Digital Discourse Database

Number of Posts: 3
Posts 1 - 3

I can't be trusted with Google's texting app

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Newspaper | Telegraph
Date | 19.5.2016
Language | English
Country | UK
Topic Tags | Google, language threat, texting, word/writing, youth
Summary | Google's new Allo app is supposed to make you save time while you're texing, but it can sometimes lead to misunderstandings. The author of the article doesn't really like emojis and doesn't know how to use them well. She doesn't follow young people's digital habits. Their generation favors brevity, which can have a negative impact on language.
Image Description | Photograph of two young girls on their smartphones, two smartphones displaying chat conversations, and a man standing in front of a screen displaying "Allo" and "Duo".
Image Tags | female(s), male(s), smartphone, text

So, Is That a Thing?

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Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 16.4.2016
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | language threat, smartphone
Summary | The smartphone keeps us on the running at all times up to the point that we are overflooded with information on a daily basis. No wonder that the phrase "is that a thing?" makes sense to most people today. It is a lazy way to express that something is a significant state of affairs.
Image Description | Collage art abstractly illustrating "a thing" versus "not a thing".
Image Tags | text

Will emoji become a new language?

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Newspaper | BBC News
Date | 13.10.2015
Language | English
Country | UK
Topic Tags | emojis, grammar, language threat
Summary | Linguist Neil Cohn explains why emojis cannot be considered a new language and why they shouldn't be seen as a threat to language. Emojis don't have the same characteristics as other languages. Emojis are used to complement words, as we would use gestures along speech. Sometimes, people use long sequences of emojis to communicate, but they are not a language since they lack a grammar. Cohn talks about his book The Visual Language of Comics and explains what visual languages are. The visual language of comics does not work the same way as emojis; it's a language that has a grammar.
Image Description | Photograph of a series of emojis on a screen, photograph of a hand gesture, sreenshots of text message conversations with emojis, and photograph of a library of comic books.
Image Tags | emojis, hand(s), smartphone, text

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