{"id":130763,"date":"2015-10-20T17:54:23","date_gmt":"2015-10-20T17:54:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/2015\/10\/20\/re-how-teens-and-adults-text-i-would-be-super\/"},"modified":"2015-10-20T17:54:23","modified_gmt":"2015-10-20T17:54:23","slug":"re-how-teens-and-adults-text-i-would-be-super","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/2015\/10\/20\/re-how-teens-and-adults-text-i-would-be-super\/","title":{"rendered":"re: how teens and adults text, I would be super interested for you to explain your theory!"},"content":{"rendered":"

allthingslinguistic<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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hello-delicious-tea<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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tangleofrainbows<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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ok SO. a lot of this comes from various stuff i\u2019ve seen on the linguistics of tumblr, but at the heart of it is that people in my generation (at least in the us; idk abt other countries\u2019 timelines on this front) went thru (or are still going thru) our Formative Social Years in an environment where we\u2019d regularly interact with even our closest friends on text-only platforms (whether texting or gchat or fb messages or w\/e), and b\/c so much linguistic\/social information is actually conveyed by facial expression and tone of voice, we\u2019ve collectively made up all of these textual ways of conveying that in a concise, efficient way<\/p>\n

so like, sometimes on this blog i\u2019ll talk about\u00a0\u201cstraight people\u201d, and sometimes i\u2019ll talk about\u00a0\u201cstr8 ppl\u201d, and even tho i would pronounce those the same, the first is much more neutral \u2014 it would probably happen in the context like\u00a0\u201ci\u2019m not sure how i feel about straight people writing stories that center around experiences of homophobia\u201d \u2014 than the second, which which is much more frustrated\/venting \u2014 it would be more likely to crop up in the context of\u00a0\u201call i want is to live quietly in my little queer utopia but no str8 ppl have to come along and heteronomativity UGH #over it #whatever #NOT RLLY OVER IT\u201d. or even with more subtle things like end punctuation:\u00a0\u201ci\u2019m not going\u201d basically just means i\u2019m not currently planning to go to the thing;\u00a0\u201ci\u2019m not going.\u201d carries much more of a connotation of\u00a0\u201ci have seriously considered going and have Reasons for staying at home\u201d (and note that capital \u2014\u00a0\u201ci have Reasons for staying at home\u201d feels different than\u00a0\u201ci have reasons for staying at home\u201d). (and this isn\u2019t even getting into things like shitposting or advanced memeology, but there are specific textual markers that go with things like that, some of which would be pronounced if you read them aloud, but many of which wouldn\u2019t be)<\/p>\n

but, crucially, for these kinds of things to carry meaning, they have to be used consistently: if i use\u00a0\u201cstr8 ppl\u201d and\u00a0\u201cstraight people\u201d interchangeably in all contexts (as i do for something like\u00a0\u201cthe supreme court\u201d vs\u00a0\u201cscotus\u201d), then there\u2019s no way to develop a distinction in meaning between the two \u2014 the only way to do that is to consistently use the different orthographies in different contexts. (to take another example: if something is\u00a0\u201cgreat\u201d, then it\u2019s solidly good. if something is\u00a0\u201cgr8\u201d, it\u2019s more in the land of\u00a0\u201ci can\u2019t quite believe this is as earnest\/tacky\/tasteless as it is but i\u2019m weirdly into it anyway?\u201d (sometimes with a side helping of\u00a0\u201cdo i just enjoy this ironically or do i genuinely enjoy it there is no way of knowing please send help\u201d))<\/p>\n

the upshot of this is that to be fluent in tumblr (or texting, or fb messenger, or w\/e) means to actually be paying a lot of attention to subtle points of grammar and spelling, to know when to use\u00a0\u201cdid u kno\u201d or\u00a0\u201cur\u201d or even pull out an old-fashioned tip of the hat to\u00a0\u201ce733T haxxor 5killz\u201d. most of these are very subtle distinctions, the kind of things you feel intuitively rather than write out explicitly, and so it\u2019s very hard to convey them concisely and accurately to someone who\u2019s not already immersed in the linguistic environment<\/p>\n

