John McWhorter: Txtng is killing language. JK!!!

Summary

This script challenges the notion that texting is detrimental to literacy, arguing instead that it represents an evolution in language use. It posits that texting is a form of 'fingered speech' that mirrors casual conversation, not formal writing. The speaker explores how texting has developed its own conventions, like 'LOL' and 'slash,' which serve specific communicative functions. They suggest that texting is an additional linguistic skill, akin to being bilingual, and part of a rich, evolving language landscape.

Takeaways

• 📲 Texting is not a decline in literacy but an evolution in language use, reflecting a new form of communication.
• 🗣️ Language primarily originated as speech, with writing being a later development, and texting is a modern form of 'fingered speech'.
• ⏳ Historically, there has been a clear distinction between speech and writing, with formal speech often mirroring written language.
• 💬 Casual speech is characterized by shorter word packets and a more telegraphic style, unlike the structured prose of formal writing.
• 😄 The use of 'LOL' in texting has evolved beyond indicating laughter, now serving as a pragmatic particle to convey empathy and accommodation.
• 🔄 The 'slash' in texting is used to change the topic or scene in a conversation, similar to how one might transition topics in spoken language.
• 📚 Concerns over the decline of language skills are not new, with historical examples dating back to the 19th century and earlier.
• 🌐 Texting represents a new linguistic system that is developing alongside traditional writing skills, enriching the cognitive abilities of its users.
• 🔑 The development of texting language shows the adaptability and creativity of young people in creating a medium that suits their communication needs.
• 🚀 Texting could be seen as a form of bidialectal writing, offering cognitive benefits similar to those of being bilingual or bidialectal in speech.
• 🔍 The evolution of texting language is a 'linguistic miracle' that warrants further study to understand its impact and development over time.

Q & A

What is the common belief about the impact of texting on literacy and writing ability among young people?

The common belief is that texting leads to a decline in serious literacy and writing ability among young people, suggesting that it is a scourge on language skills.

Why is the idea that texting is causing a decline in literacy considered incorrect according to the script?

The script argues that this idea is incorrect because texting is not actually writing but a form of 'fingered speech,' and it represents an emergent complexity in language rather than a decline.

How does the script differentiate between speech and writing in terms of language evolution?

The script explains that speech has existed for much longer, possibly 150,000 years, while writing came much later, only around 11:07 p.m. in a 24-hour analogy of human existence, making it a relatively recent development.

What is the traditional estimate of when writing was invented in the context of human history?

According to the traditional estimate, if humanity had existed for 24 hours, writing was invented around 11:07 p.m., indicating it is a recent development in the history of language.

How does the script describe the difference between formal written language and casual speech?

The script describes formal written language as being more structured, reflective, and using complex sentences, unlike casual speech, which is looser, more telegraphic, and consists of word packets of about seven to ten words.

What is the role of 'LOL' in modern texting as described in the script?

In modern texting, 'LOL' has evolved from meaning 'laughing out loud' to serving as a marker of empathy and accommodation, functioning as a pragmatic particle in the language of texting.

How has the use of the word 'slash' changed in texting according to the script?

The script explains that 'slash' in texting has taken on a new role as a scene-changing device, allowing for topic shifts in a conversation, which is different from its traditional use as a separator in phrases.

What historical pattern does the script highlight regarding concerns over language and writing skills?

The script highlights a recurring pattern throughout history where each generation has expressed concerns about the language and writing skills of the younger generation, suggesting it is a common societal worry rather than a new phenomenon.

How does the script suggest that texting could be beneficial for young people's cognitive abilities?

The script suggests that texting, as a form of bidialectal writing, could be cognitively beneficial for young people, similar to the advantages of being bilingual or bidialectal in spoken language.

What does the script imply about the future development of texting language?

The script implies that the future development of texting language will continue to evolve and become even more complex and nuanced, offering a rich area for linguistic study and understanding.

What is the script's final suggestion for examining the evolution of texting language?

The script suggests that examining texts written by 16-year-old girls in the future, such as in 2033, would provide insights into the evolution of texting language and its development over time.

