posted on Friday, April 27, 2007 4:48 AM by Endie

Declension narrative

Tobold, en passant, makes a great point:

We live in an age where people write as much as never before in the history of mankind: text messages, e-mails, blogs, game chats. And it turns out that one of the reasons why many people didn't write so much in previous ages is that they don't know how. They still don't know how, but somehow the social inhibition ... has become lost.

They simply claim that "u" and "r" are just socially acceptable short forms of "you" and "are", mix in some newly invented slang like "roxxor" and "pwn", some acronyms like "lol", and soon the phrases they're writing looks so unlike correct English that nobody even notices that they just spelled a couple of words wrong, and have no idea of the correct use of punctuation.

I hadn't considered the hugely increased use of the written form amongst a wider section of the population.  I was aware that i conduct a lot of my interactions in writing, mainly through emails.  Those, however, merely replaced the letters I used to churn out in the eighties and early nineties (when enough of my friends started getting email addresses to make that viable).  But people who, after leaving school, only wrote in Christmas cards and official forms now communicate widely in textual form.

And they're not very good at it.  Partly through lack of practise; partly because of an unwillingness to read widely enough to absorb correct use of language.  But Tobold is right: at the heart of the matter is a reluctance to accept that there are good and bad ways to use language.  Depressingly many people claim that "r u rdy" is as valid a form of language as "are you ready?"  I have heard that the subjunctive is making a small comeback in some quarters: I would that it were more obvious.  In the main, written language is devolving as those perfectly capable of writing well are disinhibited by constant exposure to sloppily-constructed emails and 10-character, verb free text-messages, and become drawn into the habit of using abbreviated terms and discarding or abusing potentially vital punctuation (not least the comma).  The resulting inexactitude will lead to misunderstanding.  That's all very well when arranging where to meet that night, but rather less excusable when stating user requirements for a civil-engineering project.

Not to mention that it's horrible to read.

Comments

# re: Declension narrative

Tuesday, May 01, 2007 8:08 PM by Michael Chui
Whoa!

Language police ahoy.

Would you consider the language in legal documents to be a good way of using language, or a bad way? It's been around far, far longer than even our current incarnation of English, which, speaking of which... how are you determining what's a good way and what's a bad way?

Certainly, the simplistic utility phrase of "r u rdy" is hardly a stellar example of language, but these people are chatting. They're not documenting user requirements; they're not writing high poetry or prose; hell, they're not even writing a blog post! They're just passing electronic utterances back and forth in order to convey a concept effectively.

But I've lately been noting a number of articles coming out about the post-literate era we're in. As someone who just finished Dan Simmons' four part Hyperion Cantos last week (Sunday to Sunday), I agree that people don't read enough.

But that's a completely different beast from people using slang to communicate. I mean, English was slang, too. It's just globally accepted slang, a butchered hashing of two parts Germanic, two parts Latin, one part French, and liberal sprinklings of various world languages wherever we happened to stalk them down dark alleys and mug them for loose vocabulary.

God forbid they try to use the same language to debate Platonic forms.

# re: Declension narrative

Wednesday, May 02, 2007 6:47 PM by Endie
I have a degree in law, and I'll be the first to say that legalese is just as much of a crime against English as txtspk.

Both forms are lazy and obfuscatory. Each is packed with cliche and lacks invention or any chance of beauty.

And people who write awful emails - I'm exposed to plenty in my line of work - hurt themselves. They, of course, are the real victims. I can pick a meaning from the digital scrawl and move on. It's unpleasant, of course, but no worse than that. They are trapped by their unwillingness to make the effort to read and write beyond the level of functional literacy. The willingness to write carefully has got me jobs and the offers of jobs. It has given me wealth beyond that which my wholly-self-taught professional skills could otherwise have achieved.

And even on a gaming level, there are advantages to clarity: playing America's Army with people capable of terse but clear statement is a rare delight.

Since you and I are both capable of complex language, we can hold this conversation. Those whose language is limited will be restricted to that which they can express. That is the danger.

But you're right to point up the reading thing as the key. I've just deleted several sentences on the subject rather than rant. I daren't even start on that!