the bastardization of language?: exploring the...

The Bastardization of Language?: Exploring theLanguage of Text Messaging

Derek Denis

University of [email protected]

Study Languages 2011December 8, 2011

“the bastardization of language”

“a breakdown in the English language”

“the linguistic ruin of [a] generation”

“grotesque”

“texting is wreaking our language”

“i h8 txt msgs”

• The media loves to talk about the “horrors” of textmessaging!

• Are their concerns valid? Is texting ruining English?• How can we test this? What have scientists already said?

• In this workshop, we will discuss these questions!• What are your opinions?• We will talk about a research project conducted right here at

the University of Toronto.• We will perform our own mini-research project in an effort to

address these claims.

• My goals:• Introduce the concept of Computer-Mediated Communication

(CMC) as a variety of English unto itself.• Discuss the difference between prescriptive and descriptive

views of language.• Discuss language change.• Emphasize that empirical rigour and not anecdotal evidence is

the only way to investigate claims about language.

Who am I? Why should you care about my opinion?

• I’m a linguist• I study the structure of language using the scientific method.

• Specifically, I’m a sociolinguist• I examine language variation, language change and how these

relate to social constructs like class and gender.

• I’m a defender of txtspeech• CBC News• Globe and Mail• New Scientist Magazine• Emailed by National Geographic last week

• In the not too distant past, I was a teenager.

What do you think? Is this proper English?

1) Male, 19, Computer-Mediated Communication

aaaaaagh the show tonight shall rock some serious jam!

2) Female, 15, Computer-Mediated Communication

Jeff says “lyk omgod omgod omgodzzzzzZZZ!!!!”


hehehe okieee! Must finish it now ill ttyl


lol.. as u can tell im very bitter right now

shall

Shall is a modal auxiliary that is part of the future temporalreference system of English.

• It is used to express the future tense along with other wordslike will and be going to

• star wars episode III is going to(/will/shall) suck just asmuch as the previous two

• by the way there will(/is going to/shall) be a jam session atmy house

• i think i shall(/will/am going to) hit the sack

say

Say is a verb of quotation.

• It is used to introduce reported speech along with other verbslike go and be like.

• I emailed him and said(/was like/went) “when are you comingover?”

• he was like(/said/went) “uh... yeah...”• some guy’s running around the street going(/being like

/saying) “world war three, oh my god it’s world war three!”Do you remember that?

Must

Must is a deontic modal.

• It is used to expression obligation and necessity along withother elements like have to and gotta.

• I must(/have to/gotta) consult my Man-Bible.• You’ve gotta(/must/have to) send me pics.• We have to(/must/gotta) go up to Yorkdale.

very

Very is an adverb of intensification.

• It is used next to an adjective to increase the degree of whatthe adjective is expressing just like really and so

• My clean room is so(/very/really) weird.• haha it was kinda creepy, but very(/so/really) cool.• I don’t have any stories though my life is really(/very/so)

boring.

So what?

I’ve shown four sociolinguistic variables.

• A set of different ways to say the same thing.

• Different variants of a sociolinguistic variable have differentsocial correlations.

• A variant could be used:• by more women than men;• by working class people and not upper class people;• when speaking to a teacher and not when speaking to your

friend.

So why did I highlight shall, say, must and very?

A Linguistic Fusion

1. Shall is the oldest way to express future tense, and is nearlyextinct in speech.

2. Say is the standard way to introduce reported speech.

3. Must is the oldest and most formal way to express deonticmodality.

4. Just as very is the the oldest and most formal intensifier.

Yet all these forms, and other older, standard, formal forms areconsistently found throughout the language of Computer-MediatedCommunication, interspersed with newer, less standard, informalforms and other linguistic innovations.

Fluid mastery of sociolinguistic resources

In a study I conducted with Sali Tagliamonte between 2005 and2008, we concluded that:

Consistent juxtaposition of “forms of a different feather”is the quintessential characteristic of CMC. [...] CMCappears to be a venue in which teenagers are free to useall these features together. The linguistic fusion isendemic to the register itself. Individuals pick and choosefrom all the available variants that their linguistic systemhas to offer and draw from the entire stylistic repertoireof the language that exists at a given point in time. Ifthe teenagers did not already possess skilled command oftheir linguistic system, this would be impossible. Thecharacter and nature of [CMC] we have uncovered herereveals fluid mastery of the sociolinguistic resources intheir speech community.