Outlines

00:00

💬 The Misconception of Texting and Language Evolution

The speaker, Joseph Geni, challenges the common belief that texting is detrimental to literacy and writing skills, especially among the youth. He argues that texting is not a form of writing but a form of speech, which is the original and primary form of language. Geni points out that writing is a much later development in human history, comparing it to a recent addition if human existence were 24 hours long. He emphasizes that casual speech is different from formal writing, using examples from Edward Gibbon's work to illustrate the point. Geni suggests that the structure and rules of texting mirror the natural, unmonitored speech patterns, which are more telegraphic and less reflective than written language. He concludes by suggesting that texting is an adaptation of language to modern communication tools, allowing us to 'write' as we speak.

05:01

📲 Texting as a New Form of Communication

In this paragraph, the speaker delves into the structural looseness of texting, highlighting how it disregards traditional writing conventions such as capitalization and punctuation. He likens texting to 'fingered speech,' a medium that allows people to write as they speak, which is a natural and casual form of communication. The speaker then discusses the evolution of the acronym 'LOL,' which has transformed from meaning 'laughing out loud' to a more nuanced pragmatic particle that conveys empathy and accommodation in text conversations. He also explores the use of the 'slash' in texting as a tool to change the scene or topic within a conversation, similar to how one might transition topics in spoken dialogue. The speaker argues that these developments in texting represent an 'emergent complexity,' a new layer of linguistic structure that is often misunderstood as a decline in language quality.

10:02

📚 Historical Concerns Over Language and Texting's Cognitive Benefits

The speaker addresses historical concerns about language deterioration, showing that worries over spelling, grammar, and writing skills are not new but have been present throughout history. He cites examples from 1956, 1917, 1871, and even 63 A.D., demonstrating a continuous pattern of language evolution and societal anxiety over changes in language use. Geni then posits that texting is a new form of writing that coexists with traditional writing skills, suggesting that it is cognitively beneficial, much like being bilingual or bidialectal. He argues that texting represents an expansion of linguistic capabilities rather than a degradation. The speaker concludes by expressing curiosity about the future development of texting language, likening it to a 'linguistic miracle' and emphasizing the importance of understanding and studying these changes in communication.

Keywords

💡Texting

Texting refers to the act of composing, sending, and reading messages through electronic devices, often using abbreviated language or shorthand. In the video, texting is presented as a form of 'fingered speech' that is distinct from traditional writing. It is argued that texting is not a decline in literacy but rather an evolution of language that reflects the way we speak casually.

💡Literacy

Literacy, in the context of the video, refers to the ability to read and write, and the speaker challenges the notion that texting is leading to a decline in literacy. Instead, the speaker suggests that texting is an alternative form of communication that complements traditional literacy skills.

💡Language Evolution

Language evolution is the process by which languages change and develop over time. The video discusses how texting represents a new stage in the evolution of language, with its own set of conventions and structures that are emerging and adapting to the way we communicate today.

💡Speech

Speech is the primary mode of human communication, predating writing by thousands of years. The video emphasizes that language originated as speech and that texting is more akin to speech than to traditional writing, highlighting the natural, conversational aspects of texting.

💡Writing

Writing is the system of visually representing language with symbols. The video points out that writing came much later in human history and is a more deliberate and structured form of communication compared to speech. Texting, while using the mechanics of writing, is argued to be more similar to the fluidity of speech.

💡Casual Speech

Casual speech refers to the informal way people talk in everyday conversations, often using shorter phrases and less formal language. The video contrasts this with formal writing and suggests that texting mirrors the structure and style of casual speech.

💡Pragmatic Particles

Pragmatic particles are words or phrases that convey meaning related to the speaker's attitude or the social context of the conversation. In the video, 'LOL' is given as an example of a pragmatic particle in texting, evolving from 'laughing out loud' to a marker of empathy and accommodation.

💡New Information Marker

A new information marker is a linguistic tool used to introduce new topics or information within a conversation. The video explains how the slash ('/') has become a new information marker in texting, allowing for topic changes in a way that is not possible in spoken conversation.

