Thoughts on Language and Communication

I just read this Economist article all about "Homo mobilis" and how the youth (my?) culture is both distorting language, but also initiating a sort of cultural evolution.

Indeed, languages have always been evolving, and an attempt to force people into a set grammar and spelling is bound to lead, eventually, to some sort of rebellion. It's part of life. The
reforms of one generation become the chains of the next (or at least, that's how they're perceived by the younger crowd). As an anthropology student, this strikes me as given. Cultures change. It's what they do. Yes, each parent tries to indoctrinate their children with their interpretations of what it means to be human, but the process is never wholly complete.

In regards to language, I may be a bit more indoctrinated than my peers. Perhaps more accurately, I'm on the fence. I feel both the nostalgia for a time when the distinction between "their" and "they're" was universally understood, when people took the time to think through what they wanted to say before committing it to paper. But I also share the bricoleur mentality, and the attention span of what we may call the Google generation. It's an odd balancing act that I don't feel I've been handling well; it's a desire to be what I'm not, by virtue of my birthday.

This emphasis on defining identity is a normal part of growing up. They say it happens in the teen years, but I challenge that and say that it's more stressful now, as I prepare to graduate from university and enter that most frightening of places: the real world. Am I ready? I guess I won't know until I get there.

A few months ago I got a job offer via e-mail. A professor at a small, humanitarian college in San Fransisco found my resume on CalJobs and asked me if I'd like to be his research assistant. Sounds great right? Well, it would be if he had bothered to send me a decent e-mail. As a wise person who I shared this with the other day said, "He's not qualified to be your boss." Perhaps an understanding of what he did wrong will be one of my strongest points when they ask, "why should we hire you over the other applicants?" Because (unlike this professor) I know how to capitalize the beginning of each sentence, use proper grammar, and treat every e-mail as though it were a letter.

Sure, between close friends and family I will be a bit lax in these areas, but that's because we're close, comfortable enough that we can be a bit informal. It's about knowing your audience.

But in the digital age communication goes beyond e-mail. Texting and instant messaging and (what really bothers me) Facebooking and its cohorts are even more problematic. My solution: avoid Facebook, only im friends and family, and, unless in a hurry, use proper spelling and all in a text. Of course this also raises issues about what constitutes a hurry.

Our society increasingly emphasizes the metaphor of time as money. We only have a limited amount of time, so we must spend it wisely. I could tie this into a Christian worldview of linear time, as opposed to how much of the rest of the world sees time as circular, but that's another essay. I only wish to highlight that we use our time, money, and energy for what we value, so regardless of how you see the world, you choose to do what you feel is important, be it instant gratification for the self or an arduous ordeal for someone else, or anything in between. We attach some value to every potential action and choose accordingly.

So am I being hypocritical at all by expressing this in a blog that (to my knowledge) only my mother reads? Maybe. It has taken me about twenty minutes to write this much, so I would like to think that it's at least somewhat carefully thought out. I would also like to think that my blog could become a public space in which to debate various issues, but for that I'd need a bigger readership, and to post more frequently.

The web has made us more interconnected. But it has also limited our abilities to communicate. I personally love writing both online and on paper because I get the chance to think and revise to communicate and present myself how I want to. I hate phones, not because I have to talk, but because I can't see who I'm talking to. It's eerie; it's a disembodied voice that only I can hear... Face to face you can look in their eyes, see how they're feeling, read their body language, really fully interact.

This posting is also partly inspired by the latest South Park episode, which if you've not seen, you must (even you Mom). It's a wonderful satire of our internet addiction. Watch it here.