June 2008

textural language in the digital age

As more and more youth embrace the net and it's keyboard communication, the spelling and use of text has gotten more and more warped from the traditionally frozen useage of my youth. There was only one correct way to transcribe speech and in fact it tended to slow down the development of language, freezing it likewise into a set pattern of correctness. Outside of the libraries language continued to flow and change and develop but when one set pen to paper, there was only one way to speak. Trying to capture the language variations from beyond required extensive use of quotes, apologies, and prestige. It wasn't that long ago in fact that written language belonged only to the few privileged folks in society.
This has changed, quite dramatically, with the digital age. We spent the last fifty or more years extending literacy as far as we can into the strata of our society. Now we vigorously follow that effort with the extension of computer and internet access. Because the current technology still relies heavily on text based language, we are seeing an explosion of experimentation in that form. One might lament the use of creative spelling as a failing of literacy. When people use forms that are shorter, more phonetic, and sometimes just plain unaesthetic to express themselves, when they translate casual slang and grammer into phonetically crafted works of text, one might decry the ignorance of the masses. Some in fact do. You hear it often in the older generations mostly, but among many literati there is a general dismay over the degradation of literacy in the digital age.
Yet I pose another opinion, just come to me this morning. In fact, these creative spellings and warpings of the written language indicate a very high literacy. Where once ciphering was learned as a memorized process, used in prescribed ways, now it is being used creatively, natively, and comfortably by millions of people who bend it and develop new language idioms within it, as fluently as any language has ever evolved when fully alive in a society. Languages that do not change and alter with use are dead languages. Consider vulgate latin versus classical latin. One continued to change for hundreds of years, the other stayed frozen, a written language representing a specific period in history. In English the forms continually change. Even the differences from Shakespear to today are dramatic, nevermind going back as far as Beowulf. At that stage one can only read the language with an interpreter nearby, even though it is English. When the printing press and dictionaries came along, written language was frozen somewhat. By arduous process and constant use a term will make it's way into those august tomes, there to become officially sanctioned. However one still heard long and hard about certain words being unacceptable because they weren't so recorded. "Ain't ain't a word because ain't ain't in the dictionary!" (Actually it is though, and it's a very solid word with good history.)
So today our population is playing fast and loose with the written language and most of us are rapidly catching on. We know that "ur" means "you are" and "LOLz" means "laughing out loud in a droll manner." We understand things like "l33t," "technically elite" for those of you who have stayed in your stacks, and the common substitution of z for s when it's a voiced sibilant. From a linguistic point of view it's actually a fascinating process to witness. I would commend any student who took it upon himself to focus his studies on the digital age of written language and it's evolution into a vibrant moving stage of communication.