Did Internet makes language death?

The new technology era has changed our daily lives radically. Nowadays, people are seemed to be very dependent on the technology. For example, people use emails instead of snail mails. The article entitles ‘Is txt mightier than the word?’, and this article is about how internet makes death of language. The growing usage of instant messaging services such as Windows Live Messenger and Yahoo! Messenger caused many informal language cases happened. Instant Messaging (IM) are very popular among the society especially youngsters. According to Tyson and Cooper (2001), the IM trend growth since November 1996, this was named as ICQ, the first IM tool. Since internet grows fast, therefore the language usage in IM grew fast as well, and thus the informal language is born because of this. Generally, internet users prefer informal language because the language is shorter, has the same pronunciation and easier to understand. Since it is widely used by internet users, it is known as the “internet language”.

chat box that using informal language

The informal language will let the readers feel engaged, informal or narrative form of affordances of the modes, and play their role in interpreting the meanings (Walsh 2006). According to the Putnis and Petelin (1996, p.231), different genres have different textual features to illustrate them, like for instance, the format of a formal report need to be typed in a formal way. The style and format that are used in instant message are different with formal format. According to O’Connor (2005), some students who are used to chat in IM do not realize that they are actually writing informal language during examination, for example like ‘a-r-e’ but not ‘r’.

Writing an academic essay is different with typing in IM because academic writing is formal while IM is informal language. Users must differentiate the usage of different language in different situation.

In my opinion, usage of abbreviation should not be used often because it would become a habit in our writing style.

References:

Is txt mightier than the word? 2003, BBC News, viewed 10 June 2008, <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/2814235.stm

Tyson, J & Cooper, A 2001, How Instant Messaging Works, viewed on 10 June 2008 <http://communication.howstuffworks.com/instant-messaging1.htm>

Walsh, M 2006, ‘textual shift’: examining the reading process with print, visual and multimodal texts, Australian journal of language and literacy, vol.29, no.1, pp.24-37.

Putnis, P & Petelin, R 1996, Professional communication: principles and applications, Prentice Hall, Sydney, p. 231.

O’Connor, A 2005, Instant Messaging: Friend or Foe of Student Writing?, viewed on 10 June 2008,http://www.newhorizons.org/strategies/literacy/oconnor.htm

The End: Reflection

In the process of creating weblog, I experienced what the differences between a serious weblog and a social blog. A social blog can write whatever they like and not necessary to be credible where it is different with a serious weblog, every information are essentially to be reliable and credible in order to get reader’s trusts. Mixed topics will lead readers to confusion. Like what Jakob Nielsen (2005) states, ‘The more focused your content, the more focused your readers’, where it is mean mixed topics will probably cause confusion to the readers and it make the provided information are not credible and reliable.

Designing the layout for the blog is important, a good and proper segmentation and frames in order to distinct the different section with other contains and it will make website look more organise and user-friendly (Walsh 2006). According to Berkner and Schwartz (2003), website must be a clean looking and user-friendly. The weblog must be well organised and the links have to be useful in order to make the readers reading paths easier. Hyperlinks are good and convenient for readers because hyperlinks allow readers to choose their own way to serves their own interest and needs (Schriver 1997).

It is a good experience to have a serious weblog because in this serious weblog I got to know more about the issues and I get knowledge of it. At the same time, I know many functions and features of blogs like hyperlinks and add images and videos. It is a wonderful experience.


References

Schriver, KA 1997, Dynamics in document design: creating texts for readers, Wiley Computer Pub., New York, p.378.

Walsh, M 2006, ‘textual shift’: examining the reading process with print, visual and multimodal texts, Australian journal of language and literacy, vol.29, no.1,
pp.24-37

Nielsen, J 2005, Weblog Usability : The Top Ten Design Mistakes, viewed on 10 June 2008,<http://www.useit.com/alertbox/weblogs.html>

Berkner, K & Schwarts, EL 2003, Resolution-sensitive document image analysis for document repurposing, Ricoh Innovations, CA

What is Blog?

