Number of Posts: 40
Posts 31 - 40
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)
‘Unicorn Food’ Is Colorful, Sparkly and Everywhere
Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 20.4.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | (mental) health, hashtags, Instagram, marketing, politeness, social media
Summary | Starbucks is cashing in on the 'unicorn food' trend - a trend to make all food colorful. The trend was likely sparked from a Florida-based Instagrammer who has now acquired a huge following. She noticed that her hobby had become a trend when people would copy her creations and Instagram them with the fitting hashtag. Now Starbucks has caught on the trend and they are offering a unicorm frappucino for five days only.
Image Description | Unicorn/rainbow foods and the Starbucks Unicorn Frappucino.
How to Listen to Donald Trump Every Day for Years
Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 21.1.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | grammar, language threat, politics, texting, Twitter
Summary | President Trump is widely criticized for his poor speaking abilities. His speaking style is more akin to regular talking whereas presidential speaking traditionally resembles the written language. This explains why Trump's medium of choice is Twitter or 'speeches' (too linguistically informal to be called an actual speech). Twitter, with its limitation on message length resembles texting, which as linguists have confirmed mimicks spoken language rather than formal writing.
Image Description | Donald Trump on a stage being photographed.
Image Tags | camera, male(s)
Snap Makes a Bet on the Cultural Supremacy of the Camera
Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 8.3.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | GIFs, language threat, Snapchat
Summary | Snapchat is showing us the future: communication is switching to more visual modes of communication such as photographs, videos, GIFs, funny filters. Linguist Gretchen McCulloch has argued that Snapchat filters constitute a new mode of phatic communication. We have seen the primacy of text gradually broken up in the past decade. This does not mean, however, that the written language will disappear altogether. Text is still very important for conveying accurate information concisely.
Image Description | GIF with anthropomorphic cameras and emojis dancing around.
Image Tags | camera, emojis, gifs
Instagram Für Alle
(Instagram for everyone)
Newspaper | Lead Digital
Date | 18.1.2017
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | hashtags, Instagram, marketing, social media
Summary | Instagram has become the second most active social media platform after Facebook so it is a great place for companies to advertize their product - or rather their brand. Instagram is all about visual storytelling so it is a prime platform to develop one's brand by presenting a certain look or attitude. Instagram offers various visual formats - from image posts over stories like on Snapchat to videos and livestreams. It is important to be thorough when choosing hashtags as these determine who will find the post. Many hashtags are ambiguous so one really has to be in the know to skillfully ascribe hashtags.
Image Description | N/A
Kommunikation ist alles
(Communication is everything)
Newspaper | Frankfurter Neue Presse
Date | 4.2.2017
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | abbreviations, childhood, language threat, smartphone
Summary | Many young children already have smartphones. It is problematic if youths spend too much time on new media - they don't learn how to interact face-to-face so that they whip out the phone even if they are hanging out with a friend. They increasingly write in abbreviations which makes them do badly in school. Parents are part of the problem, because they demand that their children be available on the smartphone at all times. It is important to give children positive offline experiences.
Image Description | Image of a man holding a cell phone and holding his thumb up.
Image Tags | cell phone, hand(s), male(s)
Leben im Befehlston #
(Living in the commanding tone #)
Newspaper | Die Zeit
Date | 16.3.2017
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | digitized education, language threat, school
Summary | School children are supposed to learn how to program codes as early as grade three of primary school. There are many toys that help children learn how to write in code easily. Code may be the first foreign language future generations will learn as employers hugely value the ability to program a software.
Image Description | N/A
Soziale Medien: Auf dem Weg in eine Post-Schrift-Gesellschaft
(Social media: on the way to a post-literate society)
Newspaper | Berliner Zeitung
Date | 8.2.2017
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | emojis, language threat, politics, social media, Twitter
Summary | Dystopias are being written about what is going to happen to society in the age of increasing digitalization of life. Predictions include that we will lose the ability to read and write because we will be able to do everything through voice command. We can already order piza at Domino's by using emojis only. The new literacy culture is limited to 140 characters and resembles in fact more an oral culture in which the truth is what is screamed the loudest.
Image Description | Reuters photograph of an eye with the Twitter logo mirrored in it.
Image Tags | logo, Twitter
SMS, tweets, e-mails... Et si on se parlait vraiment?
(SMS, tweets, emails...What if we really talked to each other?)
Newspaper | Le Figaro
Date | 27.1.2017
Language | French
Country | France
Topic Tags | emojis, language threat, technology-free
Summary | Since we're always stuck to our screens, have we lost our conversational skills? Nonsense. Many people complain that new technologies have killed "real life" communication, and that emojis are replacing words. The author of the article claims that this trend is not true; nowadays people communicate a lot. Fanny Auger, director of the School of Life Paris, noticed that her class "How to have better conversations" is very popular. The focus is on finding inspiring and stimulating exchanges.
Image Description | Photograph of four young people drinking coffee, laughing, and looking at each other.
Image Tags | female(s), male(s)
Trump attaks and dishoners English
Newspaper | Washington Post
Date | 8.2.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | language threat, politics, spelling
Summary | The new president of the United States, Donald Trump, seems to be either incompetent of using correct spelling or just not caring enough about correctness to do so. In this past year of his election campaign and since the beginning of his administration, the president and his press staff have been caught making many spelling errors in words such as "honer", "attak", "chocke", "unpresidented", "loose/lose", and so on.
Image Description | N/A
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