How did we conclude this?

We performed a long term quantitative analysis of the languageused in Computer-Mediated Communication (instant messaging)and directly compared it to the language used in speech. Welooked at:

1. The usage patterns of the four sociolinguistic variablesdiscussed above.

2. The usage of Abbreviations and acronyms like lol and ttyl.

Methodology

We collected a corpus of more than a million words ofcomputer-mediated communication from 71 teenagers and morethan a quarter of a million words of spoken English from a subsetof the 71 teenagers.

• This allowed us to make a direct comparison between thelanguage used in speech and the language used incomputer-mediated communication.

Future Tense

Quotatives

Deontic Modality

Intensifiers

Interim Summary

1. Less non-standard forms; more formal forms in CMC.

2. Existence of some highly formal forms in CMC but not at allin speech.

Abbrvs

Usually when the media talk about the problems with the languageof Computer-Mediated Communication, they like to talk aboutabbreviations and acronyms like lol and omg.

“Then there’s the problem of ambiguity. With my vastknowledge of text language I had assumed LOL meant‘lots of love’, but now I discover it means ‘laugh outloud’. Or at least it did the last time I asked.

“But how would you know? Instead of aidingcommunication it can be a barrier. I can work out BTW(by the way) but I was baffled by IMHO U R GR8. Itmeans: ”In my humble opinion you are great.” But, onceagain, how would you know?”— John Humphrys, Mail Online, 24 September 2007

Unpacking Humphrys

“The problem of ambiguity”

• How many of you thought that lol didn’t mean “laugh outloud”?

“Instead of aiding communication it can be a barrier”

• Did any of you have trouble with IMHO U R GR8?

The problem with Humphrys is that he doesn’t understand a veryimportant concept of sociolinguistics: the speech community.

Speech community

A group of people “held together by common norms andaspirations” with respect to language (Gumperz 1982:24).

What Humphrys is pointing out when he mentions ambiguity andbarriers to communication is simply that he is not a member ofthe speech community who uses the abbreviations he mentions.

• He’s not a teenager!

• In fact, he continues on to talk about how he simply doesn’ttext people.

• Why would someone who doesn’t text think he should be ableto understand the jargon and conventions of an entire genreof language?

Speaking of barriers to communication...

Consider the next paragraph in Humphry’s article:

“Let me anticipate the reaction to this modest little rant againstthe text revolution and the OED for being influenced by it. Itsdefenders will say language changes.”

• What is OED?• Oxford English Dictionary

• Humphrys is from a speech community (academics,pretentious people) who assume that everyone knows whatOED stands for.

Abbrvs are not inherently terrible

• CBC

• DVD

• ASAP

• RSVP

• Prof.

• Dr.

• PhD

• MPP

• USA

• NATO

• SARS

• 3D

• NASA

• RCMP

• FBI

• H

• He

• Li

• Be

• B

• C

• N

• O

• tbsp.

• tsp.

• pg.

• #

• in.

• kg

• MIT

• U of T

• BC

• AD

• c.

• E = mc2

• etc.

So...

Humphrys is missing two crucial points:

1. Speech communities have shared conventions with respect tolanguage.

2. Abbreviations and acronyms have been part of English for avery long time.

On top of these two points, let’s have a look at how frequentlyabbreviations are actually used in CMC.

Abbrvs in CMC

Form Frequency Proportion of total word count

haha 16 183 1.47%lol 4 506 0.41%hehe 2 050 0.19%omg 1 261 0.11%hmm 1 038 0.09%brb 390 0.04%ttyl 298 0.03%btw 249 0.02%wtf 218 0.02%...

total 26 795 2.44%

haha lol hehe omg hmm brb ttyl btw wtf Total

Abbrv

%

01

23

45

Proportion of Abbrvs of Total Word Count

1.47

0.410.19 0.11 0.09 0.04 0.03 0.02 0.02

2.44

haha lol hehe omg hmm brb ttyl btw wtf Total

Abbrv

%

020

4060

80100

Proportion of Abbrvs of Total Word Count

1.47 0.41 0.19 0.11 0.09 0.04 0.03 0.02 0.02 2.44

What did this study find?

1. Teenagers use a mix of informal and also highly formalaspects of language (such as shall and must)

2. Abbreviations are not inherently bad.

3. Abbreviations are only a very very small aspect of CMC.

4. As you get older, you use marked, salient abbreviations like lolless.

So why do people have such strong opinions!?

