Digital technology is destroying the language. Or not
Although it may seem otherwise, people care a lot about language. Everyday people who mash words together without a second thought will get all defensive and downright purist when the discussion turns to proper use of English, especially if there’s some perceived threat. And a big threat to language has been looming: digital technology.
The premise is this: Digital tools are ruining a whole generation’s ability to write and communicate clearly. Terminator gave us an overt myth of technology destroying humanity, but, really, technology’s destructive effects will be subtler: We’ll just keep dumbing things down until we’re no longer able to communicate, and that will be the end of the good world as we know it. Cognitive goo will ensue. (Nicholas Carr presented a more nuanced view of this in “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”)
These screenagers, digital natives, millenials, however they are dubbed, are certainly fluent with digital tools in ways that befuddle us. I can’t keep up with the iPod versions. Kids use cell phones not so much to figure out where they are going but where they are. They are mean and thoughtless to each other (and us) in ways unique to the quasi-anonymity and remove of cyberspace. I have to admit, at times I find it all pretty annoying too.
But when I look past the way students of the digital age use these tools, when I look through their sometimes troubling socialization through screens, I see they are writing, certainly more than we ever did, and I see a lot of good in that.
These kids are composing in imaginative ways most of us couldn’t conceive of when we were young. Their ability not just to write but to compose using mixtures of text and images and sound are astounding.
You may grant that these kids are composing online in unprecedented ways but still think that the basic use of correct language is withering: Sure, they can whip up a PowerPoint or mashup some media, but they can’t diagram a sentence or even spell correctly, right?
Well, many studies discount this thinking, including one in the journal Literacy that concluded “children’s knowledge of textisms is not associated with poor written language outcomes for preteen children.”
I read a great New York Times article about the reading side of this issue, titled appropriately: “Literacy Debate: Online, R U Really Reading?” What struck me was the article’s description of the frustration e-writing engenders: “…writers on the Internet employ a cryptic argot that vexes teachers and parents.” I love this line, because to many people, the phrase “cryptic argot” is itself a kind of “cryptic argot” (yes, “argot” is linked here to its definition; just in case, “cryptic” is too).
Some may cry foul here, pointing out that people should know words that are in the New York Times, for god’s sake, but the reality is lots of smart people don’t. The Times has a discourse for its readers. Kids’ digital “cryptic argot” is not a primitive form of language, but language use that fits their discourse community, their audience: Peers. And they have been downright ingenious with this ability from the start.
We might also worry that they will be unable to code shift, to turn those textual shortcuts into the standard written English all of us used so well in the good ol’ days. But as someone who teaches college students in online and hybrid writing courses, I’m just not seeing it. These students expertly and easily shift from their texting grammar to standard grammar, as fluently as we shifted when we were young from talking to mom and dad to our coded language for our pals.
Of course they do. The above-mentioned Literacy study authors, in thinking through their findings, said, “…the enthusiasm for textisms, for the playful use of language that enables creating a variety of graphic forms of the same word, is highly related to the kinds of skills that enable scoring well on standard English language attainment measures.” They have grown up constantly playing with language!
A while ago Phillip Elmer-Dewitt looked at the conversations on a then-budding Internet. Sometimes terse. Occasionally mean. Often stupid. But he also saw a world of opportunity and a chance for generations of writers to be born: “But it would be a mistake to dismiss the computer-message boards or to underestimate the effect a lifetime of dashing off E-mail will have on a generation of young writers. The computer networks may not be Brook Farm or the Globe Theatre, but they do represent, for millions of people, a living, breathing life of letters. One suspects that the Bard himself, confronted with the Internet, might have dived right in and never logged off.”
A generation gap in language and literacy has always existed (remember, some crazy guy named Plato was suspicious as writing itself was emerging, saying it only offered the “semblance” of wisdom). Kids sitting up on devices all night sexting and cyberbullying each other. Not good. But don’t confuse these issues with those of language use and technology. The former are problems of a more fundamental sort: Watching what it is our kids are doing, and guiding them when they are in environments where they interact with others. That’s much different than worrying about their dwindling ability to use a comma properly in a school essay.
