Everybody from the usual concerned parent ot the local librarian seems to have a negative comment on the state of literacy today, and many of them pin the blame on new technology. . . . When asked what they perceive to be the cause of this situation, most of the doomsayers point straight at new inventions, such as email, cell phones, and instant messaging, wholeheartedly believing them to be the source of any perceived decline in youth literacy. . . . Every old generation slips into the trap of condemning the language of the youth . . . Although history provides a constant reminder that youth culture is most likely not getting worse, there is an undeniable, visceral tendency to believe that it is.
David Craig wrote the previous statements in the opening of his paper entitled “Instant Messaging: The Language of Youth Literacy.”Craig wrote his essay while he was a student at Stanford University, and was able to persuade his writing professors with real observations proving that English is not in decline as a result of Instant Messaging. I will discuss some of his main points that further convinced me that Instant Messaging is a new, innovative form of English, invented mostly by teenagers. Craig brings up the arguments of many teachers and grammarians, and systematically refutes them. He writes:
Instant messaging, according to many, threatens youth literacy because it creates and compounds undesirable reading and writing habits [and] damages students’ abilities to employ regular, formal literary skills.
I don’t know if Craig is/was a student of linguistics; however, he seems to have an informed linguistic’s approach to his rebuttal, when he claims that these doomsayers do not have the right, nor the proof to pin the cause of youth literacy problems soley on Instant Messaging. On the other hand, Craig claims:
Instant messaging is a beneficial force in the development of youth literacy because it promotes regular contact with words, the use of a written medium for communication, the learning of an alternative literacy, and a greater level of comfort with phonetics and the overall structure of language.
In his research, Craig analyzed 11,341 lines of Instant Message text from conversations between youth in the United States between the ages of 12 and 17. The participants were not aware of the fact he was using their texts for research, and all of his collected transcripts remained unedited. He concluded that there are four types of slang used in Instant Messaging conversations: phonetic replacements, acronyms, abbreviations, and inanities. Craig doesn’t overlook claims from teachers that this new vernacular is creeping into writing assigments. He quotes teacher, Debbie Frost:
You would be shocked at the writing I see, It’s pretty scary. I don’t get cohesive thoughts, I don’t get sentences, they don’t capitalize, and they have a lot of misspellings and bad grammar. With all those glaring mistakes, it’s hard to see the content.
As a future teacher, I cannot ignore the frustration of this teacher, nor can I say that I wouldn’t feel the same way. However, I believe students are capable of using different languages in different contexts. Humans have always adapted different ways of speaking, or their language use, depending on their particular social setting. I believe a select few students who are letting the lingo slip into their schoolwork are giving the naysayers the ammunition they need to discredit Instant Messaging. Craig claims:
If students employ their instant messaging literacy in the wrong settings, it is because their other, scholarly literacies have not been attended to well enough. It is not, however, because IM has damaged their literary abilities or prevented the formation of these abilities.
Craig admits that English literacy has declined over the years, while math skills among students have increased; however, he says there are other explanations for this. Perhaps it is just easiest to point the finger at the youth, their newly created language, and technology. Craig delves further into his research:
The possibility of instant messaging causing such a decline is not worth considering when the modern statistics on English education for united States youths send such a clear message. There is no reason to blame anything other than our schools’ lack of focus on the teaching of Standard English skills.
Could this lack of focus by our schools be the problem? Is “teaching to the test” forcing teachers to focus on so many other topics that the basic skills are getting over looked? I won’t know the answer to that until I look into it further. This article by Craig is very informative and interesting. Craig also looks at Instant Messaging as building students’ metalinguistic abilities by aquiring another literacy. He quotes linguist, David Crystal:
To play with language requires that, at some level of consciousness, a person has sensed what is normal and is prepared to deviate from it . . . Language players are in effect operating within two linguistic worlds at once, the normal and the abnormal . . . It therefore seems very likely that, the greater our ability to play with language, the more we will reinforceour . . . metalinguistic skills, and -ultimately-the more advanced will be our command of language as a whole.
