Savannah McDade Posted January 1, 2011
In an ever-changing world of innovation, technology has been dramatically enhanced to make life easier for the general public. When this happens, the English language is bound to be marred in order to correspond with technology and essentially make life easier.
Unlike younger generations who are accustomed to the fast-paced modernization, many of the older generations may find themselves lost in a world filled with confusing abbreviations and terminology.
Lowry English teacher, Mrs. Renee Hill attests her concern about texting having noticed text abbreviations on assignments her students have turned in. “It’s disturbing. I’ve seen ‘OMG’, and ‘WTF’. Isn’t that sad?”
Regarding the degeneration of the English language due to text messaging, Hill also said, “It should be that students recognize that there’s a place for [text] lingo and then there’s […] formal writing and that the two are not the same,” Hill continued, “I hope English doesn’t change to a detriment of English.”
Lowry science teacher, Mrs. Michelle Doyle has a similar point of view, “It’s becoming more and more prominent, nobody capitalizes and nobody uses punctuation,” said Doyle, “I think, especially with the advent of Twitter, and the emphasis on fewer characters so you’re figuring out ways to really abbreviate words and kids don’t read as much …, their vocabulary is just getting smaller, and smaller, and smaller.”
Text messaging is certainly a prominent means of communication for many teenagers as well as many adults. However, is that really a valid excuse for the strain being placed on the English language? “Sometimes I think the ‘gonna’ is worse with texting than it used to be. It used to be just like a couple of kids that wouldn’t write “going to”, but now it’s a lot,” said Hill.
If the formal language does happen to slip into a permutation consisting of abbreviations and codes such as, “BRB, LOL, TTYL, 143, ILY, IDK,” and “IDC,” will it be necessary to become “text literate”?
