The Sad State of Literacy
Tony Long of Wired recently presented an article on the deplorable state of the English language under the influence of modern technology. I’m actually in complete agreement on several of his points, but several of them are patently absurd.
While I’ll readily agree that it is best to think before you write, there is definitely a limit on how long you should spend thinking. I think everyone should spend at least a few moments going over an email before sending it, checking grammar, punctuation, and making sure that the point of the message is properly conveyed. However, in the case of Instant Messaging, spending more than a few seconds contemplating the syntax of your message is actually more likely to muddle your message and prevent correct interpretation, as your messaging partner is forced to re-read the last several comments to parse the original intent of your message, and to correctly sort out the messages which don’t apply.
Try it for yourself: go back through the message logs of any chat session, and see if you can actually figure out what was being said. The responses tend to get tangled and confusing as the message length increases, which means that brevity is the primary component of clarity for instant messaging.
He also lambastes the growing trend of acronyms that pollute the “king’s English”, such as LOL, WYSIWYG, and IMHO and attributes their use to the growing difficulty in email comprehension. This is absolutely false, as the study he refers to relates the incomprehensibility of email to the lack of visual and tonal cues that are absent in any form of written communication. Acronyms such as LOL and IMHO along with the use of various emoticons are actually a limited means of replacing those missing non-textual cues and help to increase the chances of proper communication. Of course there will be occasions where they cannot help, such as when one individual in the exchange is unfamiliar with the meaning of “LOL,” but the same is true of verbal communication when two individuals do not give equivalent meaning to the same gesture.
He also goes to great lengths to denounce the use of jargon and acronyms in either technical or business communication, while he himself uses the jargon “email” as though it had been a part of the English language since the days of King William, instead of mere handful of years. There will always be a wide array of incomprehensible jargon at the cutting edge of any industry, which only those few initiates are capable of properly decoding. As time progresses, the most common and useful terms of that jargon will enter common usage, and cease to be quite so mystifying. I would bet that only a rare few would be able to tell you exactly what CD-ROM stands for, but it would be an even rarer individual who would have no idea what a CD-ROM is.
That said, he is entirely correct that acronyms and jargon are completely inappropriate for certain types of communication, notably those that are intended for an audience unfamiliar with that jargon. While it might be personally gratifying to flaunt my superior knowledge of technology, it’s absolutely unforgivable to mask the meaning of my prose behind jargon when my purpose is to communicate. Simply assuming that the audience can research or discover is likewise inexcusable, and any writer should make at least some effort to elucidate the more arcane terms.
At its heart, the purpose of any language, English included, is communication. If adequate communication can be achieved while cutting a few grammatical corners or adding jargon and acronyms and simultaneously increase the flow the information, then only the grammatical or linguistic purist should have any reason to complain. When people cut corners simply out of bad habits or laziness, and not in an effort to improve communication speed or efficiency, that’s criminal.
February 21st, 2006 at 3:05 pm
I agree that the importance is to know what adaptation of the language to use under a given circumstance. I recall reading an article mayhap two years ago which described how a middle-schooler turned in a paper written entirely in “chat speak”. I would have laughed were the case not so sad.
March 22nd, 2006 at 8:25 pm
As a person who chose linguistics as a career, I would agree that the evolution/deterioration of language is inevitable (in spite of the mumblings of the Academie Francaise). The internet has only sped up the process by giving every idiot an outlet to publish their views (without the (much-missed) “censorship” of editors)
Working in a college (!) environment, English professors no longer bemoan the splitting of infinitives but rather the misuse of your/you’re and their/they’re/there. The new (and irritating) grammatical mistake is the confusion between then/than and our/are (!!)
For a nerdy, wordy site, visit: http://www.alphadictionary.com/index.shtml (take the Yankee test for a good laugh).
March 24th, 2006 at 9:25 am
So would you agree that all evolution of language is a deterioration? Or is it possible for language to evolve in a positive direction?
As for the negative impact of the Internet, I believe that the ability for anyone to post their ideas and opinions is generally a good thing, because it gives a voice to those who may not have one, and having access to different opinions (even grammatically incorrect ones) is a good thing. While it may be preferable to only have polished and perfected opinions to sift through, I doubt there are sufficient editors in the world. Forbidding someone from expressing an opinion simply because they haven’t the necessary grammatical skills seems rather arbitrary and unfair.
In the best of all possible worlds, everyone would learn correct grammar in grade school and utilize it in every aspect of communication. Unfortunately, the dictates of economics and extreme political-correctness will probably prevent (or at least hinder) proper education, and expediency, efficiency or outright laziness will prevent proper utilization.
March 25th, 2006 at 10:32 pm
Language is a creature of necessity, as well is its usage, and both shall evolve as the need evolves. What we are seeing is the need for efficiency over proper grammar, complicated by a huge mass of jargon and slang that has entered common use at an incredible rate as various facets of existence have blurred together with our non-working lives. This has caused the necessary adaptation of technically improper usage and, unfortunately, it is those who lament the good-ol’ days of extensive drafts and proofreading, and other such time consuming tasks that suffer. Far be it for me, the grammatic cripple, to be the one to throw a stone at those who choose the expedient road as I also appreciate efficient and contextually clear communication as well as “proper” usage when it is called for. I would not, however, sacrifice quick and clear communication for something more pleasant to hear or see but marginally less effective.
That said, would I like to see proper usage carry into the modern era? Certainly. Do I expect to see it? No. The problem is that an increasingly technical environment requires swift and clear communication, and that need bleeds over into all areas of interaction. I tried to put together an example of a typical exchange that I work with daily, but the “more grammatically proper” example began to take over a page to cover the same thing I did in three lines using our communication protocols. Mayhap I can go over the exchange some time in the future, but breaking it into “normal” conversation mode is just too alien to even attempt at this hour.
The point is that the requirements of quick and efficient communication in a given context are not new. In fact, there has always been a need to use abbreviated communication methods clear back to the days of bartering before “money”. Back then, one expected to use the terms and usage associated with the context of commerce, but stopped using such things when the exchange of goods was completed. What we are seeing now is a blurring effect where the need for such usage is no longer clear because the technologies that have prompted and promoted it are no longer compartmentalized away from our daily lives as they have been in years past. The language and its use have evolved only because the context of its use has evolved.
I could also blame part of it on our pitiful public education system and what it has become in recent years, but I’ll have to save that for another time.