Those who think the English language is in decline due to technologically-advanced ways of communicating, such as text messaging and instant messaging, can relax.
According to Dr. Seth Katz, assistant professor of English at Bradley University, people have complained about the decline of language since the Renaissance.
“Language is going to hell only if you have no tolerance for change,” Katz said.
Language is fluid
Katz said language is fluid and constantly changes. He describes language as “organic” and something which cannot be stopped from changing.
East Peoria Community High School teacher Jillian Spear agrees.
“Language does change and forever will change with new technology. Who would have thought even just 150 years ago that one day we would be able to verbally communicate with someone from across the world using a hand-held device or push buttons and instantly get almost ANY information you could possibly need? Who knows what the future has to bring us to change the way that we communicate today,” Spear said.
To illustrate how language changes over time, Katz said younger people tend to say the expression “on accident” while older people say “by accident,” the latter being correct.
“Young people always rebel against language which adults hate, just like teen music,” he said.
Just as fashion seems to repeat every 20 years, words retire and resurface in the English language. Katz said the jazz crowd originally used the word “groovy” and the word resurfaced later with the hippie generation.
And new words seem to surface suddenly to mark a moment in time. During the Clinton administration, the word “wonk,” which means a person who knows a topic forward and backward, surfaced.
Today, there are many new words that have resulted with technology, such as tweet, webisode, unfriend, blog, and vlog.
There is also a new abbreviated way to communicate when texting or instant messaging. Many have seen expressions, such as “Ur l8t” (you’re late), ttyl (talk to ya later) or LOL (laughing out loud) in these types of messages.
Again, Katz said this does not mean that people will forget how to spell words or become bumbling idiots.
Hasty messages
“In a world where, increasingly, messages are delivered in smaller and hastier bits (think of Twitter and texting), more and more messages are delivered in more and more haste, and with less and less patience and craft. So it may seem that we are being buried in bad writing. However, most of these messages are simply the ones we would have left hastily scrawled on the kitchen table once upon a time, or messages we would have delivered by a brief phone call, or messages we would have saved to deliver later at leisure,” Katz said. “If you use Facebook, then you have encountered the person who has to tell you all the minute details of their day as they are happening. Once, rather than appearing in writing for the world to read, those messages would have waited for dinner table conversation.”
While Spear agrees with Katz that many of the writing situations students now face are informal and brief in nature, it does not lessen her frustration.
“As an English teacher, it is frustrating to attempt to switch students from their fast-paced, on-demand communicating to a writing situation where they have to summarize, research and support their writing through examples, descriptions, etc. As teachers, we find it challenging to meet the needs of a changing written world, while still teaching the core fundamentals of teaching that students will be tested on throughout their educational careers. State testing has yet to morph with the new needs of students and the world they will be entering into,” Spear said.
Katz agreed there are rules to follow in certain situations, and if a student writes “gr8t” to mean “great” on an English paper, that is a problem. But Katz has not witnessed this much.
“I find very little — if any — of the habits of texting or e-mail creeping into my students’ writing. They understand the differences, and they can shift deftly from one register to the other. They more often tend, as students always have, to have trouble distinguishing between the particular turns of phrase appropriate to speaking, and those appropriate to writing. That comes from not reading enough — and there have always been people who don’t read enough to develop an ear for the differences between writing and speaking. I don’t think everyone can learn to write formal English well.
“I encourage my students to know their weaknesses (for example, if they are poor editors) and to find friends who can help them — as people do in the real working world: one has the ideas, but another needs to craft them into a report, and a third needs to edit and polish. The schools do a disservice to students if they always treat writing as a solo act,” Katz said.
Unlike Katz, Spear said there are high school students who mix abbreviated words in formal writing.
“At the high school level, students have yet to mature into thoughtful communicators,” Spear said.
“Generally speaking, many high school students “slip” text messaging language into writing intended to be more formal, such as ACT prep writing. Students have difficulty differentiating who their intended audiences are and what slang or type of language is appropriate for the writing situation.”
Even though students are instructed in their English classes to avoid this type of writing, many students still include, for example, “u” instead of “you,” Spear said. Another problem comparable perhaps to calculators in math class is that students are relying too much on technology to do their work.
“They have transformed into poor editors and rely on technology to edit for them. So, when accidentally not writing out a word, word-processing programs do not always see text messaging and IM language as incorrect and neither do the students since they use that language each and every day,” Spear said.
Different roles
Just as college students and teachers have a role to perform regarding the English language, Katz said everyone speaks differently, depending on the setting.
“You talk to your friends differently than you talk to your parents and the clerk at Target,” he said. “We play different roles.”
The question of whether society maintains formal standard English is a complex one, Katz said.
“I don’t know how much active maintenance it actually needs: its users and proponents tend to ‘maintain’ it by including and providing economic and social opportunities as incentives to those who use formal Standard English, and by excluding and discriminating against those who don’t.
So, the personnel officer who reads a poorly written application letter, and discards that letter (and the applicant) without regard for whether the applicant has actual qualifications for the job (which may not require strong written English skills) is (often unconsciously) reinforcing and maintaining the formal Standard dialect by not giving greater economic opportunities to a person who can’t deploy that dialect well,” Katz said.
A job application is one way a person’s use of English is taken into account, but Katz said, in general, people stereotype groups by the way they speak.
“We mark what groups we are members of by the way we talk,” he said.
Just as religious groups have split and fought over “correct” beliefs over the years, so too will the battle of what is considered “correct” language and grammar continue.
“(Language) exists in a dynamic state of change and tension among a variety of social groups and economic and communication interests. The multiplication of outlets for public discourse and expression brought about by the Internet, and the convergence of all media to digital formats, lead to more opportunities to compete over what versions of the language will be regarded as Standard or prestigious. And that makes some people really uneasy,” Katz said.
Specifically, Katz said there are two things people get “all het up about” regarding language: “their personal bugaboos (don’t begin a sentence with because; avoid passive voice, etc.); and genuine problems with figuring out just what the writer meant.”
“It takes work and craft and patience and feedback from good readers and repeated revision to write a document that most readers will find clear in meaning and well organized.
“There is still plenty of good writing taking place every day. There is just so much more writing taking place in general that of course the bad writing seems to become overwhelming,” he said.
