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Spare Tyre said:
Do you mean "American urban" here, Bro? There is nothing like that in urban Australia.

Crikey! Don't try to give me the rough end of the pineapple. I saw Chopper. I also saw The Quiet Earth. While that one may have been made in New Zealand, small geographical differences have not meant much since the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor. The blokes in those film got nuthin' on the brothas. So color me skeptical that everyone down under speaks the Queen's English while sipping Foster's and trying to avoid the many snakes, spiders, and ACFs that menace the countryside. One good exposure to an ozone hole is sure to leave a fellow speaking gibberish that only an aussie would have a chance of understanding, so my point stands.
 
pedaling squares said:
Why not just write in the thread like you did?.
Because it creates a flame war, out in the open for all to read, whether they wish to or not. Discussed ad nauseum in the About the Forum thread, here.

Boeing said:
the morality mods are at it again.
I've never thought of myself as being a morality mod, though you may. I have to wonder where you would thus draw the line if you were a mod here. Or if CN were your business?
 
Jul 23, 2009
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Exactly, Alpe. Ergo my original point, that issue should have been handled, or at a minimum clarified, via PM. Admins have no more right to create flame wars than regular forum users. And when an admin lays it out in the open for all to see, whether they wish to or not, that she "suspects" racism, she's fanning the flames as effectively as our old friend BPC.
 
Libertine Seguros said:
It depends on your opinion of Sapir-Whorf.

Language is a fluid thing which adapts to the situation around it. New thoughts and concepts are brought up all the time, and so new coinages need to be created to fit. Old terms acquire new definitions by euphemism or otherwise, so new terms need to replace them.

A general degeneration of language proficiency is not necessarily what's gone on so much as an enormous increase in our exposure to written language that fulfils functions not previously ascribed to it, eg internet forum communication, instant messenger services etc where we type like we speak, rather than like we write, and an enormous increase in our exposure to language written by and for informal communication between people of varying education levels. I would choose a different register to write in, were my posts to be published on the front page; I write in a different manner in instant messages, in informal forum chat, in more discursive, analytical forum chat, and in long email missives to some of my more distant friends who I don't have the opportunity to speak to as often.

Language is an adaptable thing. Though the higher registers may take a puritanical approach (see French or Icelandic), these are usually the most impervious to change, because when writing (or speaking) formally, for official, academic or journalistic purposes, a certain register is expected that gives your discourse a certain gravitas. It simply would not do to write a sentence like "n then he was like, oh my god, like, he was lyin' an'all!" in academic or journalistic script, even if you tidied up the phonetics.

There are certain errors that really grind my gears, for sure (there's that "for sure" again!). "Could of, would of, should of" in particular drives me mad. But ultimately, if somebody writes that in something academic, official etc, then it will just be crossed out. If you write that on your CV when applying for a job, it will go straight in the bin. But these are less the product of the information age, and more the product of a general misconception born out of a linguistic habit that predates the internet (the abbreviations into "could've, would've, should've" and so on).

Believe me I'm familiar with the fluid tendency and sub-regional context of language, as well as the preference for established hierarchies between the hochdeutsch, in the canonical sense, versus dialekte in relation to one's provenance, education and social status. In Italy the people didn't start to really speak "Italian," which is imprecisely said to have evolved from the Florentine dialect of Dante in the late Middle Ages, until televisions were more or less introduced en masse in the 50's and 60's. They spoke in dialetto. The country was only unified in 1861, thus for many centuries the Italians, just like their spoken dialects, were a heterogeneous entity only vaguely connected to a common identity by the geographical context. And dialects often, in their refusal to embrace the high parlance of the official language doctrine, frequently offer possibilities and solutions that more aptly express the social and cultural identity of a completely valid local tradition. In fact, in this sense, the standardization of language here, wrought by a modern commercial means of communication, with the consequent decrease and even loss of dialect is lamentable. Since it recalibrates the cultural parameters of identity, while at the same time eliminates what might be called that semio-diversity, which found diverse expression in the local food, art, architecture, in short kultur.

But my point attempted to address something entirely different: that is, the forces at work which are presently determining what appears to be the general, and here I disagree with you, language anemia of our times. The ways of communication you mention and the various levels of reception, are being, so it appears, reformulated upon lines totally in synch with the commercial interests of the corporations that have come to dominate the famous information age. Language and communication are no longer based upon even a standard grammar, if we are to judge by the way young people generally write these days, let alone sophisticated modes of elocutio.

