LANGUAGE AND TECHNOLOGY 

John McWhorter: Txtng is killing language. JK!!!


TEXTING IS A MIRACULOUS THING. John Whorter looks at the meaning behind language in various ways. He says language has been used mostly in speech. We write like we speak. The thing about texting is that it's loose on its structure, so there's no focus on punctuation and grammar. It's basically the idea of fingered speech in which we write the way we talk and it is easy to think of it as a decline to language due to its bagginess and concern to the lack of traditional blackboard ways of teaching and writing. People think something has gone wrong but actually texting is a kind of emergent complexity. It is not writing at all in fact it has a new structure, the  words become subtler and words start to become markers of empathy, marker of accommodation which linguistics call pragmatic particles. Texting has introduced a new information marker. There's new constructions developing due to texting, a whole new way of life, young people are developing, alongside using their own writing skills meaning they can use two things which increases the dialectical which is cognitively beneficial in terms of writing so actually texting is a balancing act and therefore is an expansion of their linguistic repertoire.


David Crystal: Texting

David Crystal does not believe that texting decreases literacy rates of young adults. Crystal discusses the use of abbreviation and acronyms and how they motivate a much wider ranging and innovative set of conventions. Therefore texting has its own different ways of direct address items.  Texting is beneficial to literacy.


Both of the men agree that technology actually develops a new certain type of dialect used between the young adults to communicate. Although both point out how badly this is seen around the world and that actually technology doesn't improve or support language, they argue reasonable points on how its a new profound structure of writing.

Although they both support it, they focus at it in different ways and forms. For instance, Crystal says that in order to leave out a letter you need to know its there. Which helps you get better and practice on it. Where as John approaches it in another matter. He looks through history showing evidence of how bad language was back then and texting wasn't even introduced back then. Which shows that texting isn't exactly a main reason for bad language, grammar and punctuation. He believes the it is beneficial to them and develops their language making them bidialectical.