I doubt any English speaking people today would argue the
idea that digital media – namely social media and texting – has given rise
to laziness in using the English language. When I’m not out fighting the world
on acronyms and jargon – well, not exactly fighting the world – I am a
proponent of using our language properly. And no, I don’t mean stuffy prim and
proper aristocratic dialogue, which you will not find in my writing, I mean
knowing the basic rules of grammar and punctuation.
It’s not hard, really, we learn those rules in elementary
school and perfect them throughout our educations and beyond. Yet, in the
advent of immediate access to sending and receiving information, there seems to
be a culture based around rushing to the point by any means necessary, even if
it means sacrificing a period here or a comma there. Before long, whole words
are missing while others are severely bastardized. The beautiful language of
Dickens, Woolf, and Hemingway is suddenly a pale and decaying reflection of its
former self degrading incrementally through every generation of retweets and
copy and pasted status updates. Single letters and numerals come to represent
words and twenty question marks follow an incomplete sentence because the
author really wants you to know that the question is a question, a strong and
inquisitive one at that.
I know this single blog post or anything else I say or do
will not fix this overnight – or ever. Realistically, it will grow worse before
a generational backlash led by future kids thinks good grammar is cool again.
Was it ever cool? However, I will walk the talk (another tired cliché) by spreading
the [emotion of your choice] of communicating
well with others because the words and marks mean what they say and say what
they mean. Imagine reading 140 characters and understanding exactly what the
author intended with no ambiguity. I see no harm in that.
We have all heard some statement such as how much energy
would be saved if everyone would shut off a light bulb an extra hour a day. How
many tweets and status updates would be salvaged from the oblivion of apathy if
everyone took an extra five seconds to correct their language? We just might
begin to truly communicate again.
Good points here David.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, I think we’ll have to await a renaissance that is the product of some cataclysmic event. Civility was lost in the decadence of the eighties. Attention spans were lost in the nineties with the advent of hyper-sensory videogames. Identity was lost in the new millennium with reality TV, prolific use of copy/paste and the egotistical assumption that we all understand each other overtly with no time for the inconvenience of details. As those decades built (or what’s the opposite of build?) via technology, their offspring suffered a regression acquiring the tools of survival.
Humans need a work ethic to provide purpose. Without purpose they will atrophy should the cable go out, satellites go down or there need be some reason to communicate successfully…