John McWhorter: Txtng is killing language. JK!!!

Does texting mean the death of good writing skills? John McWhorter posits that there's much more to texting -- linguistically, culturally -- than it seems, and it's all good news.

TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes (or less). Look for talks on Technology, Entertainment and Design -- plus science, business, global issues, the arts and much more.

[benvincent]

Slash must be a 2013 thing that lasted for exclusively the duration of this TED talk

[murrycohen]

Dr. McWhorter is, in my opinion, the best linguistics teacher around. He is really interesting to listen to, and he can teach you a lot. Not only is there linguistic knowledge and expertise in what he says, but there is also wit and knowledge of what is going on in the world in general. I suggest that everyone purchase and read his many books, and also buy the 4 courses he offers as part of the Great Courses series of The Learning Company. You won’t be disappointed. This man has a lot to teach, and he does so with grace, charm and unbridled efficacy.

[megabigblur]

He's not saying it's not possible to text in proper English. What he's saying is that you should judge texting the way you judge speech, not writing. Young people aren't idiots. One doesn't text one's boss with the same casualness one would text a peer or a friend, just as you wouldn't SPEAK to your boss the same way you would speak to a peer or a friend. If you do know someone who is doing that then yes, they need to be corrected, but I would bet the majority have more common sense.

[brandonthesteele]

I've never used "slash", nor have I heard or seen anyone else use it.

[PauloNideck]

Amazing his take on LOL as an emphatic marker !

[polyglot]

I also didn't know about "slash". For me, "Slash" is still the guitarist from 'Guns 'n' Roses'.

[brianna]

I love how TED talks take huge topics from their respective fields and make them accessible to everyone, like you don't have to be a Linguists to learn from this and I love that.

[lisat]

Linguistics I always thought was about language. To me that also meant communication. Your talk here was about methods of communication and how that impacts our “words”. This talk was about communication moving forward. I am younger than most of (maybe all) of the elected members of our Federal government. I have a decent education. My grandparents were farmers and cowboys. My Nana always said He don’t and she don’t. But she also only had a 6th grade education. She read a learned but that old “he don’t” never left her. My nana also used older terms for many things. Colloquial terms for different times and regions? There is skillet vs. frying pan. To my Nana it was a skillet. Or- spider if it had legs to go over a camp fire. I know my family moved west. Through Ohio, Dakota, Minnesota, Montana. Then in 1930s west ending up in San Bruno
near San Francisco. The stories my nana shared were amazing. My family were Scots. Some were sent here as defeated warriors after Culloden (one of the few not killed) and others as indentured servants. Language and stories were important to us.

[CommunicationTwentyFourSeven]

I think this is a brilliant view of how communication and language evolves over time. Looking at texting as "fingered speech" and developing multi-lingual skills is a great observation. As a communication instructor, if I can get over the fact that you're not necessarily thinking about punctuation and capitalization while texting, then so can everyone else.

[moonlightcrystal]

I really don't understand, if texting is limiting/ruining your writing skills you have the capacity to study and expand your grammar, vocabulary etc. if you don't have the capacity you can get help.
if texting is limiting your communication, or face to face, skills then you have to put the phone down and start to slowly get the confidence to talk to people. You can do this by watching videos or getting ideas/opinions from friends/teachers. You have the ability and resources to perfect your communications skills, why make up excuses?
Of course this may not apply to people with anxiety, or other problems, since it may be harder for them.
Also, of course it is easier said than done.

Please correct me if I'm wrong and any other thoughts are welcomed. ^^

[laceymarienehls]

Very interesting. However, I've never heard of or even used "slash".

[MrCmon]

Never heard of "slash" written out.

[allielee]

im a teen (16) and this is super true i use texting slang such as lol all the time and most of the time i don't even realize it or the implications behind it. also there's differences between subtle slang such as "haha" and "ahaha" and the like, or "lolll" and other things that's just come to be so natural for my age demographic that we don't realize it! so interesting, thanks for sharing

[ConsiderableGravity]

I've never heard of slash, that's a situation when you would normally just send the second part as a different text...

[matty]

I listened to him in a language series on Audible... He looks so different than I thought he did. Still a brilliant man... my fav

[Lopfff]

I agree with everything here. But I gotta point out: Christopher Hitchens casually spoke in beautiful, eloquent prose paragraphs

[KwynM]

I've never heard of slash... I just transition without that. I use "anyways" instead.

[UniverseUtopia]

He's quite right about the fact that our writing evolves inasmuch as our speaking, and that texting is essentially fingered speaking.

[neil]

I heard a few months ago that people are actually saying "lol" in conversation. If this is true, then texting really has affected language. Having said that, languages have and always will evolve over time. If you could go forward a couple of hundred years in, say, New York, the language you'd hear would probably be recognisable as English but would sound different due to the influence of a global network of which we are all now part of.

[idiotsloveboxes]

My favorite part of this speech is the point that 'kids these days' sentiments & pessimism is not unique to any particular group or era and can give way to progress and innovation.