It's clunky, awkward, unsophisticated; but more than this, reflects a chunkiness, awkwardness and unsophistication that is being inculcated in young people’s thought process through the "schooling" they were given on the internet and not in school. Finally it doesn't enable young people to express themselves adequately in situations that demand more than what they are used to on the internet.

Don’t misunderstand me, I’m not a language purist, nor one for affected formality, however, changes in dialect and modes of expression should work toward making us think better, not worse. That's my critical concern in my line of work. The corporate world of the information age does not, to me, appear to be achieving this goal, in the new standards being set by the commercial means of mass communication.

Basta.
 
I understand everyones points about how it is confusing and how on some websites people are just downright rude to each other but it is just a reflection of our times/ changing language. A lot of people on here say lo ( for example ) and that has became probably accepted ( even if you do not say it, you know what it means ).

And our modern day language sure beats Shakespearean language ( which i am learning at the moment, in Macbeth and have been learning other plays of the type for 3 years ).
 
BroDeal said:
While that one may have been made in New Zealand, small geographical differences have not meant much since the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor. So color me skeptical that everyone down under speaks the Queen's English while sipping Foster's and trying to avoid the many snakes, spiders, and ACFs that menace the countryside. One good exposure to an ozone hole is sure to leave a fellow speaking gibberish that only an aussie would have a chance of understanding, so my point stands.

Not nice to ACF/ Aussies. Also it was the Japanese.
 
period_speech.png
 
Amsterhammer said:
...........
, and whob levae misplacedx letters and dyslexic typos in their texts despite the fact that they must have noticed them.:rolleyes:

Reminds me of this guy I saw today wearing a T-shirt with an awful misspelling of one of the most common words in the English language, it said in big letters

FCUK

What is this world coming to?
 
rhubroma said:
Believe me....short

Basta.



This is not strictly a linguistic issue; a high/low problem. It's a discursive shift. Some would say a dialectic as much as a corrosive. It's fine and well to say that these concerns are cordoned by the internet, but the reality is that as attention and comprehension are parceled out--Libtertine spoke of registers--other modes of discourse must adapt, condescend, accommodate, whatever. (The cartoon upthread illustrates this, but only via the venue of a secure culture.) Unlike the Nordic countries maybe (and French codifications) US English prose now--in all professions--conveys a real modification at any level. As does UK english as well--even if there are codified standards applied to each new manifestation.

Go to any public lecture these days and see the ways in which the academic mode of address has changed. Sure, it's profit driven, but the value is recalibrated as well. But this needn't be elitist (so much). Look at the Times or the LRB from the 80s and compare the density of the prose and political awareness to most public writing today. In short, Kittlerian terms maybe, media has moved the boundaries more than it has simply lowered them. So bald point: few people lecturing, speaking, writing today are doing so in ignorance of the internet and its influence--both psychological and factual. That its memes aren't taken on is irrelevant. No current discourse is operating in the absence of internet conversations--even if totally ignorant of their details.

This is, in some ways, in support of your argument, but, at the same time, not sure with its values.

Second point: you are hard on the mechanisms of directive capital, yet school (and humanist culture by extension) shows up as blind spot in your argument. Of course we know of the academy's integration into the legitimation of profit mechanisms, yet the argument is that it even still transmits other values and possibilities. What are these, and how are they calibrated to the techno-multiplication of discursive categories? This has to be factored in the transformation. For better and worse. And these have societal implications that redefine the application of culture and language both. Again, this is part of the anxiety you argue, but I think it can't be held as a normative barrier.
 
Susan Westemeyer said:
It is like when someone starts virtually every sentence with "Listen, ....." ........

Susan

Listen, or, in French Ecoutez, is probably the most common initial word of politicians' utterances when answering any interviewer. A very common occurence right now in France (800 meters away from here).
 
Susan Westemeyer said:
That drives me nuts too, but after 21 years in Germany, I have become convinced that the schools teach "loose" and not "lose". I think I have met very few non-native-english-speaking Europeans who use that correctly.