In our current technology era, blog trend has been increasing rapidly. The article entitles, ‘What Is The Definition Of A Blog’, written by Michael Arrington, and this article is describing what actually blog is all about. According to Pew Internet & American Life reports, in every 5.8 seconds, a new weblog is created, and it is approximately 15,000 new blogs created daily. The blog’s author are able to use own creativity on designing their own blogs, no matter how the design is, every blog has the same characteristic which is framing in order to divide the columns for the post, the author profile, links and other features (Kress and van Leeuwen). There are many definitions for the ‘blog’ term due to its frequently changing characteristics and there have overloaded with different points of view from the people.

example of blog

source from=http://www.templatesflow.com/screenshots/1677/1677-zoom.jpg

Blog allow bloggers to post photos, videos, audios, hyperlinks and linking with other useful websites or blogs. According to Walsh (2006), the website should be designed based on the audience perspective, contexts and contents should made as precedence as fine document design for purpose to connect and encourage readers to be involved with the organization itself. In a website, hyperlinks are important because it is enable readers to choose their own reading pathway by clicking on the hyperlinks that provided (Walsh 2006). According to Schriver (1997), hyperlinks are good and convenient for readers because hyperlinks allow readers to choose their own way to serves their own interest and needs. Blogs is something more on interactive, what information written hope to get feedback or comments because it is interactive program but not only information. According to Jeff Jarvis (in Conniff 2005), argues that blog is more about conversation than content. Comment enables readers to leave their opinion towards certain discussion issues. Receive comment can make improvement and betterment. A blog that have no single comment is not credible (Arrington 2006). Comment can also be interesting because it written by readers thus can view other people opinion toward a certain issues and it is interactive as well.

In my opinion, I think blog is an electronic diary and an interactive tool in communication which can share your personal experience, discussion toward a certain issues and many purposes.

References


Arrington, M 2006, What Is The Definition Of A Blog?, viewed on 10 June 2008,http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/12/31/what-is-the-definition-of-a-blog/



Coniff, M 2005, Just what is a blog, anyway?, viewed on 10 June 2008,http://www.ojr.org/ojr/stories/050929/



Schriver, KA 1997, Dynamics in document design: creating texts for readers, Wiley Computer Pub., New York, p.378.



Walsh, M 2006, ‘textual shift’: examining the reading process with print, visual and multimodal texts, Australian journal of language and literacy, vol.29, no.1, pp.24-37.

Kress, G & van Leeuwen, T 2006, Reading images: The grammar of visual design, 2nd edn, Routledge, London.

A misleading Advertisement

Flora Pro.activ health drink

source from:http://www.flora-professional.co.uk/whichfloraisrightforyou/images/chol_drink_img1.jpg

This article ‘Tough remedy for health drink ad’, is about an advertisement for a health drink but it has been misleading the meaning of advertisement where it was recommended by three-quarters of doctors to the exclusion of other brands. According to the article, it is misleading because it did not mention other drinks branded but only one rival to Flora had been endorsed by more than 50% of doctors surveyed. Advertising is an important to promote company reputation by delivering mass media to audience in order to persuade people (ciaadvertising.org 2003).

Flora Pro.activ advertisement

source from=http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2007/oct/31/asa.advertising

Advertisements have many different types, for example, billboards, magazines, newspaper, flyers, and internets which are uses in every advertisement to illustrate their message using different genres. Advertisements are multimodal layout which means advertisements use more than one mode to present the message to audiences like images with texts, video which contain audio and texts (Walsh 2006). This Flora Pro.Activ drink advertisement has texts and images to promote their product and illustrate their message to audience.

The purpose of texts is to connect the readers in a literary narrative and the affordances of the modes, however verbal and visual modes are designed to maximize the engagement in the story (Walsh 2006). The Flora Pro.Activ advertisement has been misleading information to the public but not completely because everybody has their own interpretation on text as well as images. According to Schriver (1997), interpretation of documents like images and texts are through experience, knowledge, social awareness, feeling and culture.

Therefore, in my opinion, the information delivered by the advertisement is misleading but as everyone has their own interpretation on texts, some people might think it is just an advertisement and it does not affect their decision whether to buy the product or not.

