Txtng is killing language. JK John McWhorter

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we always hear that texting is a scourge

the idea is that texting spells the

decline and fall of any kind of serious

literacy or at least writing ability

among young people in the United States

and now the whole world today the fact

of the matter is that it just isn’t true

and it’s easy to think that it is true

but in order to see it in another way in

order to see that actually texting is a

miraculous thing not just energetic but

a miraculous thing a kind of emergent

complexity that we’re seeing happening

right now we have to pull the camera

back for a bit and look at what language

really is in which case one thing that

we see is that texting is not writing at

all what do I mean by that basically if

we think about language language has

existed for perhaps a hundred and fifty

thousand years at least eighty thousand

years and what it arose as is speech

people talked that’s what we’re probably

genetically specified for that’s how we

use language most writing is something

that came along much later and as we saw

in the last talk there’s a little bit of

controversy as to exactly when that

happened but according to traditional

estimates if humanity had existed for 24

hours then writing only came along at

about 11:07 p.m. that’s how much of a

laterally thing writing is so first

their speech and then writing comes

along as a kind of artifice now don’t

get me wrong

writing has certain advantages when you

write because it’s a conscious process

because you can look backwards you can

do things with language that are much

less likely if you’re just talking for

example imagine a passage from Edward

Gibbons the decline and fall of the

Roman Empire the whole engagement lasted

above 12 hours till the gradual retreat

of the Persians was changed into a

disorderly flight of which the shameful

examples given by the principal leaders

in the serena’s himself that’s

but let’s face it nobody talks that way

or at least they shouldn’t if they’re

interested in reproducing that it’s not

the way any human being speaks casually

casual speech is something quite

different linguists have actually shown

that when we’re speaking casually in an

unmonitored way we tend to speak in word

packets of maybe seven to ten words

you’ll notice this if you ever have

occasion to record yourself or a group

of people talking that’s what speech is

likes speech is much looser it’s much

more telegraphic it’s much less

reflective very different from writing

so we naturally tend to think because we

see language written so often that

that’s what language is but actually

what language is is speech they’re two

things now of course as history has gone

by it’s been natural for there to be a

certain amount of bleed between speech

and writing so for example in a distant

era now it was common when one gave a

speech to basically talk like writing so

I mean the kind of speech that you see

someone giving in an old movie where

they clear their throat and they don’t

ladies and gentlemen and then they speak

in a certain way which has nothing to do

with casual speech it’s formal it uses

long sentences like this given one it’s

basically talking like you write and so

for example we’re thinking so much these

days about Lincoln because of the movie

the Gettysburg Address was not the main

meal of that event for two hours before

that Edward Everett spoke on a topic

that frankly cannot engage us today and

barely did then the point of it was to

listen to him speaking like writing

ordinary people stood and listened to

that for two hours it was perfectly

natural that’s what people did then

speaking like writing well if you can

speak like writing then logically it

follows that you might want to also

sometimes write like you speak the

problem was just that in the material

mechanical sense that was harder back in

the day for the simple reason that

materials don’t lend them so

to it it’s almost impossible to do that

with your hand except in shorthand and

then communication is limited on a

manual typewriter it was very difficult

and even when we had electric

typewriters or then computer keyboards

the fact is that even if you can type

easily enough to keep up with the pace

of speech more or less you have to have

somebody who can receive your message

quickly once you have things in your

pocket that can receive that message

then you have the conditions that allow

that we can write like we speak and

that’s where texting comes in and so

texting is very loose in its structure

no one thinks about capital letters or

punctuation when one text but then again

do you think about those things when you

talk No

and so therefore why would you when you

were texting what texting is despite the

fact that it involves the brute

mechanics of something that we call

writing is fingered speech that’s what

texting is now we can write the way we

talk and it’s a very interesting thing

but nevertheless easy to think that

still it represents some sort of decline

we see this general bagginess of the

structure the lack of concern with rules

in the way that we’re used to learning

on the blackboard and so we think that

something has gone wrong it’s a very

natural sense but the fact of the matter

is that what is going on is a kind of

emergent complexity that’s what we’re

seeing in this fingered speech in order

to understand it what we want to see is

the way in this new kind of language

there is new structure coming up and so

for example there is in texting a

convention which is lol now lol we

generally think of as meaning laughing

out loud

and of course theoretically it does and

if you look at older text than people

used it to actually indicate laughing

out loud but if you text now or if you

are someone who’s aware of the substrate

of texting the

it’s become you’ll notice that lol does

not mean laughing out loud anymore it’s

evolved into something that is much

subtler this is an actual text that was

