Technology Shaping Language Use

Academic Writing

Topic: Technology is responsible for human’s inability to use language properly, and it tainted the standard language. Does technology shape the way we use language?

Thesis statement: Technology shapes our language use, but it does not necessarily ruin it.

Introduction

As time goes by, technology has evolved, especially in communication. More developments have been made over time, from just speaking to each other face-to-face writing letters, and calling each other via telephone.

To start, writing itself was one of the ways to use language, and in this case, we write a lot because of how advanced technology is. As Remy Farkas (2018) quoted, one linguist stated that technology might lead to less communication because it defines people’s life character. As soon as you take that meaning away, the definition will change. He also noted that he saw young children texting each other even though they were sitting next to each other, and this concerns him since the technology may put language in danger. He is not against technology, but for him, voice is language, and most technology silences this voice. On the other hand, another linguist argued that technology could be a vehicle instead of putting a language in danger because many language programs can help with language usage.

Furthermore, language usage itself is evolving in the same way technology does, especially in language writing. Our ancestors first start engraving cave walls in prehistoric times to communicate, making a significant impact on language, especially in writing. Then came the print press at 1440, which went beyond quills, bringing a graphical look through the text, such as bold, italic, art of typography, and upper and lower cases. This technology gave new spelling, spacing, line breaking, and hyphenating rules. The 19th century also brought in new inventions such as the telegraph, the typewriter, the word document, and many other writing-related inventions. Moreover, the queen’s English was the standard, yet it was primarily viewed as lazy, cheap, and even vulgar.

Therefore, based on those developments and the history of technology and its impact on language, this essay will explain why technology shapes our language but does not necessarily ruin it.

History of English

Albert Bought (1951) stated that the English language started evolving approximately in the 5th century as old English. Although 85% was no longer used, some are still used today. Then, it evolved into Early Middle English, which was the start of English grammar, creating well-formed sentences with arranged words or phrases in a language or syntax. Moreover, they anglicized the language, although the French and Norman were still a considerable influence in the 14th century. additionally during, this period has been attributed to the loss of cases that ultimately resulted in inflection markers being replaced by more complex features of that language, which are a suffix on an inflected noun, pronoun, or adjective that indicates its grammatical function.

Even during the old English times, many scholars, Charles Laurence Barber (2000), stated that the loss of unstressed syllables at the ends of words destroyed many of the distinctive inflections of Old English, which was supported by John McWhorter (2008), who pointed out as the Norsemen and their English counterparts were able to comprehend another manner in speaking. Their incapability of pronouncing the ends of various words ultimately resulted in the loss of inflectional endings.

Later, it was developed into late middle English during the 14th century, where a different dialect was formed in the East-midlands around the London area. During that period, the chancery English standard was brought on by a clerk fluent in French and Latin. The clerks oversaw the creation of legal documents for the court before the 1430s using both languages, which were mainly used by royalty, the church, and wealthy British people. After this date, the clerk started to speak in a dialect that sounded like modern English, such as gaf (gave), not “yaf,” not “switch,” and they’re (there), not “hir.” From this development, early modern English stepped in during the 15th until the mid-17th century. Early modern English signified the pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar change and started the English Renaissance. William Caxton’s innovation brought Modern English to its popularity with an early printing press, and it was the key to standard English through the distribution of the English bible. It was then developed into late modern English, which was mainly used in the 20th century during the Industrial Revolution and the rise of the British Empire, causing an expansion of the English language spread by British colonialism. Finally, 21st century English is mainly used today, with better grammar and more refined language.

History of Writing as Language’s Technology

Language usage has always been shaped by technology, one of which is writing. According to Denise Schmandt and Michael Errand (2009), the origin of writing itself started in three different places: Mesopotamia, China, and Mesoamerica. In Mesopotamia, writing began in 3200 BCE with economic purposes by creating shapes and clay counters that developed as tokens. From there on, there are four phases which are the clay tokens that were used to account in the 8000–3500 BCE, the transformation of tokens into two dimensional pictographs in the 3500–3000 BCE, phonetic signs to transcribe names, which marks the turning point of mimicking the spoken language into writing in the 3000–1500 BCE and two dozen letters that stand for a single voice, an alphabet to represent a perfect interpretation of speech. From that on, alphabets started to form as symbols to describe each item approximately in 1500 BCE, divided into two types: proto-Sinaitic and proto-Canaanite from present-day Lebanon. It begins with 22 letters that stand in a single voice, combined in various ways with unpredicted flexibility to transcribe speech. Finally, the modern alphabet was formed worldwide from Latin characters, Arabic characters, Hebrew, Amharic, Brahmani, and Cyrillic, from Proto-Sinaitic. Even though the Latin Alphabets are from the Proto-Sinaitic alphabet, they were formed by a direct descendant of the Etruscan alphabet. Those Estrucans occupied present-day Tuscany, Italy, and adopted the Greek alphabet, modifying their shape slightly. Following that, the Estrucans alphabet was used widely by Romans who conquered Etruria, and every nation they conquered fell under Roman rule and became literate.

