Communication Today

Communication today is increasingly characterized by both the computerized - technical media and the mass media. Communication through media today is through services such as the short message services (S.M.S.), applications in smart phones such as Whats App, social media sites as well as forms of print and online media. These media can have an influence on the form and content of the communication behavior and the life and work of the people. However it is vital that we differentiate between forms and categories of communication. The former refers to a communicative schema while the latter refers to the communicative patterns in which parties involved get guidance to a communicative schema, for example a chat communication. In this essay, I will focus on the categories of communication and see how these have been influenced by the media and whether it has an impact on the way people communicate.
My target group would be the young people, from teenagers to young adults. This is because the benefits of transmission of data through phones or the internet mean fast accessibility to virtually anywhere and this is captivating for this group. These forms of communication mean that they can easily keep in touch, make appointments, maintain relationships and of course have fun communicating. However, there are certain factors that influence the communicative categories in which various groups of people fall under, e.g. ethnic and cultural affiliation, social circles, and age as well as status. . It is through these categories that communication patterns can be analyzed. Further, the dichotomies of oral and written form of communication form substantial drawing lines in as much as the influence on both these aspects on verbal and non-verbal forms of communication is concerned. Consequentially, the aspects that a language entails such as morphology, syntax, lexicon, pragmatics etcetera can be affected. We start by looking at the aspects.
Syntax, which is the principles on which sentences in a language are processed in a language, is mostly affected in the non-verbal than in the verbal communication. This means the when conversing over a phone call or face to face communication can take place without much problem. If one party does not understand the other, they can directly ask. In a written form though it could be problematic if the involved parties have don’t master a language comprehensively or when it comes to someone outside a specific group. Within the same groups, people tend to have a sort of specific cord which they use e.g. between peer groups or even different regions in a country. Another aspect would be lexical semantics. This means the study of what individual lexical items mean, why they mean what they do, how we can represent all of this, and where the combined interpretation for an utterance comes from. Similarly the non-verbal communication is affected more by mediums of communication as the verbal from. The word order in which one utters in a face to face talk is not so problematic since one can also understand from the context. However in the written form, there is a incoherency and therefore the structure of the language can be deterred leading to misunderstandings.
Now moving over to the practical part, how are the youth using this media? In the case of written form, there is an urge to keep the message short and concise as possible. Concise here means that the data sent is understandable to the one receiving it; there has to be a differentiation based on the communication partner. For example, in as SMS, this saves a lot of character and it is usually possible to squeeze the contents in only 160 characters . Further, cost and time plays an important role. The shorter the text is, the cheaper it is and the less time consuming it is. Even in chat rooms the chat message must be sent quickly for a quick feedback. So as to keep the conversations going, many abbreviations and acronyms are used. Whole phrases or even sentences are summarized can one word. Punctuation marks are often omitted or even capitalization.
• kanns kaum erwarten bis du endlich kommst!!!HDGGGGGDL :-)
(HDGGGGGGDL-Habe dich ganz ganz ganz ganz ganz doll Lieb)
Many of the acronyms and abbreviation are taken from English and the German and are often associated with particular phrases or sayings which are common. This reduces the risk of misunderstanding and also it replaces the expression in a personal conversation. These features are supported by the emoticons, which are modeled on the smiley. Also, by means of asterisks one can express more complex feelings or actions just and accurate.
• *liebevollknuddel* which ist short for “Ich knuddel dich liebevoll”.
Also, emotions that one may be afraid to show in face to face conversation can be communicated through written forms. In fact, the use of smiley’s or acronyms can make the situation less tense to replace facial expressions, so one can communicate via writing his mood and his expression. There is also the aspect of innovation involved in this form of writing. The desire amongst the youth to create something new, personal and authentic can create a feeling of independence and pride of achieving something solely. They will derive pride from having their own way of communicating amongst themselves. This could be a defense mechanism tact against people who do not belong to their peer groups; to create their own boundaries.
Another aspect that has been changed by the new form of communication is Anglicism. Given the effects of globalization today and with it the use of English, there are eminent effects on the German language. Even in the education institutes, for example in our Seminar, ‘Mediensozialiasation’ Anglicism terminology is not hard to come across e.g. Peer-Groups, Brainstorming etcetera. Further, some of these words can be found in the duden dictionary e.g. Camping (English) – das Camping (German) Sometimes an English word is picked out and directly used.
• I need you,like the moon needs the sun to shine. I need you like the flowers need the water to live. EHRLICH!
• Hast du an das beidseitige Tesafilm gedacht für die Fotos? Write back!
The impact of new media on the language is not necessarily negative; it might just be the opposite. The basic line is that, it does affect the way the young people talk but they are able to differentiate situations where they use the colloquial language or written form and when not to . However the difference between spoken language and written language should remain minimal. The new media of communication has opened up new horizons amongst the young people, for example when one can establish new contacts social media sites. The important thing is the chat language used, be one that the chat partner can understand and that those composing the messages or conversing can adapt their writing or talking style automatically to the purpose. Also this should not take over personal relationships because chats can take the form of a face to face conversation, e.g.
Speaker X: na mein liebä, auch schon da!
Speaker Y: Hör mir uff. Was machstn???
Speaker X: nix!
It is quite positive to see the increasing speed of communication as this can facilitate many processes both in the private as in public spheres. However, language like a cultural value should be handled carefully. Although the new media have evolved so quickly, it does not mean that principles of the German language be thrown in disarray. As long as this form of communication, despite its extremes is differentiated from the regular use of language then it can be termed as acceptable. This is because language is subject to change, which is one of the reasons why dictionaries are revised from time to time. This phenomenon of the “new-language” is inevitable. Therefore linguistics as well as sociologists should look for a way in which these can be integrated in the system so that the youth do not have to feel that they are using a non-official language.
Conclusively, children as well as the youth should learn to develop awareness of the different patterns of communication that they participate in. It should be a sort of reflex awareness so that they can differentiate between forms and categories of communication. Once this difference is clearly set, then they can develop their skills accordingly.

