Slang, "Sup", and Socializing

Week 5 Response

Free Topic

So this week, as I was thinking about what to write about for my blog, I became distracted by an email I saw my friend typing to a teacher. The email had abbreviated words (ex: “cuz”), which is something I would expect to receive from a friend in a text or on Facebook chat. I couldn’t help but consider how much of an impact technology has had on how we communicate, socialize, and even present ourselves through these technologies (especially in regards to grammar).
This makes me consider a research paper I wrote last year, where I decided to research the evolution of the “love letter” and communication during wartime. The research I found really correlates to what we are studying today. The way we convey information, and even what information we decide to convey, is very different than the content in previous times. Before, people wrote these long, eloquent letters that would be sent from overseas, with beautiful details and wonderful handwriting. Now, I receive texts saying “Waddup”. Was it really THAT time consuming to add an “h” and a space to spell “what’s up”?? (*haha*) which is hardly a real sentence to begin with! We have learned to shorthand, abbreviate, and incorporate slang into most of our conversations through technology. Mostly this occurs through texting and facebook chat/AIM/etc. I never thought of it before, but NOW it seems like such a silly concept that we couldn’t add the 7 extra characters.
I think the reason I started writing about this is because I realize how often I’ve seen my friends write emails to their teachers using text slang and always thinking it’s so funny how built in some of that can be. It’s like a bad habit that no one consciously realizes. I am even guilty at times; when I write my mom emails sometimes I get too lazy to capitalize the “I” haha as if that’s REALLY that hard! But on Facebook chat there’s no need for that since the person I am typing to is sending me responses like “cuz” instead of “because”.
In class when we had to write down a question and pass it around to one another, I wrote “do you believe that technology has negatively or positively affected our communication/social skills”? I got really interesting responses that I agreed with. Most of us agreed that technology did make people a bit negligent about their grammar and punctuation, even in more professional/school-oriented situations. But on the other hand (as there is always two sides to every story), technology has also enhanced our ability to communicate on a global scale. We can communicate instantaneously, which is obviously a big reason why short hand has become so popular, and with people from across the world that we would NEVER be able to get in contact to so quickly.
I realize that, yes many of us may accidentally forget to capitalize our “I” in an email, but technology can also benefit our communication skills in the sense that it can happen on a internationally. Also, the internet and other technologies have opened the door to personal expression and given a voice to many people who would never be able to experience that in the real world. As is true with most things, you can’t have the good without the bad!