The subsequent development was during 1500–1800, where they finally invented printing. Even though the Chinese had invented printing with blocks since the 6th century AD, it was more known as the diamond sutra in 686. In Europe, on the other hand, printing was invented in the mid-15th century, but Johannes Gutenberg made books much cheaper and invented newspapers. but in England, it was invented in 1476. Newspapers started to print in 1641, but the first successful printed newspaper was in 1702 in England.

In the 19th century, communication became more efficient since many inventions were developed, such as the telegraph, the typewriter, word documents, and many other inventions.

Further development happened again in the 20th century, with the first radio message in 1901 by Macaroni, the invention of television in 1925 by John Logie Bard, and the invention of telephones in the 1970s. They even had the first commercial text in 1992 in Britain. The computer was also invented in this century, but the communication features were created in the late 1990s, such as emails in 1965. These technological developments evolved to help with communication and how people socialize, especially in 1980, since the internet was created.

The Internet Language

Although more refined and better, the English language in the 21st century was still changing, especially in social media. It was shown that it tends to be simpler and very different than standard English. The language used for the internet, especially in social media, is known more as Text-speak. According to Shariatmadari (2019), text-speak generally enables its users to put their thoughts into words, using them to bond with others, deliver information, learn from others’ experiences, and continue to build on work done by others.

Irrum Abbasi (2020) quoted French (2018), who stated that text speak is rooted in the standard language. Still, it emulates the conversational spoken language with acronyms and simpler spelling for efficient typing on mobile devices. The users have modified standard English words into abbreviations (e.g., lol for laughing out loud or brb for be right back), erasing non-essential alphabets, substituting homophones (e.g., f8 for fight or gr8 for excellent), and de-emphasizing appropriate punctuation and capitalization, causing structural adaptations. (Cingle & Sundar, 2012). Irrum Abbasi furthers his explanation by quoting Cingle and Sundar (2012) to state that text speak and word adaptations start to affect daily language usage. Many have argued whether text-speak and the internet language affect the language negatively or positively. Still, all arguments aside, Irrum Abbasi (2020) stated that technologies are here to stay, so text-speak will be the primary mode of communication for the net generation, whether they like it or not.

Linguist Gretchen McCulloch (2019) also supported this statement, stating that the language used in social media does not necessarily kill the language. Instead, it was a sign of language evolution. Moreover, language usage is always expected to be bilingual, formal, and informal, and when appropriate. In an interview with Vox, she added that language is constantly changing, and there is no right way to communicate. Even in the day, Shakespeare’s use of English was different compared to Chaucer's.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the thesis statement still stands. Technology shapes the language, but it does not necessarily ruin it because the English language is flexible and changes every era of technology development. Many linguists and scholars have stated that they think the same way.

References

Abbasi.I. (2020). The Influence of Technology on English Language and Literature. English Language Teaching, 13 (7). 2–4.

Baugh, A.C., & Cable, T. (2001). A History of English Language: Fifth edition. Pearson.

Bazerman, C. (2010). Handbook of Research on writing: History, society, school, individual, text. Routledge.

Beaument, N (2021, 11 February). The Impact of Technology on the words we use. Harvard.co.uk. https://www.harvard.co.uk/the-impact-of-technology-on-the-words-we-use/

Farkas, R. (2018, 26 October). Linguists discuss the relationship between language and technology. Michigandaily. https://www.michigandaily.com/campus-life/linguists-discuss-relationship-between-language-and-technology/

Mcdough, M. (2019, 29 July). Is the internet killing language? LOL, no. Vox.com. https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2019/7/22/20702335/internet-language-text-emojis-gifs-bad-for-english

Novak, M.C. (2019, 4 April). A brief history of communications and innovations that changed the game. G2.com.https://www.g2.com/articles/history-of-communication#19th%20century%20communication