Digital Discourse Database

Number of Posts: 4
Posts 1 - 4

«Nous n'avons jamais autant écrit à travers l'histoire de l'humanité»

("We have never written so much through the history of mankind")

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Newspaper | Le Figaro
Date | 27.7.2017
Language | French
Country | France
Topic Tags | emojis, grammar, language threat, social media, spelling, word/writing
Summary | Linguist Louise-Amélie Cougnon answers some questions related to digital language and language threat. She talks about social media language and emojis, and claims that we should not worry about the spread of digital language. Also, research does not show a link between digital language use and language impoverishment. However, it seems that pupils have lower spelling and grammar skills than before.
Image Description | N/A

Apple transforme son emoji pêche

(Apple transforms its peach emoji)

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Newspaper | Le Figaro
Date | 3.11.2016
Language | French
Country | France
Topic Tags | emojis, language threat, spelling
Summary | Not everyone agrees with the new iOS update; some emojis have disappeared. For instance, the old peach emoji was replaced by another emoji that looks more like an apricot. Changing emojis is another way of saying "you should write this way and not that way", which is similar to a spelling reform. Emojis are becoming political. Finally, emojis are not a threat to language; they are a way to complement it.
Image Description | Images of the old and new peach emojis, and photograph of a cap with the message "make peach (picture of the new peach emoji) peach (picture of the old peach emoji) again".
Image Tags | emojis

Dans le secret de la très discrète Académie des emojis

(The secret behind the very discrete Emoji Academy)

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Newspaper | Le Figaro
Date | 31.10.2016
Language | French
Country | France
Topic Tags | emojis, spelling
Summary | Emojis have to go through a lot before they can be available on our phones and apps; they first have to be approved by the Unicode Consortium. The Unicode Consortium was first created to codify all the different written characters in the world so that they would look similar on any platform. Now, the organization does not only focus on the normalization of words, but also of emojis. People working for the Unicode Consortium (mostly white 50-year old men) meet four times every year to discuss the evolution of emojis. They all agree on one point: emojis cannot be considered a “language”. Emojis complement language (by transmitting certain emotions for instance). Nevertheless, some debates surrounding emojis mirror certain debates related to spelling reforms.
Image Description | Images of different emojis, and logos of companies members of the Unicode Consortium.
Image Tags | emojis, logo

El impacto de la redes sociales en el lenguaje

(The impact of social media on language)

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Newspaper | infobae
Date | 3.7.2016
Language | Spanish
Country | Argentina
Topic Tags | emojis, language threat, social media, spelling
Summary | Social media have an impact on the Spanish language with the adoption of new words such as "tuitear" (to tweet) or googlear (to google). Linguist Silvia Ramirez Gelbes claims that language is alive; it is growing, changing, and adopting new words. The introduction of new words in a language is not anything new; for example, when planes were first created, the aeronautical world had to create new words. Gelbes also states that people (and not authorities) are the ones who decide which words are to be used. Moreover, she says that although we live in a "visual culture", emojis are not a threat to our language; they should be viewed as a complement. Finally, people write more, so we witness a multiplication of spelling mistakes, but new technologies don't have a negative impact on spelling.
Image Description | Photograph of a man holding a speech bubble with different symbols related to new technologies, and five Twitter links to other related infobae articles.
Image Tags | emojis, male(s), Twitter

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