done by a non male person of about 20

years old not too long ago

I love the font you’re using bTW Julie

Lal thanks gmail is being slow right now

have you think about it that’s not funny

no one’s laughing and yet there it is so

you assume there’s been some kind of

hiccup then Susan says lawl I know

again more guffawing than we’re used to

when you’re talking about these

inconveniences so Julie says I just sent

you an email Susan lul I see it very

funny people if that’s what lol means

this Julie says so what’s up Susan Lau I

have to write a 10-page paper she’s not

amused let’s think about it lul is being

used in a very particular way it’s a

marker of empathy it’s a marker of

accommodation we linguists call things

like that pragmatic particles any spoken

language that’s used by real people has

them if you happen to speak Japanese

think about that little word net that

you use at the end of a lot of sentences

if you listen to the way black youth

today speak think about the use of the

word yo hold dissertations could be

written about it and probably are being

written about it a pragmatic particle

that’s what Lal has gradually become

it’s a way of using the language between

actual people

another example is slash now we can use

slash in the way that we’re used to

along the lines of we’re going to have a

party slash networking session that’s

kind of like what we’re at slash is used

in a very different way in texting among

young people today it’s used to change

the scene so for example this Sally

person says so I need to find people to

chill with and Jake says haha you’d

write a dissertation about haha - but we

don’t have time for that

haha so you’re going by yourself why

Sally for this summer program at NYU

Jake haha / I’m watching this video with

sons players trying to shoot with one

eye the slash is interesting I don’t

really even know what Jake is talking

about after that

but you notice that he’s changing the

topic now that seems kind of mundane but

think about how in real life if we’re

having a conversation we want to change

the topic there ways of doing it

gracefully you don’t just zip right into

it you’ll pat your thighs and look

wistfully off into the distance or

you’ll say something like makes you

think when it really didn’t but what

you’re really what you’re really trying

to do is change the topic you can’t do

that while you’re texting and so ways or

developing of doing it within this

medium all spoken languages have what a

linguist calls a new information marker

or two or three texting has developed

one from this slash so we have a whole

battery of new constructions that are

developing and yet it’s easy to think

well something is still wrong there’s a

lack of structure of some sort it’s not

as sophisticated as the language of the

Wall Street Journal well the fact of the

matter is look at this person in 1956

and this is when texting doesn’t exist I

Love Lucy is still on the air many do

not know the alphabet or multiplication

table cannot write format we’ve heard

that sort of thing before

not just in 1956 1917 Connecticut

schoolteacher 1917 this is the time when

we all assumed that everything somehow

in terms of writing was perfect because

the people on Downton Abbey or

articulate or something like that so

from every college in the country goes

up the cry our freshmen can’t spell

can’t punctuate and so on you can go

even further back than this it’s the

president of Harvard its 1871 there’s no

electricity people have three names bad

spelling in correctness as well as in

elegance of expression in writing and

he’s talking about people who are

otherwise well prepared for college

studies you can go even further back

1841 some long-lost Superintendent of

Schools is upset because of what he has

for a long time noted with regret the

almost entire neglect of the original

blah blah blah blah or you can go all

the way back

with 63 ad and there’s this poor man who

doesn’t like the way people are speaking

Latin as it happens he was writing about

what had become French and so there are

always there are always people worrying

about these things and the planet

somehow seems to keep spinning and so

the way I’m thinking of texting these

days is that what we’re seeing is a

whole new way of writing that young

people are developing which they’re

using alongside their ordinary writing

skills and that means that they’re able

to do two things increasing evidence is

that being bilingual is cognitively

beneficial that’s also true of being by

dialectal that’s certainly true of being

by dialectal in terms of your writing

and so texting actually is evidence of a

balancing act that young people are

using today not consciously of course

but it’s an expansion of their

linguistic repertoire is very simple if

somebody from 1973 looked at what was on

a dormitory message board in 1993 the

slang would have changed a little bit

since the era of love story but they

would understand what was on that

message board take that person from 1993

not that long ago this is you know Bill

& Ted’s Excellent Adventure those people

take those people and they read a very

typical text written by a 20 year old

today often they would have no idea what

half of it meant because a whole new

language has developed among our young

people doing something as mundane as

what it looks like to us when they’re

batting around on their little devices

so in closing if I could go into the

future if I could go into 2033 first

thing I would ask is whether David Simon

had done a sequel to the wire I would

want to know and I really would ask that

and then I’d want to know actually what

was going on on Downton Abbey that’d be

the second thing and then the third

thing would be please show me a sheaf of

texts written by 16 year old girls

because I would want to know where this

language had developed

since our times and ideally I would then

send them back to you and me now so we

could examine this linguistic miracle

happening right under our noses thank

you very much

you