[tt] Wired: The Web Not the Death of Language

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The Web Not the Death of Language
http://www.wired.com/print/culture/lifestyle/news/2005/02/66671

Kristen Philipkoski Email 02.22.05

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- We love instant messenger for the little
pleasures it provides: workday diversions, covert flirting
opportunities, parental contact with an easy out.

But communicating using instant messenger, text messaging, even
blogging are changing the way humans communicate. The technologies
have opened up a whole new field of linguistic studies, and
researchers say the impact will be as significant as the advent of
the telegraph and telephone.

Traditional linguists fear the internet damages our ability to
articulate properly, infusing language with LOLs, dorky emoticons
and the gauche sharing of personal information on blogs. But some
researchers believe we have entered a new era of expression.

"Resources for the expression of informality in writing have hugely
increased -- something not seen in English since the Middle Ages,"
said David Crystal, an author and linguistics professor at the
University of Wales at Bangor. He presented at the American Academy
for the Advancement of Science annual meeting in Washington, D.C.,
by recorded DVD when the live feed failed.

At first glance, you might not expect Crystal to get excited about
IM utterances. But from behind a long silver beard and coke-bottle
glasses, his excitement is clear. The internet is getting more
people to write, he said, and that's a great thing.

Some believe the informality of internet-mediated communication is
causing the language to deteriorate.

"The prophets of doom emerge every time a new technology influences
language, of course -- they gathered when printing was introduced in
the 15th century," Crystal said.

But linguists should be "exulting," he said, in the ability the
internet gives us to "explore the power of the written language in a
creative way."

During a seminar on language and the internet at the AAAS meeting
Friday, researchers presented their findings on internet
communication techniques.

In the spring of 2003, Naomi Baron collected 23 instant message
conversations from college students: nine between males, nine
between females and five between males and females. She studied
2,185 total transmissions.

The results did not fit typical stereotypes, she found. They used
few abbreviations, acronyms and emoticons, the spelling was
reasonably good and contractions were not ubiquitous. Overall, the
study suggested that conversing through instant messenger resembled
speaking more than writing.

Had the study focused on high school students, the results likely
would have been very different. For high school students, IMing is
more like fashion. See Microsoft's latest cheat sheet for parents.
But high school students are difficult to study because researches
need informed consent from parents, who usually want to see the
results.

The easier-to-study college students gave a more staid impression of
IM communication. The average length per transmission was 5.4 words;
22 percent were a single word. Many were parts of sentences -- 112
included a conjunction, like this: "she's a phd student (break) and
my TA," and 48 used a preposition, like this: "what are you bringing
(break) on Saturday."

The college students used only 31 abbreviations specific to internet
communication, 16 of which were "k" for OK. They used just 90
acronyms total, 76 of which were "lol," and they used just 49
emoticons, mostly smiley faces. Just 171 words were misspelled, and
the students often corrected the spelling in a follow-up. When they
could have used contractions they did so only 65.3 percent of the
time.

Men were much more likely to use contractions, Baron found. She also
noted that women took significantly longer to close IM conversations
than males, and males were significantly more likely than females to
break utterances into multiple IM transmissions.

Probably least surprising was the fact that 70 percent of college
students who answered a questionnaire as part of the study said they
were simultaneously pursuing other activities while they IM'd, such
as listening to a media player, word processing, talking to someone
in person, eating or drinking, watching television or talking on the
telephone. The average number of IM conversations per student at one
time was about three, the highest number being 12.

They had multiple conversations, they said, because of time
constraints, and also because focusing on just one IM conversation
would be "too weird."