Number of Posts: 5
Posts 1 - 5
'Ha' Isn't a Laugh. Seriously?
Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 8.7.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | abbreviations, emojis, Facebook, research/study, texting, word/writing
Summary | People express laughs in different ways when the text or otherwise communicate online. Some type a version of "haha", others write "LOL" or a similar abbreviation but none of these messages mean that one is actually laughing. Linguists who have analyzed thousands of texts claim that LOLs signal interlocutor involvement like an "uh-huh" on the phone.
Image Description | Cartoon of various people laughing with various noises.
Image Tags | male(s)
What Happened to Who?
Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 8.4.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | abbreviations, grammar, language threat, politics, Twitter
Summary | More and more politicians have begun replacing the relative pronoun "who" with "that" in sentences like ''people that come with a legal visa and overstay''. Although some dictionaries say this is an acceptable for, the New York Times' style sheet does not condone using "that" instead of "who". It denies the mentioned persons their humanity. This trend is unsurprising considering that our communication is increasingly happening on platforms like Twitter that only allow 140 characters so that we invent loads of abbreviations like "LOL" and "TTYL".
Image Description | Artwork copying Edvard Munch's "The Scream" and a few high-profile Tweets with spelling mistakes.
Image Tags | female(s), male(s), Twitter
Eines der reichsten Länder knausert beim Bildungswesen
(One of the wealthiest countries is stingy about education)
Newspaper | Sonntagszeitung
Date | 19.3.2017
Language | German
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | abbreviations, childhood, language threat, school, threat
Summary | Children nowadays get a smartphone as soon as they are physically able to hold one and spend their whole lives in an artificial, digital environment. All information is at their finger tips, they only need to know how to read. They mix languages and use more and more abbreviations. To top it off: the goverments cuts money from education.
Image Description | N/A
Sexting: A language our children must never learn
Newspaper | Daily Telegraph
Date | 20.4.2017
Language | English
Country | UK
Topic Tags | abbreviations, childhood, sexting, technology-free, threat, youth
Summary | Youths are using abbreviations to keep their parents out of the loop like LMIRL (let's meet in real life). The police have published a list of these to help parents monitor their children. It is sad that children and teenagers have such low self-esteem that they do anything to receive validation from their digital peers. This is not just youth culture or rap music's fault but rather the parent's fault. They are always busy and spend too much time on their smartphone rather than gracing their children with face-to-face attention and smartphone-free activities.
Image Description | Getty image of a teenage boy smirking at a smartphone.
Image Tags | male(s), smartphone
Kommunikation ist alles
(Communication is everything)
Newspaper | Frankfurter Neue Presse
Date | 4.2.2017
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | abbreviations, childhood, language threat, smartphone
Summary | Many young children already have smartphones. It is problematic if youths spend too much time on new media - they don't learn how to interact face-to-face so that they whip out the phone even if they are hanging out with a friend. They increasingly write in abbreviations which makes them do badly in school. Parents are part of the problem, because they demand that their children be available on the smartphone at all times. It is important to give children positive offline experiences.
Image Description | Image of a man holding a cell phone and holding his thumb up.
Image Tags | cell phone, hand(s), male(s)
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