Number of Posts: 10
Posts 1 - 10
Se parler pour de vrai
(To talk to each other for real)
Newspaper | 24 heures
Date | 25.6.2017
Language | French
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | language threat, social media, spelling, texting
Summary | We constantly 'click' and 'follow', but we don't talk to each other anymore. As a result, some people are trying to find new ways to make people talk again.
Image Description | N/A
Schamlosigkeit hilft
(Shamelessness helps)
Newspaper | Die Zeit
Date | 10.8.2017
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | cyberbullying, social media, spelling, threat
Summary | A German TV show host has just responded to a hate comment on social media by mimicking the commenter's faulty spelling and reversing his accusations and insults. The commenter, confronted with an imitation of himself, apologized. A German artist sprayed hateful tweets on the Twitter building to show how much illegal hate speech they have not managed to remove. This strategy of shaming is nothing new in disciplining members of a community but it seems to work.
Image Description | Portrait of the TV show host.
Image Tags | female(s)
Words are getting shorter due to social media as 'Jomo' and 'mic drop' feature on word of the year list
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)
Why Kids Can't Write
Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 2.8.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | grammar, punctuation, school, smartphone, social media, spelling, texting, threat, word/writing
Summary | Many students struggle with writing despite various pedagogical models that have been implemented in past years to tackle that perpetual issue. This is all the more suprising considering that today's students may do moret voluntary writing than any generation before it. They text and post on social media a lot but the writing register is different there. The format's main principle is shortness so grammar, spelling, and punctuation take a back seat.
Image Description | GIF of a hand writing and a group of teachers in a workshop.
Image Tags | female(s), gifs, text
Vong diesem Mann her kommt 1 neue Sprache
(Fromg this man comes 1 new language)
Newspaper | Welt
Date | 16.6.2017
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | language threat, meme, social media, spelling
Summary | A meme is floating around in social media spaces. The "Vong" language is parodying serious language by incorporation orthographical and grammatical mistakes as well as tautology. It has become incredibly popular on social media and has even appeared in Germans' spoken language and advertisements. Common features of it are replacing the indefinite articles "eine/ein" ("a") with a "1" and adding the phrase "vong... her" usually including a redundant tautalogical statement and the misspelled preposition "von". An example would be: "The weather is really nice, sun-wise." Here, the "sun-wise" is the tautological statement and it would also include an orthographical error in "Vong" language.
Image Description | N/A
«Nous n'avons jamais autant écrit à travers l'histoire de l'humanité»
("We have never written so much through the history of mankind")
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
Junge schreiben - mehr als je zuvor
(Youths write - more than ever)
Newspaper | Appenzeller Zeitung
Date | 29.1.2016
Language | German
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | code-switching, language threat, research/study, school, smartphone, social media, spelling, texting, word/writing, youth
Summary | There is a public hysteria about how youths are no longer capable of spelling correctly or writing appropriately and skillfully. All this is seen to be caused by new media such as smartphones. BUt young people today write far more than previous generations did: they post on social media and text every day. The only difference is that this writing culture is very informal and colloquial. Researchers however assume that one cannot simply state that this spoils their writing skills generally, most students are easily capable of code-switching from informal registers to a formal register appropriate for school.
Image Description | N/A
If manners maketh the man, then what is Donald Trump?
Newspaper | Telegraph
Date | 13.4.2017
Language | English
Country | UK
Topic Tags | politeness, politics, social media, spelling, Twitter
Summary | One can dislike Donald Trump for many reasons, but for the author one of the main reasons is his overuse of capitalization in his Twitter posts as well as his carelessness (that he mixes up p's and q's). This carelessness translates directly into his general rudeness, his inaptitude for diplomacy, and the paradox in defending old values by spitting on political correctness which is technically just plain old politeness.
Image Description | Image of Donald Trump with his hands in front of his face and a portrait of the author.
Image Tags | hand(s), male(s)
El impacto de la redes sociales en el lenguaje
(The impact of social media on language)
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
La letra, con ‘smartphone’, entra
(The letter enters with smartphone (pun with "la letra con sangre entra"))
Newspaper | El País
Date | 27.10.2014
Language | Spanish
Country | Spain
Topic Tags | grammar, research/study, social media, spelling, texting, threat, youth
Summary | Spelling and grammar are having a hard time in today's society; there seems to be too much lenience with regards to writing rules, which may be due to an incorrect use of new technologies. People should know when it is appropriate to use a specific register. It is okay to write a text message with abbreviations as long as users are able to change register and adapt their writing in an exam for example. A professor in Valladolid claims that handwriting as opposed to digital writing can be the solution to spelling and grammar mistakes. Social media and the way we write on those networks have a major impact on our writing skills. A study showed that the mistakes young people make in their writing assignments come from our habit to constantly write quickly and be spontaneous on social media. Those mistakes are mostly due to a lack of attention. The study also showed a positive aspect: with social media, we write more.
Image Description | Photograph of a group of four young people using their smartphone.
Image Tags | female(s), hand(s), male(s), smartphone
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