References:

ciaadvertising.org 2003, What is Advertising?, viewed 10 June 2008, <http://www.ciadvertising.org/studies/student/98_fall/theory/hornor/what.htm>

Tryhorn, C 2007, ‘Tough remedy for health drink ad’, viewed 10 June 2008,

<http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2007/oct/31/asa.advertising>

Walsh, M 2006, The ‘Textual shift’: examining the reading process with print, visual and multimodal texts’, Australian journal of language and literacy, vol.29, no.1, pp.24-37.


Schriver, KA 1997, Dynamics in document design: creating texts for readers, Wiley Computer Pub, New York. Pp.361-441

E- everyhting?

Internet makes human lifestyle become easier. Nowadays, in such a high technology period, we can search everything with just a few clicks. Getting bored hearing everyone talking about e-This and e-That? The word ‘e’ really makes a big change for the world because everything connects with ‘e’, for instance e-banking, e-booking, e-shopping, to e-ticketing and many more. Nelson’s (2000) make a prediction in his article, which entitle The Next Generation Internet, E-business, and E-everything, where it is talking about the internet usage.

example for e-booking

source from= www.tgv.com.my

ebay logo

source from= www.ebay.com

E-payment can be said as the most useful among the e-s because it can make out payment with just a few clicks. Almost every company that own website will have their own slot for e-payment because people no longer drives to certain places for purpose to settle down bill,. E-payment can settle bills like banking bills and online business. E-payment makes life convenient because it can save times and all settlements can be done with only a few clicks.

Even though how e-payment, e-booking, e-shopping and whatever e-s need to have a good and proper segmentation and frames in order to distinct the different section with other contains and it will make website look more organise and user-friendly (Walsh 2006). According to Berkner and Schwartz (2003), website must be a clean looking and user-friendly.

Therefore, technology has makes the human life easier and saves time for modern people. Without the Internet, it wills costs more time and energy for us to search for information by using computer with a single click. In my opinion, technology has bring us more benefits than harm especially modern people in the world, where we need to connect with people around the world by using recent technology.

References

Nelson, M. R 2000, The Next Generation Internet, E-business, and E-everything, viewed 10 June 2008, <http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd/ch20.pdf>

Walsh, M 2006, ‘Textual shift: Examining the reading process with print, visual and multimodal texts,’ Australian journal of language and literacy, vol. 29, no. 1, pp. 24-37.

Berkner, K & Schwarts, EL 2003, Resolution-sensitive document image analysis for document repurposing, Ricoh Innovations, CA

Did Internet makes language death?

The new technology era has changed our daily lives radically. Nowadays, people are seemed to be very dependent on the technology. For example, people use emails instead of snail mails. The article entitles ‘Is txt mightier than the word?’, and this article is about how internet makes death of language. The growing usage of instant messaging services such as Windows Live Messenger and Yahoo! Messenger caused many informal language cases happened. Instant Messaging (IM) are very popular among the society especially youngsters. According to Tyson and Cooper (2001), the IM trend growth since November 1996, this was named as ICQ, the first IM tool. Since internet grows fast, therefore the language usage in IM grew fast as well, and thus the informal language is born because of this. Generally, internet users prefer informal language because the language is shorter, has the same pronunciation and easier to understand. Since it is widely used by internet users, it is known as the “internet language”.

chat box that using informal language

The informal language will let the readers feel engaged, informal or narrative form of affordances of the modes, and play their role in interpreting the meanings (Walsh 2006). According to the Putnis and Petelin (1996, p.231), different genres have different textual features to illustrate them, like for instance, the format of a formal report need to be typed in a formal way. The style and format that are used in instant message are different with formal format. According to O’Connor (2005), some students who are used to chat in IM do not realize that they are actually writing informal language during examination, for example like ‘a-r-e’ but not ‘r’.

Writing an academic essay is different with typing in IM because academic writing is formal while IM is informal language. Users must differentiate the usage of different language in different situation.

In my opinion, usage of abbreviation should not be used often because it would become a habit in our writing style.

