There was time a few years ago when an email from a young friend that went "How R U? BTW, I'm going to B in the US in May and wud very much like 2 meet U" surprised me because I had just about begun to accept this kind of murder of the English language in text messages. In fact I'd only just started committing murder myself in the interest of time and brevity when texting. How long would it be before my murderous instincts found expression in the realm of email?
I distinctly remember the first time a young cousin with whom I was chatting online used LOL, and for the life of me I could not figure what that might mean despite trying all the reading comprehension strategies I taught my students to use, namely, go back and read, look for context clues, etc. etc. Finally I interrupted our cyber conversation by asking my cousin what LOL meant. I must confess I felt extremely stupid and enlightened that day! Needless to say my SMS type vocabulary has grown enormously since then, but happily I still email in English!
The fact is that IM (Instant Messaging) or SMS conventions represent a new and important form of literacy, which involves decoding, encoding, interpretation and analysis. As Lewis, C. & Fabos (2005) point out IM blurs the boundaries of literacy, and redefines literacy as a "range of practices involved in the alphabetic coding of socially and culturally relevant signs and symbols", in their article "Instant Messaging, Literacies and Social Identities" in the Reading Research Quarterly, 40, 470-501.
So if IM constitutes a new form of literacy what implications would this have for the study of linguistics? Will some of these abbreviations like LOL for instance become word acronyms or morphemes to be pronounced as ordinary words? We already write this abbreviation in lower-case letters ( lol) as happens with acronyming (a way of getting new words), don't we? Will dictionaries include lol and represent it in phonetic writing so that it will be pronounced like a word in itself? And how will it be phonetically transcribed? Will it be transcribed as lol as in lazing or will it be lol as rhyming with dole? If it is the former, then we would describe a person who was laughing out loud while lazing in a reclining posture as a person who was lolling and lolling! Too complicated? Forget it and pray it doesn't happen!
And what about those abbreviations, like BTW, which cannot be pronounced as words (on account of the rules that govern which sounds may or may not be combined in English)? Will they begin to be read and pronounced as a sequence of letters, and replace the phrase "by the way" altogether? In other words will BTW become a morpheme in its own right?
Chew on that and check a dictionary for BTW and LOL while you are at it. Until then tc ....
I distinctly remember the first time a young cousin with whom I was chatting online used LOL, and for the life of me I could not figure what that might mean despite trying all the reading comprehension strategies I taught my students to use, namely, go back and read, look for context clues, etc. etc. Finally I interrupted our cyber conversation by asking my cousin what LOL meant. I must confess I felt extremely stupid and enlightened that day! Needless to say my SMS type vocabulary has grown enormously since then, but happily I still email in English!
The fact is that IM (Instant Messaging) or SMS conventions represent a new and important form of literacy, which involves decoding, encoding, interpretation and analysis. As Lewis, C. & Fabos (2005) point out IM blurs the boundaries of literacy, and redefines literacy as a "range of practices involved in the alphabetic coding of socially and culturally relevant signs and symbols", in their article "Instant Messaging, Literacies and Social Identities" in the Reading Research Quarterly, 40, 470-501.
So if IM constitutes a new form of literacy what implications would this have for the study of linguistics? Will some of these abbreviations like LOL for instance become word acronyms or morphemes to be pronounced as ordinary words? We already write this abbreviation in lower-case letters ( lol) as happens with acronyming (a way of getting new words), don't we? Will dictionaries include lol and represent it in phonetic writing so that it will be pronounced like a word in itself? And how will it be phonetically transcribed? Will it be transcribed as lol as in lazing or will it be lol as rhyming with dole? If it is the former, then we would describe a person who was laughing out loud while lazing in a reclining posture as a person who was lolling and lolling! Too complicated? Forget it and pray it doesn't happen!
And what about those abbreviations, like BTW, which cannot be pronounced as words (on account of the rules that govern which sounds may or may not be combined in English)? Will they begin to be read and pronounced as a sequence of letters, and replace the phrase "by the way" altogether? In other words will BTW become a morpheme in its own right?
Chew on that and check a dictionary for BTW and LOL while you are at it. Until then tc ....
ROFLMAO. Not
ReplyDeleteIt has all happened before. Acronyms becoming acceptable as proper language words,I mean. For instance, NEWS.
ReplyDeleteI used to think that "lol" meant "lots of love", until I was corrected by a trendy young person!
I get a lot of texts in romanized Hindi, and have great difficulty working out the meaning of the shortened form of words......
your problem of not being able to understand romanized Hindi will be sorted out if everyone learns narrow phonetic writing .....that will have to be my next blog I guess:) Thanks for your comment Unknown....wish I knew who you were.....:) Also yes lol is indeed in the dictionary!
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