and let\u2019s be real, people in my parents\u2019 generation aren\u2019t. i mean, sure, many of them have facebook accounts, but these kinds of platforms weren\u2019t around when they were in their\u00a0\u201creally getting to grips with social interaction\u201d years, and their most important social interactions usually don\u2019t take place exclusively online. for me, all of my closest friends are people i\u2019ve only interacted with online for more than a year now (with a few brief<\/i>\u00a0face-to-face visits when various travel arrangements have allowed), so tumblr, facebook, and gchat are absolutely critical<\/i>\u00a0to my social life and interpersonal interactions; for my parents, their closest friends are people they see in person at work every day, so social media is a light overlay to their social lives, not the thrumming core<\/p>\n

as such, my parents don\u2019t grok these distinctions. to them\u00a0\u201cwhat are you doing?\u201d means the same thing as\u00a0\u201clol wut r u doing\u201d;\u00a0\u201cgr8\u201d is just like\u00a0\u201cgreat\u201d (and\u00a0\u201cgr9\u201d takes some parsing \u2026 ); dogespeak doesn\u2019t have the same distinctive valence that it does to us. since they don\u2019t know about these distinctions, they don\u2019t feel the need to maintain more\u00a0\u201cproper\u201d spelling\/grammar when texting with a friend \u2014 different people have different set points for this, obvs, but in general i feel like\u00a0\u201cstandard (setting aside all the class and racial implications in that term \u2026)\u00a0spelling and grammar\u201d (with lighter-than-standard punctuation and capitalization) translates to\u00a0\u201crelatively neutral\/pleasant conversational voice\u201d, and then deliberate misspellings, abbreviations, letter substitutions, and grammar deviations are markers used to indicate shifts in mood \u2014 i have a vague sense that bitterness tends to collapse down and preserve grammar but weird spelling (\u201clyk w\/e im happy 4 u but pls, i kno u lied 2 get that\u201d) whereas enthusiasm tends to preserve spelling but weird grammar (\u201cwhat i can\u2019t even no how do air AMAZE\u201d). since people in my parents\u2019 generation don\u2019t realize that doing so unintentionally changes the way their words come across, they feel free to text\u00a0\u201cpoorly\u201d (ie with lots of errors\/substitutions, generally mixing various text-flagged vocal tones in ways that are often incoherent) in order to do so more quickly (b\/c lbr typing everything out can be a pain<\/i>\u00a0(esp on a non-smartphone), and since parents don\u2019t do it as much, they\u2019re not necessarily as fast as our spry young fingers on a familiar interface)<\/p>\n

so yeah, that\u2019s what i suspect is going on<\/p>\n

tl;dr: parents don\u2019t use orthography to mark vocal tone in the way youngfolk do, and thus feel free to condense their texts and otherwise use textspeak. youngfolk are using orthography to mark for tone, and thus text more\u00a0\u201ccorrectly\u201d to preserve their social intentions<\/b><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Which is something that leads to some confusion between parents and children – I\u2019ve gotten really upset over some of my mother\u2019s texts because they have a period at the end, and in order to be neutral, they need to not have a period. And then I remember that the way she composes text messages (and, incidentally-not-incidentally, the way my boyfriend composes messages in text) come from a different tonal background, and they don\u2019t use orthography in the same way to convey mood. It\u2019s weirdly difficult to code-switch texting, I think.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I\u2019ve been referring to this particular phenomenon as\u00a0having a vivid sense of typographical register<\/a>, but I think it also fits well into the broader sociolinguistic idea of style-shifting<\/a>. If you don\u2019t communicate via technology that much, you basically have just one style (or maybe a simple split between formal like a professional email and informal like a text), but the more computer-mediated friendships you develop, the more you develop ways of communicating textually with all the subtle shifts in nuance that you also have offline.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

allthingslinguistic: hello-delicious-tea: tangleofrainbows: ok SO. a lot of this comes from various stuff i\u2019ve seen on the linguistics of tumblr, but at the heart of it is that people in my generation (at least in the us; idk abt other countries\u2019 timelines on this front) went thru (or are still going thru) our Formative Social … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “re: how teens and adults text, I would be super interested for you to explain your theory!”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[15285,15287,15284,15286,677,4100,4],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130763"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=130763"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130763\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=130763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=130763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=130763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}