References:


Is txt mightier than the word? 2003, BBC News, viewed 22 October 2007, <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/2814235.stm


Tyson, J & Cooper, A 2001, How Instant Messaging Works, viewed on 10 June 2008 <http://communication.howstuffworks.com/instant-messaging1.htm>


Walsh, M 2006, ‘textual shift’: examining the reading process with print, visual and multimodal texts, Australian journal of language and literacy, vol.29, no.1, pp.24-37.


Putnis, P & Petelin, R 1996, Professional communication: principles and applications, Prentice Hall, Sydney, p. 231.


O’Connor, A 2005, Instant Messaging: Friend or Foe of Student Writing?, viewed on 10 June 2008,http://www.newhorizons.org/strategies/literacy/oconnor.htm

The Current Blogging Issues

Blogs trend has been escalating in cyber world. According to report on November 2007, there are approximately 110 million blogs tracked by Technorati (http://technorati.com/). According to Pew Internet & American Life reports, in every 5.8 seconds, a new weblog is created, and it is approximately 15,000 new blogs created daily.



There are many trends for blog as in blogs appear as an electronic diary at first but due to emergence of subcategories of blogs, there are many types of blogs. For instance, vlog (video blogging) is a blog with videos (ex YouTube) and others developed such as photolog, linklogs, artlogs, tumblelogs and others. Many genres are available in blogosphere like political blogs, travel blogs, fashion blogs and etcetera. It depends to the blogger’s purposes and intended audience of the blog. There are many blogging trends around world, where different places have different trends and therefore, Europe, Asia and Malaysia have each different trend too.



Jacklang blog is one of the famous blog in France that posted political issues and by using his blog to convey message to the public (http://www.blogjacklang.net/). As seen, we can conclude that French government uses the current blogging trend and convert blogs into political blog to reach out to the public.



Besides, Hong Kong too uses blog as a medium to convey business tips and information through stock blogs. The blogs reveal on Hong Kong current stock market and business issues which is indeed a good news and convenient way on checking the latest information for the online stock watchers. (http://hongkongstockblog.blogspot.com/ ).



Lim Kit Siang, a famous Malaysian politician posts political issues in his blog and comment about the Malaysia political issues. Latest updates and news of our new government can now be known immediately by a single click at Lim’s blog. Readers can also post questions and comments in the blog to get answers on the latest political issues. (http://blog.limkitsiang.com/)


The types of blog that prevalent in Europe, Asia, and Malaysia are political blogs and social blogs. Political blogs authors express their own opinions and views in their country in order to gain supporters and let their readers know what are their views in some political issues. On the other hand, social blogs give readers about the author’s own lifestyles and experiences to attract more readers to visit their blogs. Besides, due to the number of hit on particular blogs, advertiser will place advertisement for those blogs which have many readers.


The benefit for the political blog is that they can post they own opinions and views as long as it is not against the law in the particular country. There are some companies such as Nuffnang and Advertlets give every blogger a chance to earn money through blogging. As long as your hit per day can reach their certain amount, these companies allow you to apply for their advertisements. There is an awesome blog in Singapore where the blogger is making living through her blog. Xiaxue is a well known Singaporean blogger who more than 20,000 hit in a day, thus advertising companies pays her to place their advertisements in her blog to reach out to her readers.



In local blogosphere, Jeff Ooi is a famous blogger who blogs in political issues. By using the blog, Jeff Ooi expresses his personal opinions and views in Malaysia political issues. Nowadays there is a rising form of blogging which is known as Vlog (video blog). Vlog and Blog are quite similar, just that Vlog is blogging in the form of video. Normally vloggers will post their videos up to YouTube, instead of posts in words, vlogger prefer to upload their videos which are inclusive of visual and audio system to attract their audiences. Vlogger usually post their videos based on their intended readers demand (Kushner 2006)





Nowadays blog is not only a trend among internet users but also being used for other purposes such as promotional purposes. Corporate companies are now using blog for the purpose to reach out to their market due to majority of the community are internet users. Corporate blogs are unlike from normal blogs as they are posted by the organization in order to achieve the organizational objectives. For example Samsung, where they convey messages, solutions to their products problems as well as their company’s latest information to the public. Blogs will help keep their users updated on their latest updates and even attract new customers if their blogs are well-designed, updated constantly, and interesting (The Economist 2006)