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Interesting timing. I just had one of the best discussions of the year in my compostion classroom full of high school seniors. We were discussing “audience” as a writing consideration and the kids showed an unprecedented level of awareness and concern for audience as a result of their experiences on Facebook. What is encouraging is that this is an example of technology honing student thinking in terms of a deeper concern of compostion — not just grammar and punctuation.
I wonder if this new age style of the written word also exposes the ultra conservatism of past generations (even if we are still a red-state nation). Maybe we were just too uptight on language in the past. Humans use sounds and symbols to communicate. If a generation makes adjustments in this area to their benefit, more power to them. Hopefully, the over-relied-upon, Jurassic, standardized testing agencies can keep up. The same kids who email me without capitalization and punctuation also visit in sloppy attire, often slouch, and lack the professionalism that I would expect in an interview situation. So I do associate some of what I see in the next generation of writing as being parallel with a slow moral decay of society. But it seems, from what I am hearing, that I may be mired in the conservative past which I criticize. The more things change, the more they stay the same. If only Plato could be here for this.
An interesting parallel. Is the texting, etc of today really that much different than the voice used by kids in the 70’s and 80’s while they sat around in groups in person? I think not. Way back when, our parents were just as irritated about the way we communicated compared to more “classical” styles. Things turned out OK or better for our generation, language-wise. And I suspect the next will further it even more.
This is often a discussion among English majors and as an editor I must say, it takes me more time to edit articles now, as proper grammar seems to be slipping away.
Although I do view some of the latest technology as another way to “expand” our minds rather than limit (we are able to find information in seconds)…but my biggest hang up comes in the form of Kindles! I just can not cave…I need to hold a book, feel the cover, smell the aged pages.
This is a very intersting argument as there are positives and negatives…but I do feel the most substantial negative is the deterioration of our language. SPELLING, in particular!
Online writing, like much of technology in our everyday lives has that “slippery slope.” I agree completely that the issues of writing ability and inappropriate use of technology by kids can be separated (by logical minds at least) but how many parents these days are keeping abreast of what their children are doing and truly trying to teach? How many parents see their kids being online as s simply a right and a rite instead of as a privilege that should be monitored?
But I had these same concerns when I took writing classes as a late-twenty something with mostly teens in my class. So many of the young students decided that their way of writing was simply perfect because it was their way of expressing, their right to write as they wished and their way of pushing the boundaries. My concern with that has always been how do you know you are pushing the boundaries when you have never learned what the boundaries are? If you don’t know the rules of grammar then you are pushing the limits of them in total ignorance any way. That’s not art, that’s not skilled writing, that’s an elephant painting and being lauded as art.
I suppose it’s hard for me to argue about this with someone who teaches writing for a living. But it seems to me the trend is, indeed, that grammar and spelling are suffering major losses. Based on what I see in the professional realm — business signs, brochures, etc, with misspellings and grammar errors; and what I see from the very teachers who are supposed to be instructing my grade-school children; and general every day life in emails, on Facebook…
It’s not good.
Steinbeck’s grammar was horrible. His wife and editor cleaned it up for him. Food for thought?
I’d love to see examples of what — and who — characterized Steinbeck’s grammar as horrible. And was he not the exception, rather than the rule?
I agree with what Mary T wrote above. In any art, one should learn the boundaries and rules before bending them to suit and enhance one’s creativity.
Doesn’t lack of knowledge about the mechanical aspects of writing limit you as a writer? Just like knowing nothing about perspective would limit you as a visual artist? Few people have wives or editors capable of cleaning it up…
Steinbeck admitted it in his journals and personal letters. No doubt, it is like having a road full of speed bumps in front of you to be limited grammatically, but it isn’t as big of a problem as most people think. And as a teacher, I have seen only a handful of cases over the years in which a student’s bad grammar is really an impediment to his expression. Doesn’t help the grade, though.
I heard from my teacher that if technology continues developing at the rate it is, there will be no written language for teachers, professors,and scholars to argue about.
Do you think that’s true? Could mankind revert to the years when no spoken language had a written system?