John McWhorter TED Talk 2013: Is texting killing language?

John McWhorter argues that texting is a modern language marvel at TED talk 2013.

During a TED talk in 2013, John McWhorter engages his audience in an unexpected speech of how texting in our modern day is not killing language, contrary to popular belief. He lays out the history of language, and details the differences between written language and spoken language. Written language is much younger than spoken language, and it is scientifically shown that spoken language entails more diversity and cognitive stimulation due to its “loose” and casual nature.  This stimulation can be accessed through bilingual and bidialectal spoken language. McWhorter argues that texting provides a great opportunity to exercise our cognitive abilities with written language versus spoken language and that this opportunity shows the great depth of understanding young people, or people who text, unconsciously show in terms of language and how it works in our daily lives.

McWhorter’s analysis of the acronym “LOL” as a pragmatic particle was something I had never heard before. A lot of my friends with whom I text always affectionately complain that I use LOL too much. I then reply that LOL is my form of punctuation. I never knew how close I was to understanding its grammatical purpose. I had been saying that for years without thinking about it, unconsciously using my understanding of language to adapt to the medium in which I was using to communicate. With that in mind, from an educational standpoint, I do not believe that texting is killing language. However, I do believe that it is blurring the line between spoken language and written language. McWhorter describes that young people are using texting as a communication strategy that has been unavailable until now: writing spoken language, or treating the written language as if it were spoken language. I think that this evolutionary practice is unique and interesting, but sometimes it can have negative effects on students’ writing. Skills such as spelling, vocabulary, and reading comprehension can be negatively affected as students abbreviate words, fail to see misuse of vocabulary, and learn to comprehend text at a face value. I have seen these mistakes first hand when proofreading my peers’ papers. I feel that writing language other than texting has become an even more formal way to communicate. Writing e-mails, even though they are a virtual and textual communication similar to texting, is stressed as being a formal way to communicate, which can be seen and heard in any college classroom, either verbally or within the syllabus. In e-mail, it is considered a faux pas to include the types of words and abbreviations that would be seen in a texting conversation. I actually prefer e-mail as a form of communication, because I have a clear, written piece of information that includes a title, rather than an unstable flow of words that can mean different things to different people. I think that texting has its benefits and consequences, but overall, it is not devastating to our language as we know it.

John McWhorter TED talk 2013