If literacy in America is declining among our youth, perhaps we need to take a deeper look into the reasons why, and not blame the easiest target, Instant Messaging.
hello!
I think I can see both points on the issue of IMing and writing skills. I can see how it would influence their classroom writing and cause them to use abberveations instead of full words, not capitzlize etc. For the most part however, I think it helps with writing skills. it forces student to write and practice their typing as well. yes, it is true that the sentence usualy consists of “lol, omg u r right” type of things, but they are getting the sentence out there. Also, I am in a basic linguistics class right now, and I can see this as a way to increase and further develope our language. The constant iming between students increases their writing ability and perhaps their own verbal ability as well. I really like this subject and I think it was a great choice to blog about!
I agree with Mr. Craig. Teacher’s taking declining English scores out on students’ use of IM rather than their lack of teaching the basics is just plain wrong. In my opinion, the use of instant messenger and text messaging on cell phones is a good thing. It is returning students to reading and writing, not just listening like in a regular phone conversation. I personally think that writing on instant messenger has made me a better writer. I have to think about what I want to type – not just blurt the first thing that comes into my mind – and I have to make sure that it will make sense to the person to which I am writing. I’ve also come to the realization — through personal experience – that you have to be much more careful when you are joking with someone or saying something sarcastic when you are communicating with them on instant messenger than when you are talking on the phone. You have to be more careful with your words when using instant messenger, and I think that is a helpful thing, not a hurtful thing.
Friday I drove down to Chicago to pick up my brother who was there for some work related training. On the way home he was driving (which was a mistake in itself, he scared me to almost death) and I was over in the passenger seat typing out text messages to my teenage daughter who was just getting out of school.
My brother looked at me disdainfully and asked, “are you sending a text message?”
“Yes” I said, “I wanted to make sure Samantha picked Shelby up from school,” which sends my brother who is tree years older than I into lecture mode.
“I swear modern technology will eventually throw us back to the equivalent of the dark ages,” he exclaims while throwing me toward the windshield breaking for the horrendous I94 Chicago traffic. I look at him stupidly and he gone on, “Socrates said, ‘writing would be the end of memory’ and I believe that e-mail and text messages will be the end of verbal communication.” “It wont take long,” he went on, “and we’ll be back to dragging our knuckles on the ground.”
I disagree. It’s human nature to find different ways to communicate. One form of communication doesn’t cancel out another. While Socrates may have been somewhat right, the capacity for memory is still available, it’s just not as necessary as it was before the written word. The telephone certainly wasn’t certainly didn’t end face to face communication, it’s simply expanded it and made it easier and faster for people to communicate from long distances. Same with the internet, e-mail, cell phones, and text messages, they are simply ways to expand communication.
The shortcuts we use to communicate through e-mail and text messaging doesn’t have to be the downfall of the written word either. We, as thinking human beings, have the capacity to communicate in many ways and also write in many different capacities. For example, I go to AA meetings on a regular basis and around those meetings you’ll hear a language only AA people can understand. They tend to use pithy statements and cliché’s and acronyms that anyone in AA can recognize but someone who has never been there may be left scratching their head. I call it AA speak. It drives me crazy but I understand it, and it doesn’t make it a bad thing. I certainly don’t use in when I communicating with people not related to AA or in my written assignments at school. My grammar and punctuation skills are sometimes lacking but that comes from my lack of knowledge of those skills. Either I don’t remember what I was taught in elementary school 30 years ago or I never really learned. I can, however, separate AA speak from other forms of communication, so I don’t see why text message and e-mail language cannot be intentionally separated from the written language.
So, I guess this was my long winded way of saying I agree with the author of Kristie’s articles. Text language is not the downfall of written language.
[...] :Kristie: IM: Language Builder or Buster [...]
[...] Comment 8 [...]