Digital Discourse Database

Number of Posts: 4
Posts 1 - 4

Words are getting shorter due to social media as 'Jomo' and 'mic drop' feature on word of the year list

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Newspaper | Telegraph
Date | 3.11.2016
Language | English
Country | UK
Topic Tags | social media, spelling, texting, word/writing
Summary | With social media and texting, it seems that words are getting shorter. For instance, “jomo” stands for the “joy of missing out”; the acronym has been included on the Collins list of words that have seen a significant rise in usage. Other terms are: mic drop, throw shade, sharenting, uberisation, or dude food.
Image Description | Photograph of a group of people cheering, video of Obama dropping his mic, and photograph of Trump smiling
Image Tags | female(s), male(s)

Erik Orsenna: «N'oublions jamais qu'une langue est un cadeau!»

(Erik Orsenna: "Let's never forget that a language is a gift!")

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Newspaper | Le Monde
Date | 9.3.2017
Language | French
Country | France
Topic Tags | language threat, spelling, texting, word/writing
Summary | Writer Erik Orsenna talks about language and why it shapes us. He talks about the new French spelling reforms, the French Academy, the relationship between language and people's identity, rap music, useless anglicisms, and texting.
Image Description | Photograph of interviewee Erik Orsenna
Image Tags | male(s)

Le point à la fin du SMS: un mauvais signe

(A period at the end of a text: a bad sign)

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Newspaper | Le Monde
Date | 5.1.2016
Language | French
Country | France
Topic Tags | abbreviations, misunderstanding, punctuation, spelling, texting, word/writing
Summary | Texting is becoming very popular among younger people who will soon be getting their smartphone transplanted on their hand. The language of texting is "cool", does not necessarily follow traditional rules, uses phonetics and abbreviations. Moreover, to replace the tone of voice and other nonverbal cues that are lacking in writing, people use emoticons. Now, it seems that adding a period at the end of a text can lead to misunderstandings.
Image Description | Photograph of a businessman walking and looking at his phone
Image Tags | male(s), smartphone

How I Became Addicted to Online Word Games

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Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 18.3.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | addiction, game, language threat, spelling, word/writing
Summary | There are plenty of stories about the horrors of online game addiction. But being addicted to online word games mimicking Boggle or Scrabble does not only have the same addiction-related issues but also messes with your vocabulary. These games have no penalty for guessing a word that might not even be one, which is why one just begins to memorize all words that the app accepts without really knowing what they mean. This obsessive toying with words may have a negative impact on our linguistics abilities as well as spelling, and so on.
Image Description | Illustration of a man with Scrabble tiles on his tongue reminiscent of party pills.
Image Tags | game, male(s)

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