Number of Posts: 7
Posts 1 - 7
I can't be trusted with Google's texting app
Newspaper | Telegraph
Date | 19.5.2016
Language | English
Country | UK
Topic Tags | Google, language threat, texting, word/writing, youth
Summary | Google's new Allo app is supposed to make you save time while you're texing, but it can sometimes lead to misunderstandings. The author of the article doesn't really like emojis and doesn't know how to use them well. She doesn't follow young people's digital habits. Their generation favors brevity, which can have a negative impact on language.
Image Description | Photograph of two young girls on their smartphones, two smartphones displaying chat conversations, and a man standing in front of a screen displaying "Allo" and "Duo".
Image Tags | female(s), male(s), smartphone, text
Facebook granted patent for post-scanning software that identifies slang before it becomes popular
Newspaper | Mirror
Date | 9.3.2016
Language | English
Country | UK
Topic Tags | Facebook, word/writing
Summary | Facebook has been granted a patent for a software that can identify users' new words and slang. Facebook wants to identify those new "cool" words before they become popular and create a glossary of those terms.
Image Description | Hand holding a smartphone displaying the Facebook app, photograph of man's face (nose and mouth), and diagram showing how the new software would work
Image Tags | Facebook, hand(s), male(s), smartphone
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)
Le point à la fin du SMS: un mauvais signe
(A period at the end of a text: a bad sign)
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
Elf neue Wörter, die wir dringend brauchen
(Eleven new words that we need urgently)
Newspaper | Welt
Date | 1.9.2016
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | (mental) health, smartphone, word/writing
Summary | Our language cannot keep up with technological innovations and other changes. There are dozens of new scenarios that have no name and urgently need one. For instance the shame parents feel when their children join an idiotic fad like Pokémon Go or the neck deformation our generation will have from staring at a smartphone all our lives. Another discrepancy is that we have no catchy name for involuntary images taken of floors or the insides of our pockets. We also new words to describe intersex people or stretched out ears after a lifetime of ear-gaging.
Image Description | Getty Images of a woman with ear gages and a transgender person.
Image Tags | computer/laptop, female(s), male(s), smartphone
How English Became English by Simon Horobin review – ‘OMG’ was first used 100 years ago
Newspaper | The Guardian
Date | 31.3.2016
Language | English
Country | UK
Topic Tags | word/writing
Summary | Simon Horobin's new book is about language change. He traces the history of the English language while explaining the notions of language standard and prescriptivism. Horobin argues that some linguistic forms such as "OMG" are not new; for instance, the acronym OMG first appeared in 1917. Horobin also praises the possibility of being linguistically creative, which is something new technologies offer.
Image Description | Photograph of British comedian Jack Whitehall wearing a Hooters t-shirt and a bra.
Image Tags | male(s)
Junge schreiben - mehr als je zuvor
(Young people write – more than ever)
Newspaper | St. Galler Tagblatt
Date | 29.1.2016
Language | German
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | language threat, smartphone, texting, word/writing, youth
Summary | Ever since the Swiss youth did poorly in the PISA survey of 2000, critics have been blaming new technologies for deteriorating young people's linguistic skills. English literature lecturer Mario Andreotti however outlines that today's teens write more than previous generations, albeit less formally, because they use their phones to write rather than talk. Because texting does not follow the rigid formal rules of writing but rather is just spoken discourse written down, some experts assume that these relaxed writing habits may worsen students’ writing skills in general.
Image Description | Photograph of three teenagers who are not interacting: two of them are looking at their phones.
Image Tags | male(s), smartphone
Page 1 of 1