Writing and the Internet

[raven_estrella]

I'm still in my linguistics class, and last week we talked about language on the computer.  My textbook said that writing on the Internet is somewhere between speech and more "traditional" writing. It also said that on the Internet, grammar and spelling mistakes tend to be ignored. People just do things however the heck they want. Obviously, that's

Comments

[anonymous]

[raven_estrella]

This "character"? : ) Well, I think my views come from working in the Writing Center and seeing that many people have trouble writing papers in the required Standard English. It's an issue of literacy; people need to be able to communicate in the language of business and academia. They can communicate in other forms too--they just need to know how to switch. We have to teach children SOME form of grammar. I don't buy the argument that teaching grammar is too "prescriptive."

[ravelda]

I meant "this quarter," obviously. And "Standard English" doesn't really exist, as you will see if you do more research. I agree that some teaching of grammar is beneficial, but I think most people have the ability to styleshift between different linguistic codes well enough without someone learning over their shoulder and going, "This is incorrect."

Anyway. I agree that spelling and grammar shouldn't go out the window, but I don't agree that there's always a "correct" way to write. Who's deciding what's "correct"? Grammarians? The standards of business and academic language tend to hegemonically constructed, as well, which is bad for linguistic diversity.

[ravelda]

Also, as evidenced by my "this character" typo, people tend not to be as careful when they're clearly not writing for business or academia. Is this a bad thing? I think people should be allowed to do "whatever the heck they want" sometimes. Experimenting with grammar and syntax is okay, in my book. It's how things evolve.

Bloopers like my typo reflect how the medium of blogging, like instant messaging and chatting, has been influenced by spoken discourse. It's constructed in a more moment-by-moment fashion, and people tend not to go back and edit. Instead, they repair their speech and the speech of others at a later point in time, as they would have done had they been speaking. It's quite interesting to analyze, really.

[ravelda]

Finally, I didn't say that teaching grammar was prescriptive. If anything, it can be descriptive in the ways it looks at existing ways that grammar works. It's only prescriptive when grammarians start deciding what's "correct" and what's "incorrect."