Texting The New Language Essay

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Texting: the new language.

Since the advent in the early 2000’s, texting has had negative affect on today’s language skills. Social isolation isn’t the only phenomenon accompanying the era of texting and social media, being able to spell and speak proficiently is a skill that is slowly dissipating with each passing generation. As auto correct and word shortcuts become available and instantaneous, our need to learn how to spell and use words correctly becomes irrelevant. Christine Erikson reports that, “The first text sent in 1992 by Neil Paperworth… said Merry Christmas…” but texting became largely used when “…texts could be exchanged in between networks…” (Erikson) in 1999. “By 2000, the average number of text messages sent in the U.S. …show more content…

Our culture is an avalanche of information all immense in its power. We stop for a second and observe it as snow, thinking how light it is. How quickly it melts but we can’t seem to escape the weight of it all as it overcomes us as a society. So we agree and go along with it. Adding yet another snowflake to the crushing weight of the avalanche as it pours onto the next generation. The language takes shape from a traditional view to a modern take. Time Magazine asserted, “Texting has long been bemoaned as the downfall of the written word, “penmanship for illiterates,” as one critic called it. To which the proper response is LOL. Texting properly isn’t writing at all — it’s actually more akin to spoken language. And it’s a “spoken” language that is getting richer and more complex by the year.” Time magazine goes on to describe a most interesting point, that instant messaging is evolving out of the written word and more into a written “spoken” language. When a user sends a text message the user is intending to send more than a written message. Some could say that it is the modern form of sending letters in the mail or passing notes in class. Although it is in a technical sense the same, a written communication, text messaging has indeed evolved into a written spoken language. It communicates far more than what is written and more of an emotion behind what is accompanying it. It isn’t the depth of struggle in Dante’s Inferno or the humor in Twelfth Night or the adventure in Beowulf but a different emotion. The one common to and sold along with the idea of living in the moment. Of having not a care nor a worry but simply enjoying the joy of being present. Hence, the precision of communication is accurate through the misspelling or incorrect grammar of words, it isn’t about any great story of life, rather just a “fun time” right

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