Number of Posts: 14
Posts 11 - 14
How I Became Addicted to Online Word Games
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)
Emoji is named as Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year
Newspaper | Mirror
Date | 17.11.2015
Language | English
Country | UK
Topic Tags | emojis, word/writing
Summary | The "face with tears of joy" emoji was named word of the joy by the Oxford Dictionary. Emojis are symbols of today's culture and communication, and are replacing traditional forms of communication. There is nowadays a focus on visual communication. Emojis are a new form of communication that allow people to express their emotions, and to go beyond linguistic barriers.
Image Description | Digital image of the "face with tears of joy" emoji, and photograph of a man reading the Oxford Dictionary of English.
Image Tags | dictionary, emojis, male(s)
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 2 of 2
Back | Next