Digital Discourse Database

Number of Posts: 4
Posts 1 - 4

«Jemandem zu sagen, er solle sich ficken, ist ziemlich schlimm»

(«Telling soeone to go fuck himself is pretty bad»)

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Newspaper | Tages-Anzeiger
Date | 5.4.2017
Language | German
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | anglicisms, language threat, research/study, texting, word/writing
Summary | Linguist Elisabeth Stark is research texting communication with a corpus of 18000 text messages and even more WhatsApp messages. She says that about 2-3% of the words are anglicisms and that their amount does not seem to be rising rapidly - the word "fuck" for instance is still too strong for most German speakers. In German, sex is too taboo for taboo language. Her data also shows that Swiss people choose the local dialect rather than the standard variety when texting. Most people's langugage competencies are not compromised by this informal communication, most can adhere to conventions when a formal register is appropriate.
Image Description | Portrait of the interviewee and a Keystone image of a protest with a sign reading "fuck".
Image Tags | female(s), text

Schweizer Firmen setzen auf Bots

(Swiss firms put their money on bots)

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Newspaper | Tages-Anzeiger
Date | 27.12.2016
Language | German
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | artificial intelligence, Facebook, privacy
Summary | Many companies in Switzerland are testing out chatbots to replace their telephone customer service. Many company chatbots can be contacted via the Facebook messenger. They are quite useful because they can organize tasks according to content and delegate them to the appropriate departments or help the customers themselves. Experts demand full transparency about what happens to customer data created in chatbot uses.
Image Description | Getty image of a woman's torso holding a smartphone, some chatbot chat screenshots and graphs.
Image Tags | female(s), hand(s), smartphone, text

Schriftliche Forschheiten: Vom Niedergang der Höflichkeit

(Written briskness: On the demise of politeness)

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Newspaper | Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ)
Date | 1.9.2014
Language | German
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | email, language threat, politeness, school, texting, WhatsApp, word/writing
Summary | Communication researchers agree that politeness in professional writing has decreased with the rise of digital communication. Rules of formal writing are omitted: what was“Honored Professor So-and-so” is now a simple “Hello”. Both students and also professors are reported to have a relaxed level of formality in email exchanges. This is usually seen as an influence of texting, where traditional messages of respect are omitted, but it can also be argued that the new brief communication style is a form of respecting the addressee’s time by writing efficiently.
Image Description | Photograph of a female texting; the shot does not show the person's face but emphasizes the phone.
Image Tags | female(s), hand(s), smartphone, text

Les mamans 2.0 ont tous les trucs pour garder leurs enfants à l'oeil

(Moms 2.0 have all the tricks to keep an eye on their kids)

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Newspaper | Le Matin Dimanche
Date | 11.5.2014
Language | French
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | childhood, smartphone, technology-free, texting, threat, youth
Summary | New technologies are changing family relations. Mothers think that giving their kids a phone will allow them to always keep in touch with them. However, the sooner children get a phone, the faster they grow apart from their parents. New technologies also change relations of authority in a family. Parents should not prohibit the use of screens; they should always talk to their kids about new media use. Parents who are not interested in new technologies are making a mistake; they are missing occasions to communicate with their kids and their authority is compromised.
Image Description | Illustration of a mother reading a "Happy Mother's day" text and being nostalgic of old times.
Image Tags | female(s), smartphone, text

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