Monday, 8 May 2017

Ted Talks - Language Change

Txting is killing language. JK!!!

- Speech is much looser, much more telegraphic and its much less reflective than writing
- Speech used to be much more formal (people spoke like they wrote) 
- Texting is more like how we speak - it is very loose in its structure, no one thinks about 
   capital letters or punctuation (but we also don't when we speak)
- Texting allows us to write how we speak
- Texting is 'fingered speech' - decline in standard English (emergent complexity)
- 'LOL' is a marker of empathy
- 'Slash' is used to change the topic in texting (new information marker)

Go ahead, make up new words!

- Language is just a group of people who agree to understand each other 
- Grammar is the unconscious rules that you follow (Jean Berko Gleason: Wug Test)
- Borrowing from other languages ('Caramel' from French, 'Ninja' from Japan)
- Compounding (putting two words together - e.g. bookworm, heartbroken)
- Blend (e.g. motel, brunch, electrocute) 
- Back formation (e.g. we had the word editor before we had the word edit) 
- Acronyms (e.g. NASA, OMG) 

What makes a word "real"?

- 'Adorkable' 'Hangry' 
- Less people refer to dictionaries now

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