💡Bilingualism

Bilingualism is the ability to speak two languages fluently. The video extends this concept to 'bidialectalism' in writing, suggesting that being able to write in both traditional and texting styles is cognitively beneficial and represents an expansion of one's linguistic repertoire.

💡Linguistic Repertoire

Linguistic repertoire refers to the full range of language varieties and styles that a person can use. The video posits that young people today are developing a new linguistic repertoire by incorporating texting language alongside their standard writing skills.

💡Cognitive Benefits

Cognitive benefits refer to the positive impacts on mental processes and abilities. The video suggests that being able to switch between different writing styles, such as standard writing and texting, can have cognitive benefits similar to those of bilingualism.

Highlights

Texting is not causing a decline in literacy or writing ability among young people, contrary to popular belief.

Language primarily originated as speech, with writing being a much later development.

Writing emerged approximately 11:07 p.m. on a 24-hour scale of human existence.

Speech and writing are distinct, with writing being a more conscious and structured form.

Casual speech tends to be in word packets of 7 to 10 words, quite different from formal writing.

Texting is a modern form of 'fingered speech', not traditional writing.

Texting lacks the formal structure of writing, such as capitalization and punctuation, mirroring casual speech.

The acronym 'LOL' has evolved from 'laughing out loud' to a more nuanced pragmatic particle in texting.

In text communication, 'LOL' now serves as a marker of empathy and accommodation.

The use of 'slash' in texting has developed as a means to change the conversation topic smoothly.

Texting has developed its own set of new information markers and language structures.

Concerns about language decline are not new, dating back to historical complaints about writing and speech.

Texting represents a new form of writing skill that young people are developing alongside traditional writing.

Being bilingual or bidialectal in writing, such as through texting, has cognitive benefits.

The language used in texting today is so distinct that someone from the past would struggle to understand it.

Texting is an expansion of young people's linguistic repertoire, demonstrating a balancing act in language use.

The speaker expresses a desire to see how texting language will have evolved by 2033, referring to it as a 'linguistic miracle'.

Transcripts

Translator: Joseph Geni Reviewer: Morton Bast

We always hear that texting is a scourge.

The idea is that texting spells the decline and fall

of any kind of serious literacy, or at least writing ability,

among young people in the United States

and now the whole world today.

The fact of the matter is that it just isn't true,

and it's easy to think that it is true,

but in order to see it in another way,

in order to see that actually texting is a miraculous thing,

not just energetic, but a miraculous thing,

a kind of emergent complexity

that we're seeing happening right now,

we have to pull the camera back for a bit

and look at what language really is,

in which case, one thing that we see

is that texting is not writing at all.

What do I mean by that?

Basically, if we think about language,

language has existed for perhaps 150,000 years,

at least 80,000 years,

and what it arose as is speech. People talked.

That's what we're probably genetically specified for.

That's how we use language most.

Writing is something that came along much later,

and as we saw in the last talk,

there's a little bit of controversy as to exactly when that happened,

but according to traditional estimates,

if humanity had existed for 24 hours,

then writing only came along at about 11:07 p.m.

That's how much of a latterly thing writing is.

So first there's speech, and then writing comes along

as a kind of artifice.

Now don't get me wrong, writing has certain advantages.

When you write, because it's a conscious process,

because you can look backwards,

you can do things with language that are much less likely

if you're just talking.

For example, imagine a passage from Edward Gibbon's

"The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire:"

"The whole engagement lasted above twelve hours,

till the graduate retreat of the Persians was changed

into a disorderly flight, of which the shameful example

was given by the principal leaders and the Surenas himself."

That's beautiful, but let's face it, nobody talks that way.

Or at least, they shouldn't if they're interested

in reproducing. That --

(Laughter)

is not the way any human being speaks casually.

Casual speech is something quite different.

Linguists have actually shown

that when we're speaking casually in an unmonitored way,

we tend to speak in word packets of maybe

seven to 10 words.

You'll notice this if you ever have occasion to record

yourself or a group of people talking.

That's what speech is like.

Speech is much looser. It's much more telegraphic.

