Language and Technology Theories

Language and Technology Theories

1. Phil Sargeant

   • Emojis
     • Prescriptivists believe it's a regression in language
   • He believes companies are attaching meanings to emojis through predictive prompts
   • 'Close cousins of memes'
   • Semiotics - study of signs/ symbols and their use/ interpretation
     • Emojis are semiotically complicated
   • Need to be familiar with cultures
     • He suggests that emojis similar to early communications (such as Roman alphabet)

2. Dennis Baron

   • Use mobile phones and tablets to replicate clay tablets, type writers and pencils
   • Computers have reshaped our use of language and 'disrupted' our society, education, politics and economies
     • Digital communication is "enhancing human interaction, not detracting from it"
   • "Once online, people can either be themselves, or reinvent themselves"
     • Can also edit and remove what we write with ease
   • More people are writing and having control of what they write, how they write and what they write on which creates multiples genres
   • “Computers and the internet are neither the best developments in history of writing nor the worst. They are simply the latest in a series of innovations how we do things with words”

3. Gretchen McCulloh

   • Abbreviations more efficient
   • Most writing is conversational and informal due to the internet
   • Twitter and Instagram encourages communities to cross which causes language change
     • “The internet, then, makes language change faster because it leads to more weak ties: you can remain aware of people who you don’t see anymore, and you can get to know people who you would have never met otherwise.”
   • The amount of emojis used correlates to the gesture (3 smiley faces = smile for 3 seconds)
   • First emoticon Professor Scott Fahlman :-)
   • She believes there are different 'waves' of internet users
     • 1. You had to be fairly informed in technology and saw first internet slang (c u l8r)
     • 2. late 90s early 00s internet became mainstream (and had a big effect on English-speakers) and this group is the last to not have internet
     • 3. Half of these were too young to remember life before the internet ‘post-internet people’; other half are older and were users who were reluctant to use the internet earlier ‘pre-internet people’

4. David Crystal

   • Advances in tech has led to an informalisation of the English language
     • Isn't negative
   • Enhanced socialist and idiolect and a widening of the English language's lexicon
   • Textisms
     • Phonetic spelling (u)
     • Number homophones (l8r)
     • Garpheme homophones ( b or k)
     • Letter omissions, vowel deletion (thnx)
     • Contraction/ abbreviation (goin)
   • 10% of content in text messaging is abbreviated
   • “those who believe text messaging is constantly abbreviated language are those who may never have texted in their lives”
   • Didnt' think children would perform worse in exams
   • Crystal believes adults abbreviate but was never done in texts so it was not seen as harmful

5. Christopher Werry

   • People use more letters to imitate speech
   • Texts and emails are similar to speech as people take turns when conversing

6. Emmanuel Shegloff

   • Canonical opening - most telephone cpnversations start similarly
   • 1. Summons/ answer - opens channels of communication
   • 2. Identification/ recognition - not needed for face-to-face
   • 3. Greeting sequence
   • 4. How are you sequence

7. Tim Shortis

   • Online site isn't reality as there's a virtual identity
   • Plascity and disinhibitation theory
   • Awkwardness of flirting, texting allows disinhibitation which lets users construct messages over time and outside real time interaction
   • Used in place of conversation for two reasons
     • SMS stimulates act
     • Eliminates exposure to negative non-verbal communication which can cause distress

8. Sinclair

   • Compressed English - how small ads/ texts/ tweets are written
   • First decade of SMS meant constraints led to English becoming compressed
   • New means of communication clipped down messages to save time
     • Twitter only has 280 characters so people cut down what they want to say

9. Carrington

   • Linguistic compression used in text
   • Vowel deletion, phonetic spelling, initialism and letter/ number homophones