RA 1: Digital Media

Are Digital Media Changing Language

Quote:
"For example, in a study I did of college students' instant messaging conversations, out of 11,718 words, only 31 were "online lingo" abbreviations, and only 90 were acronyms (of which 76 were LOL). In a study of college students' text messaging, my colleague Rich Ling and I found a few more lexical shortenings; yet the grand total of clear abbreviations was only 47 out of 1,473 words, which is hardly overwhelming."

Reaction:
I found the above quote very interesting because you always here from educators that "texting lingo" is destroying the English language and causing a lot of misspellings in papers, documents, etc. However, this study proves that the amount of abbreviations and acronyms really aren't as common as everyone seems to think. It's actually rather surprising that out of 11,718 word, only 31 were abbreviations and only 90 words were acronyms with 76 of them being LOL, therefor there were only 14 other acronyms besides the every so popular LOL. Those statistics are actually shocking, but in a good way. I figured that those numbers would have been way higher, however, I'm sure there are a lot of people out there like me who have to spell every word out correctly in a text. The only acronym I use is LOL, but everything else is spelled out.

Quote:
“Whatever the benefits of digital media, it is destroying the ability of young people to construct the basic unit of the English Language...the sentence."

Reaction:
I feel that this quote is untrue. As brought up in an article that I recently read, children and teens have the capability to "code-switch" as the author put it. What she meant by "code-switch" is that students have the ability to switch from different standards of communication when communicating with different people or different forms of media. One girl stated that texting lingo is only used when she is talking to friends, and does not interfere with her ability to write whatsoever (Dunnewind). The English language is always changing and evolving just like everything else. Using abbreviations and acronyms are used to save time, not because those who use it don't know how to spell or write out a sentence.

References:
Dunnewind, Stephanie.  “’Generation Text’: Teens’ IM lingo evolving into a hybrid language.”  The Seattle Times: 12 April 2003.  4 September 2013.
Retrieved from <http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=20030412&slug=immain12>.

Related Article:
As I was searching online, I found an article that was titled "Is Technology Ruining the English Language?" This article was very relevant and outlined how although times are changing with all the media out now, that of course "online lingo" is going to be popular, however, it does not affect the English language in a structured environment such as the classroom.