LogoLogo
  • Startseite
  • Über flexword
    • Qualitätsstandard
    • Referenzen
    • FAQ
  • Services
    • Fachübersetzungen
      • Fachübersetzungen TECHNIK & IT
      • Fachübersetzungen LIFE SCIENCES
      • Fachübersetzungen JURA & WIRTSCHAFT
    • Dolmetscherdienst
    • Consulting
    • Internationales Marketing
  • Stellenangebote
    • Festanstellung
    • Freelancer
  • News
    • Pressemitteilungen
    • Blog
  • Kontakt
  • Video
    • flexword Global
    • flexword Serbia
  • Datenschutz
  • Impressum
  • Deutsch
    • English
    • Español
    • Français
    • Italiano
    • Português
    • Русский
    • Srpski
    • 简体中文
    • العربية

Is the internet hurting proper english? lol, no

von flexword / September 06, 2016 / in Blog

Source: www.washingtonpost.com

Author: Caitlin Dewey

Photo: Pixabay

 

Look at these young minds being corrupted by social media.


A friend who teaches middle school English starts the school year with a lesson on how to e-mail properly. You’d think kids born in the same year as Facebook would know this stuff, but my friend says they overlook certain technicalities. They don’t start with a greeting, for instance. They sprinkle their writing with emoticons and textspeak. And she has to coach them specifically on the use of the “enter” key: They don’t put line breaks in their e-mails, because they don’t do it in texts or tweets.

 

Hearing lesson plans like this one, you might assume the Internet is wrecking English As It Once Was. (In fact, there’s a ton of moral panic over the issue: just try Googling the phrase “death of English.”) But as my friend would gladly tell you, her students have learned very quickly that there’s a time for emoji, and there’s a time for line breaks.

In fact, as a study out of Georgia Tech confirmed last week, today’s digital natives essentially speak two languages — Internet and proper English — and they’re very, very savvy about when to use each.

“This research shows that for many people … non-standard English is not a question of ability, but of reserving standard English for the right social situations,” Jacob Eisenstein, the paper’s lead author, said in a statement. “In this sense, heavy social media users have an especially nuanced understanding of language, since they maintain multiple linguistic systems.”

To come to this conclusion, Eisenstein and his team analyzed a body of 114 million geotagged tweets, looking for patterns in the use of regional and Internet slang. They found that, by and large, people forego “proper English” when they’re tweeting to a limited audience. (For instance, when they’re @-replying a friend.) But when people tweet to a larger group, as on a hashtag, or send a tweet that they know could be seen by more people, they tend to use more standard language.

This suggests a couple sociolinguistic possibilities, all of which should hearten the parents and language-defenders of the world. First off, people who grew up speaking in abbreviations and acronyms do know “proper” English, which is by no means dead. Second, their use of non-proper English is an identity choice, frequently tied to their geographic location. (In this study, people tweeting to other users in their city often used slang more.) Third, they know when it is or is not appropriate to bust out that slang — which is actually a pretty sophisticated linguistic choice.

 

“These findings suggest that users of social media are attuned to both the nature of their audience and the social meaning of lexical variation,” the paper concludes, “and that they customize their self-presentation accordingly.”

 

This isn’t an entirely novel finding, we must note: For several years, some educators and researchers have pushed back against the English-is-dying alarmists, arguing that Internet slang is just a more visible form of “style-shifting” or “code-switching,” a well-documented linguistic phenomenon. When someone code-switches, he alternates between multiple languages or language styles, depending on his audience: A bilingual speaker might call his mom in Spanish, for instance, but use English with his co-workers in the office. Likewise, the students in my friend’s English class lol and smh their way through texts with their pals, but — with very minimal instruction! — they learn not to do that in formal e-mails.
And yet, fear around this issue persists, particularly in the context of education. A 2013 Pew report found, for instance, that 40 percent of teachers think that social media has hurt their students’ writing.
In reality, studies like this one suggest that the opposite may be true: Social media may actually produce writers and speakers who have a more nuanced understanding of language and identity than non-users do.

You can take a quiz of some of Twitter’s most-used slang below; Eisenstein’s paper was recently published in the journal American Speech.

[Quiz: Do you speak Internet? See if you can identify Twitter’s most popular slang]

social mediaemoticonsidentitylexical variationEnglish
Search
  • Über flexword
    • Qualitätsstandard
  • Services
    • Fachübersetzungen
    • Dolmetscherdienst
    • Consulting Prozessmanagement, Qualitätsmanagement, ITC-Infrastruktur
    • Internationales Marketing
  • Stellenangebote
  • Freie Mitarbeit
  • Pressemitteilungen
  • Blog
  • Kontakt
  • Are we loosing our languages?
  • 50 Things a Traveler Should know Infographic
  • Nominate flexword for the ProZ Community Choice Awards
  • Why we should make the effort – languages
  • BUSINESS ETIQUETTE AROUND THE WORLD (ASIA)
  • EXPERIENCED TRANSLATION PROJECT MANAGER – Remote (US team)
  • Endlich Feierabend! So verbringen die Menschen weltweit ihre Freizeit
  • FLEXWORD HITS A MILESTONE
  • Tip #10 For Choosing A Translation Service: The Summary
  • EXPERIENCED TRANSLATION PROJECT MANAGER (Bilingual German-English) in London, UK and/or Remote
Qualitäts-Übersetzungen

  • DIN EN ISO 9001-zertifiziertes Qualitätsmanagement
  • Übersetzungen nach DIN EN ISO 17100 für Übersetzungsdienstleistungen
  • belegte, stark ausgeprägte Kundenorientierung in allen Language-Services
Unsere Standardsprachen

Englisch · Französisch · Italienisch · Spanisch · Deutsch · Niederländisch · Flämisch · Russisch · Ukrainisch · Weißrussisch · Portugiesisch · Norwegisch · Schwedisch · Dänisch · Finnisch · Lettisch · Litauisch · Estnisch · Gälisch · Ungarisch · Rumänisch · Slowenisch · Griechisch · Maltesisch · Türkisch · Katalanisch · Japanisch · Koreanisch · Malaiisch · Vietnamesisch · Chinesisch · Isländisch · Hebräisch · Arabisch · Polnisch · Tschechisch · Slowakisch · Bulgarisch · Kroatisch · Serbisch · Bosnisch · Albanisch Mazedonisch u.a.

  
  • Startseite
  • Kontakt
  • Glossar
  • Sitemap
  • Impressum
  • Datenschutz
Social icons
Copyright © 2019 flexword Germany GmbH
This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish. Cookie settingsAkzeptieren
Privacy & Cookies Policy

Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may have an effect on your browsing experience.

Unsere cookie-richtlinien
Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may have an effect on your browsing experience.

Unsere cookie-richtlinien

Notwendig Immer aktiviert

Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.

Nicht notwendig

Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.