Susan

In the cycling world around here a "sloping bicycle frame" becomes a slooping one, in italics of course.
 
aphronesis said:
This is not strictly a linguistic issue; a high/low problem. It's a discursive shift. Some would say a dialectic as much as a corrosive. It's fine and well to say that these concerns are cordoned by the internet, but the reality is that as attention and comprehension are parceled out--Libtertine spoke of registers--other modes of discourse must adapt, condescend, accommodate, whatever. (The cartoon upthread illustrates this, but only via the venue of a secure culture.) Unlike the Nordic countries maybe (and French codifications) US English prose now--in all professions--conveys a real modification at any level. As does UK english as well--even if there are codified standards applied to each new manifestation.

Go to any public lecture these days and see the ways in which the academic mode of address has changed. Sure, it's profit driven, but the value is recalibrated as well. But this needn't be elitist (so much). Look at the Times or the LRB from the 80s and compare the density of the prose and political awareness to most public writing today. In short, Kittlerian terms maybe, media has moved the boundaries more than it has simply lowered them. So bald point: few people lecturing, speaking, writing today are doing so in ignorance of the internet and its influence--both psychological and factual. That its memes aren't taken on is irrelevant. No current discourse is operating in the absence of internet conversations--even if totally ignorant of their details.

This is, in some ways, in support of your argument, but, at the same time, not sure with its values.

Second point: you are hard on the mechanisms of directive capital, yet school (and humanist culture by extension) shows up as blind spot in your argument. Of course we know of the academy's integration into the legitimation of profit mechanisms, yet the argument is that it even still transmits other values and possibilities. What are these, and how are they calibrated to the techno-multiplication of discursive categories? This has to be factored in the transformation. For better and worse. And these have societal implications that redefine the application of culture and language both. Again, this is part of the anxiety you argue, but I think it can't be held as a normative barrier.

The actual historical situation is more complex. My analysis of linguistic culture, is subordinated to my ethical stance. My pleas for educational reform, have been based on a premise that, and this has ever been made in strong worded terms in my contributions to this forum, our capitalistic society has betrayed the cultural mission and intellectual integrity of early modern humanism. I have no qualms about attacking the pedagogical model set by the corporate world. To win success their implies moral failure. Furthermore, my disapproval of this model, made clear up-thread, is that I consider it based exclusively on market projects and ambitions that have become a consumer mania, which seized society and the educational institutions alike, thereby contributing to the wholesale abandonment of grammatical virtue.

Your particular censure of my criticism of empty rhetoric and parlance, is reserved to stressing the utilitarian function that information technology has presented in the schools. I am fine with this. While you argue the possibilities that it has offered to finding new paths toward solutions that are wanting in these times. My desire is a revolutio -- a return to pedagogical models, which takes for granted neither the "virtues of the modern revolution," nor the immediate coincidence of this revolution with the universalist ambitions of the market triumphalists in determining the standard of quality of contemporary education.

Of course the internet is the greatest (in the sheer quantitative aspect) social revolution in the history of the world, for which it is enough to recall the gargantuan sum of quality information that everyone has instant access to at low cost. Having said this, as with all other human things, Twitter, Facebook, the internet should be lived with a secularism and without abdication of a critical spirit. It seems to me the way the corporate world has foisted certain modes of mass communication upon us, which is no less than molding a form of popular conformism to their worldview, is to risk bringing about an orthodoxy of the web. As George Orwell has taught us in 1984 , no orthodoxy needs a critical thought, but obedience to a doctrine: in fact the novel evidenced how the neologisms which the Big Brother party sought to impose in substitution of the arch-language (the English of Shakespeare, Orwell said), was thought of as a paraphernalia of words and logical constructions reduced to bear bones, for which every nuance and subtlety of meaning must be abolished. The sheer consequences in the critical sense are terrifying and already seem to be taking effect. The reference to Orwell is, of course, intended to show how the elimination of complexity prepares the ground for the simplification of thought, which has always facilitated every free will of power.

In many of its manifestations, above all the most popular ones, the internet undeniably has demonstrated a capacity to impoverish language and castrate the most profound thought. I wouldn't want, therefore, that the orthodoxy of this new era gets involuntarily translated into a dictatorship of brevity, a tweetomania made worse by the anxiety of always being connected. Herein lies the concerns with which any possible responses that address the questions brought up in your "second point" might be formulated.
 

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