[Music]
we always hear that texting is a scourge
the idea is that texting spells the
decline and fall of any kind of serious
literacy or at least writing ability
among young people in the United States
and now the whole world today the fact
of the matter is that it just isn't true
and it's easy to think that it is true
but in order to see it in another way in
order to see that actually texting is a
miraculous thing not just energetic but
a miraculous thing a kind of emergent
complexity that we're seeing happening
right now we have to pull the camera
back for a bit and look at what language
really is in which case one thing that
we see is that texting is not writing at
all what do I mean by that basically if
we think about language language has
existed for perhaps a hundred and fifty
thousand years at least eighty thousand
years and what it arose as is speech
people talked that's what we're probably
genetically specified for that's how we
use language most writing is something
that came along much later and as we saw
in the last talk there's a little bit of
controversy as to exactly when that
happened but according to traditional
estimates if humanity had existed for 24
hours then writing only came along at
about 11:07 p.m. that's how much of a
laterally thing writing is so first
their speech and then writing comes
along as a kind of artifice now don't
get me wrong
writing has certain advantages when you
write because it's a conscious process
because you can look backwards you can
do things with language that are much
less likely if you're just talking for
example imagine a passage from Edward
Gibbons the decline and fall of the
Roman Empire the whole engagement lasted
above 12 hours till the gradual retreat
of the Persians was changed into a
disorderly flight of which the shameful
examples given by the principal leaders
in the serena's himself that's
but let's face it nobody talks that way
or at least they shouldn't if they're
interested in reproducing that it's not
the way any human being speaks casually
casual speech is something quite
different linguists have actually shown
that when we're speaking casually in an
unmonitored way we tend to speak in word
packets of maybe seven to ten words
you'll notice this if you ever have
occasion to record yourself or a group
of people talking that's what speech is
likes speech is much looser it's much
more telegraphic it's much less
reflective very different from writing
so we naturally tend to think because we
see language written so often that
that's what language is but actually
what language is is speech they're two
things now of course as history has gone
by it's been natural for there to be a
certain amount of bleed between speech
and writing so for example in a distant
era now it was common when one gave a
speech to basically talk like writing so
I mean the kind of speech that you see
someone giving in an old movie where
they clear their throat and they don't
ladies and gentlemen and then they speak
in a certain way which has nothing to do
with casual speech it's formal it uses
long sentences like this given one it's
basically talking like you write and so
for example we're thinking so much these
days about Lincoln because of the movie
the Gettysburg Address was not the main
meal of that event for two hours before
that Edward Everett spoke on a topic
that frankly cannot engage us today and
barely did then the point of it was to
listen to him speaking like writing
ordinary people stood and listened to
that for two hours it was perfectly
natural that's what people did then
speaking like writing well if you can
speak like writing then logically it
follows that you might want to also
sometimes write like you speak the
problem was just that in the material
mechanical sense that was harder back in
the day for the simple reason that
materials don't lend them so
to it it's almost impossible to do that
with your hand except in shorthand and
then communication is limited on a
manual typewriter it was very difficult
and even when we had electric
typewriters or then computer keyboards
the fact is that even if you can type
easily enough to keep up with the pace
of speech more or less you have to have
somebody who can receive your message
quickly once you have things in your
pocket that can receive that message
then you have the conditions that allow
that we can write like we speak and
that's where texting comes in and so
texting is very loose in its structure
no one thinks about capital letters or
punctuation when one text but then again
do you think about those things when you
talk No
and so therefore why would you when you
were texting what texting is despite the
fact that it involves the brute
mechanics of something that we call
writing is fingered speech that's what
texting is now we can write the way we
talk and it's a very interesting thing
but nevertheless easy to think that
still it represents some sort of decline
we see this general bagginess of the
structure the lack of concern with rules
in the way that we're used to learning
on the blackboard and so we think that
something has gone wrong it's a very
natural sense but the fact of the matter
is that what is going on is a kind of
emergent complexity that's what we're
seeing in this fingered speech in order
to understand it what we want to see is
the way in this new kind of language
there is new structure coming up and so
for example there is in texting a
convention which is lol now lol we
generally think of as meaning laughing
out loud
and of course theoretically it does and
if you look at older text than people
used it to actually indicate laughing
out loud but if you text now or if you
are someone who's aware of the substrate
of texting the
it's become you'll notice that lol does
not mean laughing out loud anymore it's
evolved into something that is much
subtler this is an actual text that was
done by a non male person of about 20