There are bloggers who blog on certain issues that attracts many enthusiasts, for example fashion, politic, entertainment, food, entertainment and etcetera. Therefore, communities are set up in order to let bloggers connect each other to share common interest as well as ideal. A local famous blogger, Kenny Sia, posted about his own travel adventures and his current daily life with some dry joke that manage to gain a great amount of visitors to his blog. Due to the rapid growing of internet, it is easy to create a blog as there are many free blog hosting websites such as Blogger, Wordpress, and Xanga. Most of the blogs hosting sites have blog communities in which communities called Blogrings. It is allows bloggers to join in clubs and societies that share the same interests with them.










According to Walsh (2006), the website should be designed based on the audience desired, contexts and contents should made as precedence as fine document design for purpose to connect and encourage readers to be involved with the organization itself. In now technology era, online media has taken over the traditional print media. Internet website is flexible and multimodal whereas the print media is only controlled by texts and images and it is more to be monomodal based, because an internet website are contains with texts, animation, music, hyperlinks, video clips and also images (Walsh 2006). The blog’s author are able to use own creativity on designing their own blogs, no matter how the design is, every blog has the same characteristic which is framing in order to divide the columns for the post, the author profile, links and other features (Kress and van Leeuwen). Framing is vital in order to keep the website organized, eye-soothing and comprehensible.





Books are a good example of print media. It is not flexible enough and interactivity because it is monomodal based where it is contain texts and images. In order to understand all the message that conveying, reading every text accordingly is needed.





Online media such as websites offers flexibility compared to print media. Websites uses hyperlinks to engage readers with what they have to offer. According to Schriver (1997), hyperlinks are good and convenient for readers because hyperlinks allow readers to choose their own way to serves their own interest and needs.


Blogs are a good example of the new forms of media publishing. Mobile phone is one of the trends for nowadays, because mobile phone makes life easier and brought people to the convenient lifestyle. Mobile blogging is one of the new forms of online media where the user publishes blog entries contents directly to the web server by using a mobile phone. Even though, the new forms of media publishing are expanding but yet, it does not mean the death of the traditional forms.


References:


kennysia.com 2008, kennysia.com, viewed on 25 April 2008, <http://www.kennysia.com/>.

Advertlets 2007, About Adverlets, viewed 25th April 2008, <http://www.advertlets.com/about>.

Xiaxue 2008, Xiaxue.blogspot.com - Everyone's reading it, viewed 25 April 2008, <http://www.xiaxue.blogspot.com/>.

Kress, G & van Leeuwen, T 2006, Reading images: The grammar of visual design, 2nd edn, Routledge, London.

Microsoft® Encarta® Online Dictionary 2007, Msn Encarta, viewed on 25 April 2008. http://encarta.msn.com/dictionary_/weblog.html

Kushner, D 2006, Prime time for vlogs?, viewed 25th April 2008, <http://money.cnn.com/magazines/business2/business2_archive/2006/05/01/8375939/.com/magazines/business2/business2_archive/2006/05/01/8375939/>.

Screenshots, 2008, Jeff 4 Malaysia, viewed on 25 April 2008,<http://www.jeffooi.com/>


ClickZ, The Blogosphere By The Number, viewed on 25 April 2008 http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3438891

Schriver, KA 1997, Dynamic in document design: creating texts for readers, Wiley Computer Pub., New York.

Walsh, M 2006, ‘textual shift’: examining the reading process with print, visual and multimodal texts, Australian journal of language and literacy, vol.29, no.1, pp.24-37.


limkitsiang for Malaysia 2008, limkitsiang.com, viewed on 26 April 2008, <http://www.limkitsiang.com/ >

blogjacklang 2008, blogjacklang.net, viewed on 26 April 2008, <http://www.blogjacklang.net/ >

hongkongstockblog 2008, hongkongstockblog.blogspot.com, viewed on 26 April 2008, <http://hongkongstockblog.blogspot.com/ >