Literature
• Androutsopoulos, Jannis/Gurly Schmidt (2002): SMS-Kommunikation: Ethnographische Gattungsanalyse am Beispiel einer Kleingruppe, in: Zeitschrift für angewandte Linguistik, Vol. 36, S. 49-80.
• Baldwin, T. and Bond, F. (2003). Learning the countability of English nouns from corpus data. In Proc. of the 41st Annual Meeting of the ACL, pages 463–70, Sapporo, Japan.
• Haase, Martin (u.a.) (1997): Internetkommunikation und Sprachwandel, in: Weingarten, Rüdiger (Hrsg.): Sprachwandel durch Computer. Opladen: Westdt. Verl., S. 51-85.

Internet Links

• http://www.zeit.de/2011/09/C-Schreibkompetenz/seite-2 last visited, 03.02.2013 13:45
• http://www.linguistik-online.de/22_05/duerscheid.html last visited, 03.02.2013 15:06
• http://www.mediensprache.net/archiv/corpora/sms_os_h.pdf last visited, 03.02.2013 16:30
• http://www.duden.de/rechtschreibung/Camping last visited, 02.02.2013 13:00
• http://www.mediensprache.net/archiv/corpora/sms_os_h.pdf last visited, 04.02.2013

Links: • http://www.zeit.de/2011/09/C-Schreibkompetenz/seite-2 last visited, 03.02.2013 13:45 • http://www.linguistik-online.de/22_05/duerscheid.html last visited, 03.02.2013 15:06 • http://www.mediensprache.net/archiv/corpora/sms_os_h.pdf last visited, 03.02.2013 16:30 • http://www.duden.de/rechtschreibung/Camping last visited, 02.02.2013 13:00 • http://www.mediensprache.net/archiv/corpora/sms_os_h.pdf last visited, 04.02.2013