years old not too long ago
I love the font you're using bTW Julie
Lal thanks gmail is being slow right now
have you think about it that's not funny
no one's laughing and yet there it is so
you assume there's been some kind of
hiccup then Susan says lawl I know
again more guffawing than we're used to
when you're talking about these
inconveniences so Julie says I just sent
you an email Susan lul I see it very
funny people if that's what lol means
this Julie says so what's up Susan Lau I
have to write a 10-page paper she's not
amused let's think about it lul is being
used in a very particular way it's a
marker of empathy it's a marker of
accommodation we linguists call things
like that pragmatic particles any spoken
language that's used by real people has
them if you happen to speak Japanese
think about that little word net that
you use at the end of a lot of sentences
if you listen to the way black youth
today speak think about the use of the
word yo hold dissertations could be
written about it and probably are being
written about it a pragmatic particle
that's what Lal has gradually become
it's a way of using the language between
actual people
another example is slash now we can use
slash in the way that we're used to
along the lines of we're going to have a
party slash networking session that's
kind of like what we're at slash is used
in a very different way in texting among
young people today it's used to change
the scene so for example this Sally
person says so I need to find people to
chill with and Jake says haha you'd
write a dissertation about haha - but we
don't have time for that
haha so you're going by yourself why
Sally for this summer program at NYU
Jake haha / I'm watching this video with
sons players trying to shoot with one
eye the slash is interesting I don't
really even know what Jake is talking
about after that
but you notice that he's changing the
topic now that seems kind of mundane but
think about how in real life if we're
having a conversation we want to change
the topic there ways of doing it
gracefully you don't just zip right into
it you'll pat your thighs and look
wistfully off into the distance or
you'll say something like makes you
think when it really didn't but what
you're really what you're really trying
to do is change the topic you can't do
that while you're texting and so ways or
developing of doing it within this
medium all spoken languages have what a
linguist calls a new information marker
or two or three texting has developed
one from this slash so we have a whole
battery of new constructions that are
developing and yet it's easy to think
well something is still wrong there's a
lack of structure of some sort it's not
as sophisticated as the language of the
Wall Street Journal well the fact of the
matter is look at this person in 1956
and this is when texting doesn't exist I
Love Lucy is still on the air many do
not know the alphabet or multiplication
table cannot write format we've heard
that sort of thing before
not just in 1956 1917 Connecticut
schoolteacher 1917 this is the time when
we all assumed that everything somehow
in terms of writing was perfect because
the people on Downton Abbey or
articulate or something like that so
from every college in the country goes
up the cry our freshmen can't spell
can't punctuate and so on you can go
even further back than this it's the
president of Harvard its 1871 there's no
electricity people have three names bad
spelling in correctness as well as in
elegance of expression in writing and
he's talking about people who are
otherwise well prepared for college
studies you can go even further back
1841 some long-lost Superintendent of
Schools is upset because of what he has
for a long time noted with regret the
almost entire neglect of the original
blah blah blah blah or you can go all
the way back
with 63 ad and there's this poor man who
doesn't like the way people are speaking
Latin as it happens he was writing about
what had become French and so there are
always there are always people worrying
about these things and the planet
somehow seems to keep spinning and so
the way I'm thinking of texting these
days is that what we're seeing is a
whole new way of writing that young
people are developing which they're
using alongside their ordinary writing
skills and that means that they're able
to do two things increasing evidence is
that being bilingual is cognitively
beneficial that's also true of being by
dialectal that's certainly true of being
by dialectal in terms of your writing
and so texting actually is evidence of a
balancing act that young people are
using today not consciously of course
but it's an expansion of their
linguistic repertoire is very simple if
somebody from 1973 looked at what was on
a dormitory message board in 1993 the
slang would have changed a little bit
since the era of love story but they
would understand what was on that
message board take that person from 1993
not that long ago this is you know Bill
& Ted's Excellent Adventure those people
take those people and they read a very
typical text written by a 20 year old
today often they would have no idea what
half of it meant because a whole new
language has developed among our young
people doing something as mundane as
what it looks like to us when they're
batting around on their little devices
so in closing if I could go into the
future if I could go into 2033 first
thing I would ask is whether David Simon
had done a sequel to the wire I would
want to know and I really would ask that
and then I'd want to know actually what
was going on on Downton Abbey that'd be
the second thing and then the third
thing would be please show me a sheaf of
texts written by 16 year old girls
because I would want to know where this
language had developed
since our times and ideally I would then
send them back to you and me now so we
could examine this linguistic miracle
happening right under our noses thank
you very much
you