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