Text Messaging Enhances Language Essay -- Communication AIM Language E

Text Messaging Enhances Language My younger brother sits as his computer everyday after work to "talk" to his friends through America Online (AOL) Instant Messaging (IM). They use terms like BRB (be right back) and LOL (laugh out loud) that seem a little confusing to the "out-dated" older sibling. It amazes me that he can carry on a conversation using abbreviations for virtually every word or phrase. It doesn't even bother him anymore that I peek over his shoulder to see what they're "talking" about, because he knows it's foreign to me and I can't understand it anyway. As I watch my younger brother on the computer at night, I realize that our habits of reading and writing are changing through modern computer technology like instant messenger. The way we write on instant messenger effects the way we work with writing in an educational sense, but at the same time, enhances, or helps develop, a totally new language. Take for example the following text, which is foreign to most of us: "How hz cyberculture changed d way we tink bout writiN & writers? hav our habits of rEDN & writiN bcum fundamNtLlE dfrnt az a result of contemporary cmptr teknoloG? hav technological advances damaged o NhancD d way we wrk w writiN?" That can be translated into the questions for our assignment: How has cyberculture changed the way we think about writing and writers? Have our habits of reading and writing become fundamentally different as a result of contemporary computer technology? Have technological advances damaged or enhanced the way we work with writing? There's a website http://www.transl8it.com/cgi-win/index.pl that allows a user to type in a phrase and it is translated into computer language by the click of a button. This to... ...ges our writing. In another sense, the IM language could, in time, enhance the evolution of a whole new language. The Net Lingo website has many relevant examples of IM language. Works Cited Birkets, Sven. "Into the Electronic Millenium." Tribble and Trubek 62-74. Bolter, Jay David. "The New Dialogue." Tribble and Trubek 75-87. Cabagnot, Ruby. "Text Messaging: Boon or Bane?" 12 December 2000. Business World Online Inc. Website.16 June 2003. http://itmatters.com.ph/features/features_12122000.html. CNN. "R ur txt msgs or OK?" Thursday, 13 February 2003. Associated Press. Website. 16 June 2003.CNN.com. Landow, George. "Twenty Minutes into the Future, or How Are We Moving Beyond the Book?" Tribble and Trubek 214-226. Tribble, Evelyn B. and Anne Trubek, eds. Writing Material" Readings from Plato to the Digital Age. New York: Longman, 2003.