It's much less reflective -- very different from writing.

So we naturally tend to think, because we see language

written so often, that that's what language is,

but actually what language is, is speech. They are two things.

Now of course, as history has gone by,

it's been natural for there to be a certain amount of bleed

between speech and writing.

So, for example, in a distant era now,

it was common when one gave a speech

to basically talk like writing.

So I mean the kind of speech that you see someone giving

in an old movie where they clear their throat, and they go,

"Ahem, ladies and gentlemen," and then they speak

in a certain way which has nothing to do with casual speech.

It's formal. It uses long sentences like this Gibbon one.

It's basically talking like you write, and so, for example,

we're thinking so much these days about Lincoln

because of the movie.

The Gettysburg Address was not the main meal of that event.

For two hours before that, Edward Everett spoke

on a topic that, frankly, cannot engage us today

and barely did then.

The point of it was to listen to him

speaking like writing.

Ordinary people stood and listened to that for two hours.

It was perfectly natural.

That's what people did then, speaking like writing.

Well, if you can speak like writing,

then logically it follows that you might want to also

sometimes write like you speak.

The problem was just that in the material,

mechanical sense, that was harder back in the day

for the simple reason that materials don't lend themselves to it.

It's almost impossible to do that with your hand

except in shorthand, and then communication is limited.

On a manual typewriter it was very difficult,

and even when we had electric typewriters,

or then computer keyboards, the fact is

that even if you can type easily enough to keep up

with the pace of speech, more or less, you have to have

somebody who can receive your message quickly.

Once you have things in your pocket that can receive that message,

then you have the conditions that allow

that we can write like we speak.

And that's where texting comes in.

And so, texting is very loose in its structure.

No one thinks about capital letters or punctuation when one texts,

but then again, do you think about those things when you talk?

No, and so therefore why would you when you were texting?

What texting is, despite the fact that it involves

the brute mechanics of something that we call writing,

is fingered speech. That's what texting is.

Now we can write the way we talk.

And it's a very interesting thing, but nevertheless

easy to think that still it represents some sort of decline.

We see this general bagginess of the structure,

the lack of concern with rules and the way that we're used to

learning on the blackboard, and so we think

that something has gone wrong.

It's a very natural sense.

But the fact of the matter is that what is going on

is a kind of emergent complexity.

That's what we're seeing in this fingered speech.

And in order to understand it, what we want to see

is the way, in this new kind of language,

there is new structure coming up.

And so, for example, there is in texting a convention,

which is LOL.

Now LOL, we generally think of

as meaning "laughing out loud."

And of course, theoretically, it does,

and if you look at older texts, then people used it

to actually indicate laughing out loud.

But if you text now, or if you are someone who

is aware of the substrate of texting the way it's become,

you'll notice that LOL

does not mean laughing out loud anymore.

It's evolved into something that is much subtler.

This is an actual text that was done

by a non-male person of about 20 years old

not too long ago.

"I love the font you're using, btw."

Julie: "lol thanks gmail is being slow right now"

Now if you think about it, that's not funny.

No one's laughing. (Laughter)

And yet, there it is, so you assume

there's been some kind of hiccup.

Then Susan says "lol, I know,"

again more guffawing than we're used to

when you're talking about these inconveniences.

So Julie says, "I just sent you an email."

Susan: "lol, I see it."

Very funny people, if that's what LOL means.

This Julie says, "So what's up?"

Susan: "lol, I have to write a 10 page paper."

She's not amused. Let's think about it.

LOL is being used in a very particular way.

It's a marker of empathy. It's a marker of accommodation.

We linguists call things like that pragmatic particles.

Any spoken language that's used by real people has them.

If you happen to speak Japanese, think about

that little word "ne" that you use at the end of a lot of sentences.

If you listen to the way black youth today speak,

think about the use of the word "yo."

Whole dissertations could be written about it,

and probably are being written about it.

A pragmatic particle, that's what LOL has gradually become.

It's a way of using the language between actual people.

Another example is "slash."

Now, we can use slash in the way that we're used to,

along the lines of, "We're going to have

a party-slash-networking session."

