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flash74686's avatar

Do you know of any books that critique texting, instant messaging, or casual speech/writing among teens and young adults througout history?

Asked by flash74686 (478points) October 17th, 2014 from iPhone

I’m writing a critique paper for a media criticism seminar about a medium and how critiques about it have changed over the years. I started with texting (teens these days don’t know proper grammar, technology is making us dumb, etc) and realized there have been similar critiques throughout history about the younger generation, bemoaning their informal language in speech and writing and claiming they don’t understand formal grammar or writing. This of course, can’t be the case since the earliest such critique was in 63 CE and if it were true, then we would have lost formal language by now. I’ve been trying to find some critiques (in book form) to include in my paper, but most of my google results are blog posts and I don’t even know what section in the library such books would be in. I’ve got John McWhorter’s book, Doing Our Own Thing, but I was wondering if anyone knew of anything older than that. I guess I’m interested in linguistics (formal vs. informal language), adult critiques about the intelligence/ability of the youth, and examples of casual writing from before IMs and texts. Any suggestion helps. Thanks so much.

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4 Answers

gailcalled's avatar

Check out Marshall McCluhan’s http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Understanding_Media:_The_Extensions_of_Man. He was a seminal figure in this area well before the internet and all its ramifications.

Earthbound_Misfit's avatar

What about looking at conversation analysis in its various forms? There are a number of books on this topic and I’m sure you could find case studies that would fit with your specific needs. I just had a quick look online and came up with this thesis that focuses on chat room dialogues conversations.

This talks about texting and the development of text language.

This also analyses text messaging and its sample is made up of university students.

morphail's avatar

David Crystal’s Txtng: the gr8 deb8

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