Prescriptivism vs. descriptivism

Prescriptivism

A view on language that is imposed language-externally. The ideathat a word or sentence is more elegant, better or correct becauseit used to be used in that way during earlier periods or because itresembles Classical languages (like Latin) is a prescriptive idea.

Descriptivism

The idea that individual languages/dialects/varieties are all naturalsystems if they are used by native speakers and aremutually-intelligible. No external requirements or evaluationcriteria are imposed on a language.

The goal of linguistics “is to describe and explain thefacts of languages, not to change them.”(O’Grady and Archibald 2012:8)

The problem with prescriptivism...

The prescriptive viewpoint ignores something extremely important:The mutability of languages. The fact that all languageschange!

Beowulf (English, c. 10th century)

Hwæt! we Gar-Dena in gear-dagumþeod-cyninga, þrym gefrunon,hu Da æþelingas ellen fremedon.

Modern English (English)

Woah! We old Danes,of the kingdom, learned about glory by asking,how these noblemen showed courage.

Language change

Language change happens over a long time and this can result intwo completely unintelligible languages (Old English, ModernEnglish).

In the short term, language change is still taking place.

In all of history, no one over 40 has ever been heard tosay: “I love the way kids are talking these days.”— Bill Labov (founder of modern day sociolinguistics)

No one would ever say that the language that Beowulf was writtenin was not English. Likewise, just because Ulysses is not written inthe same language as Beowulf doesn’t mean that James Joycewasn’t writing in English.

• Language change is consistent and universal.

• The only constant with respect to language is change.

Our mini-project

In the second part of this workshop, we are going to perform amini-research project.

All of the data I was talking about came from a corpus of instantmessaging speech.

Can the same conclusions be made with respect to text messaging?

We’ll find out!

Our mini-project

Here’s what we’re going to do.

1. Take out your cell phones.

2. Look at your 10 most recent text messages received.

3. Record the following information on the form I gave you.

3.1 Total number of words in the text.3.2 Age of txter (let’s limit this to teenagers)3.3 Gender of txter3.4 Number of txt abbreviations and which ones.

4. We’ll collapse all this data into one file.

5. Make some charts and compare txting to IM and guys to girlsand age effects.

Let’s go through how to do this.

While I input the data, get into small groups and talk about thesequestions. Make hypotheses and justify them! Write them downyour ideas so we can talk about them.

1. Will there be a larger proportion of abbreviations in ourmini-corpus of texts than in my corpus of instant messaging?

2. Will age have an effect on the number of abbreviations?

3. Who will use more abbreviations? Guys or Girls?

4. What will be the most frequent abbreviation?

Wrap-up discussion

Let’s wrap things up with some discussion.

1. Has your opinion of Computer-Mediated Communicationchanged? Stayed the same? Gotten worse?

2. Next time you hear someone complaining about the languageof text messaging, what will you tell them?

3. What do you think about this quote?

It came to me that the English language was in deeptrouble when people started saying “rofl” and “lol” inperson.

[... I]t is remarkable how often people say this sort of thing. Itreaches newspaper columns and magazines as well as everydayconversations about language (“Oh, you’re a linguist? What doyou think about the way Internet slang is changing thelanguage?”). I’ve heard a half-hour radio discussion about it onthe BBC World Service (in the middle of the night; it was a realyawn, a perfect fix for my insomnia). It seems likely that at leastsome people really do think English might be altered radically bythe intrusion of email abbreviations for phrases like “[I’m] rollingon the floor laughing” or “[I’m] laughing out loud” into regularspoken English.

Don’t worry. Nothing radical or even slightly significant willhappen. Suppose, say,“rofl” became quite common in speech(which seems unlikely, since if your interlocutor falls down and rollson the floor laughing it generally needs no comment; but maybe asa metaphor, or on the phone). What would have changed? Oneinterjection (a word grammatically like “ouch”) added. Total effecton language: utterly trivial. Not even noise level. Interjections areso unimportant to the fabric of the language that they are almostcompletely ignored in grammars. There’s almost nothing to say.They have no syntactic properties at all — you pop one in whenthe spirit moves you. And their basic meaning is simply expressiveof a transitory mental state (“Ouch!” means something like “Thathurt!”). Don’t worry about English. It will do fine. Not evenfloods of email-originated phrases entering the lexicon wouldchange it in any significant way.

Geoffrey Pullum. (2007). English in deep trouble? Language Log.

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