is made up.

 

[thujone]

ah i see stop

i guess there are a lot of people against the evolution of english or language in general. it's funny, how english used to be so heavily influenced by other languages now it is english that influences all other languages. people who barely know english understand what webcronyms like LOL mean

 

[izzy66]

interesting link. thanks, Enki.

 

[purple_cloud]

Hmm, I only read the quoted text. Written English and Spoken English are two very different things, in fact linguists usually spend more time studying spoken language. There is a lot of research currently get done on internet conversations, I had a friend do a project on it, it was pretty interesting actually. It seems as if things like text messages are "written" but have more characteristics of "spoken" language, and it's true even in languages other than English. Syntax is something linguists will never settle on, there have been so many theories, some with bitter responses to them, like Minimalism, and others like Head driven phrase structure grammar seem to be newer and more upcoming, but have problems with them as well.

Our brains do focus on "grammar" when we are speaking, we all have one that we use, it's just that it's different than the written "grammar" that is used as a prescriptive reference majority of the time. From a descriptive perspective (which I don't often have, it's situational), language does change, and it's only proper that it's speakers change along with it.