That's kind of like what we're at.

Slash is used in a very different way

in texting among young people today.

It's used to change the scene.

So for example, this Sally person says,

"So I need to find people to chill with"

and Jake says, "Haha" --

you could write a dissertation about "Haha" too, but we don't have time for that —

"Haha so you're going by yourself? Why?"

Sally: "For this summer program at NYU."

Jake: "Haha. Slash I'm watching this video with suns players

trying to shoot with one eye."

The slash is interesting.

I don't really even know what Jake is talking about after that,

but you notice that he's changing the topic.

Now that seems kind of mundane,

but think about how in real life,

if we're having a conversation and we want to change the topic,

there are ways of doing it gracefully.

You don't just zip right into it.

You'll pat your thighs and look wistfully off into the distance,

or you'll say something like, "Hmm, makes you think --"

when it really didn't, but what you're really --

(Laughter) —

what you're really trying to do is change the topic.

You can't do that while you're texting,

and so ways are developing of doing it within this medium.

All spoken languages have what a linguist calls

a new information marker -- or two, or three.

Texting has developed one from this slash.

So we have a whole battery of new constructions

that are developing, and yet it's easy to think,

well, something is still wrong.

There's a lack of structure of some sort.

It's not as sophisticated

as the language of The Wall Street Journal.

Well, the fact of the matter is,

look at this person in 1956,

and this is when texting doesn't exist,

"I Love Lucy" is still on the air.

"Many do not know the alphabet or multiplication table,

cannot write grammatically -- "

We've heard that sort of thing before,

not just in 1956. 1917, Connecticut schoolteacher.

1917. This is the time when we all assume

that everything somehow in terms of writing was perfect

because the people on "Downton Abbey" are articulate,

or something like that.

So, "From every college in the country goes up the cry,

'Our freshmen can't spell, can't punctuate.'"

And so on. You can go even further back than this.

It's the President of Harvard. It's 1871.

There's no electricity. People have three names.

"Bad spelling,

incorrectness as well as inelegance of expression in writing."

And he's talking about people who are otherwise

well prepared for college studies.

You can go even further back.

1841, some long-lost superintendent of schools is upset

because of what he has for a long time "noted with regret

the almost entire neglect of the original" blah blah blah blah blah.

Or you can go all the way back to 63 A.D. -- (Laughter) --

and there's this poor man who doesn't like the way

people are speaking Latin.

As it happens, he was writing about what had become French.

And so, there are always — (Laughter) (Applause) —

there are always people worrying about these things

and the planet somehow seems to keep spinning.

And so, the way I'm thinking of texting these days is

that what we're seeing is a whole new way of writing

that young people are developing,

which they're using alongside their ordinary writing skills,

and that means that they're able to do two things.

Increasing evidence is that being bilingual

is cognitively beneficial.

That's also true of being bidialectal.

That's certainly true of being bidialectal in terms of your writing.

And so texting actually is evidence of a balancing act

that young people are using today, not consciously, of course,

but it's an expansion of their linguistic repertoire.

It's very simple.

If somebody from 1973 looked at

what was on a dormitory message board in 1993,

the slang would have changed a little bit

since the era of "Love Story,"

but they would understand what was on that message board.

Take that person from 1993 -- not that long ago,

this is "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure" -- those people.

Take those people and they read

a very typical text written by a 20-year-old today.

Often they would have no idea what half of it meant

because a whole new language has developed

among our young people doing something as mundane

as what it looks like to us when they're batting around

on their little devices.

So in closing, if I could go into the future,

if I could go into 2033,

the first thing I would ask is whether David Simon

had done a sequel to "The Wire." I would want to know.

And — I really would ask that —

and then I'd want to know actually what was going on on "Downton Abbey."

That'd be the second thing.

And then the third thing would be,

please show me a sheaf of texts

written by 16-year-old girls,

because I would want to know where this language

had developed since our times,

and ideally I would then send them back to you and me now

so we could examine this linguistic miracle

happening right under our noses.

Thank you very much.

(Applause)

Thank you. (Applause)