Number of Posts: 5
Posts 1 - 5
Mit dem Selfiestick im Späti rumeiern
(Egging around at the deli with the selfie stick)
Newspaper | Tages-Anzeiger
Date | 9.8.2017
Language | German
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | anglicisms, artificial intelligence, emojis, Facebook, fake news, language threat, selfie
Summary | The new German dictionary "Duden" has added 5000 new key words, many of which are originally English. Now, having been included in the most authoritative dictionary in German language, they are officially part of the German language as anglicisms. Such words include fake news, emoji, selfie, chatbot, and liking ("liken" in German with the English word stem "like" and the German infinitive verb ending "-en").
Image Description | N/A
«Jemandem zu sagen, er solle sich ficken, ist ziemlich schlimm»
(«Telling soeone to go fuck himself is pretty bad»)
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
Auf Eigenständigkeit bestehen
(Insist on autonomy)
Newspaper | Tages-Anzeiger
Date | 14.3.2016
Language | German
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | language threat, texting, word/writing
Summary | Digital communication like texting or blogging offer Swiss people various possibilities to express themselves in their native tongue. Linguistic autonomy has always been very important to Swiss German-speakers. This makes it all the more disheartnening that more and more Standard German is finding its way into Swiss German speech and writing.
Image Description | N/A
Jetzt kommt die Sticker-Schwemme
(The sticker flood is on its way)
Newspaper | Tages-Anzeiger
Date | 15.11.2016
Language | German
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | abbreviations, emojis, Facebook, language threat, marketing, social media
Summary | Emoticons (f.i. ":-D") and abbreviations (f.i. "LOL") have trickled down from "geek speak" and established themselves in the mainstream. Emojis are nowadays ever present in our digital communication as well as in other arenas such as film or advertising. Now various social media platforms, among them Facebook, offer users various palettes of stickers. They are larger versions of emojis and are sent as an image file rather than included on the keyboard as a letter. Because many sticker palettes need to be purchased, a whole economy is beginning to form: The Japanese messaging app Line has sold over $250 mio worth of stickers last year. We do not need to fear that emojis and co. will replace language as we know it.
Image Description | Commodified emojis in various forms (as balls, as tattoos, as bed sheets, as food, on clothing, as masks, etc.) and Facebook messenger chats using/purchasing sticker collections.
Image Tags | emojis, Facebook, male(s), social media
Eine literarische Revolution ;-)
(A literary revolution ;-))
Newspaper | Tages-Anzeiger
Date | 10.2.2015
Language | German
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | emojis, language threat, translation
Summary | Originating in the late 1990s in Japan, emojis have gained huge popularity worldwide. Some say they are destroying our language, others use emojis for poetic endeavors. Fred Benenson has for instance re-written the classic story of Moby Dick using emojis. The project was crowd funded and is called “Emoji Dick”. Apple has recently put into action an online petition calling for more ethnic diversity among emojis.
Image Description | Digital image representing 180 different emojis.
Image Tags | emojis
Page 1 of 1