On my projectzero page which lists over 101 goals I have, one of the goals I started on today is to watch 50 TED talks. The first talk I listened to was by the linguist John McWhorter, entitled, "Txtng is killing language. JK!!!" Here's the link if you wanted to listen to it.
I have to confess I’ve never really used text talk in a text message. My text messages have always contained complete grammar. Does that make me sad? Possibly! Or does it just mean I love a well constructed sentence, and actually find that grammar is very helpful. My problem is, I’ve had so many messages in the past from people-usually girls whose messages have been so abbreviated, I’ve had to spend considerable time decrypting them, to actually work out what they were trying to say. How does that help anybody? In contrast, as a linguist John McWhorter finds real beauty in the dynamics that young people generate by creating their own ever evolving language through text messaging. He gives the example of the abbreviation LOL, which he argues no longer really means Laugh Out Loud, because often it’s used by some in nearly every sentence, so therefore the meaning has evolved into it being a marker of empathy or a marker of accommodation regarding whatever is being said. As I said, interesting....but I’m still not going to use text talk!
