Is Texting Ruining English Language Analysis
Hieu Tran
Professor Michael Mannion
English 12 A
27 October 2013
Is Texting Ruining The English Language? In this weeks video John McWhorter talks about texting. John studies how language has evolved -- and will evolve -- with social, historical and technological developments, in addition to studying and writing about race in America. He argues that we always hear texting is a negative decline or fall in serious literature or writing ability. That texting ruins someone’s ability to write or speak in a grammatically correct way. When In it really doesn’t, language is speech. Speech is much looser, its much more telegropahic. Very different from writing, we tend to see language being written often. That we think that’s what language is.
He then proves his point by saying texting is very loose in its structure. No one thinks about capital letters or punctuation when they text. Same goes for speaking, no one thinks about capitalizing letters during a speech. Although Texting has the mechanics of writing, Texting is basically “fingered speech”. John compares texting to a new type of language that has new structure. He then concludes that the way he sees texting is a whole new way of writing that young people are developing. That we are using alongside our normal writing skills, which is an example of being bi-dialectal. I completely agree with John, when I text it is completely different as to when I write an essay. Texting flows smooth and easy like a speech. My writing of course differs in terms of grammatical issues. I have to add punctuations and capitalizations but, I don’t have to worry about that in texting because, it is a form of speech! So is texting ruining the beautiful American language? No it is not because, texting is another form of speech!
Professor Michael Mannion
English 12 A
27 October 2013
Is Texting Ruining The English Language? In this weeks video John McWhorter talks about texting. John studies how language has evolved -- and will evolve -- with social, historical and technological developments, in addition to studying and writing about race in America. He argues that we always hear texting is a negative decline or fall in serious literature or writing ability. That texting ruins someone’s ability to write or speak in a grammatically correct way. When In it really doesn’t, language is speech. Speech is much looser, its much more telegropahic. Very different from writing, we tend to see language being written often. That we think that’s what language is.
He then proves his point by saying texting is very loose in its structure. No one thinks about capital letters or punctuation when they text. Same goes for speaking, no one thinks about capitalizing letters during a speech. Although Texting has the mechanics of writing, Texting is basically “fingered speech”. John compares texting to a new type of language that has new structure. He then concludes that the way he sees texting is a whole new way of writing that young people are developing. That we are using alongside our normal writing skills, which is an example of being bi-dialectal. I completely agree with John, when I text it is completely different as to when I write an essay. Texting flows smooth and easy like a speech. My writing of course differs in terms of grammatical issues. I have to add punctuations and capitalizations but, I don’t have to worry about that in texting because, it is a form of speech! So is texting ruining the beautiful American language? No it is not because, texting is another form of speech!