David Crystal – The Effect of New Technologies on English

now when new technology comes along it influences language it has to technology always has influenced language quite dramatically think of the Technologies of the past printing arrives in the 15th century suddenly we have new varieties of English that weren’t there before new varieties of any language of course but we’re talking about English today we have newspapers eventually and look at the style of a newspaper with its headlines and all and the cartoons and the captions and the editorials and all the things you now know about a newspaper once upon a time there was no such thing so fast forward to the 19th century and we have the develop M of the telephone you know when the telephone arrived people did not know how to deal with it they they didn’t know what to say when they picked up the phone they would shout and say who is that are you there and so on today we just go hello or we give the telephone number or whatever it is we do people thought the telephone was going to be the biggest disaster in society because it would
mean people would no longer go out of
their houses to talk to each other
and it would be a disaster of course it
hasn’t been like that when broadcasting
comes along in the 1920s a lot of people
thought it was a disaster they thought
this is going to be a medium of um
people being brainwashed by this new
system of getting into our heads into
our homes it hasn’t been like that but
broadcasting has introduced new
varieties of the language think of all
the things you can do on the radio and
on television that you couldn’t do
before like
Sports commentary think of a football
commentary you know that didn’t exist
until you know the last few decades
think of news reading weather
forecasting chat shows all of these come
in as a result of broadcasting now the
internet is doing exactly the same thing
the internet arrives not so long
ago you guys here most of you have never
known a world without the internet those
of us who are slightly less young um
well remember a world without the
internet we’re talking only since the
199s remember the worldwide web arrives
in
1991
only when could you have first done a
search on Google not before 1999 because
Google didn’t exist before then those of
us who are older when did we first send
an email not before the
mid90s so text messaging on your mobile
phones when did that that come in not
until the early
2000s instant messaging early 2000s
blogging the word blog arrives in 1997
it’s short for webblog meaning the kind
of diary that you can put on the
web nobody blogged before about
2003 Facebook
Facebook 2004 only Facebook has not been
here forever only 2004 YouTube 2005
Twitter 20 6 how many of you
tweet any of you any of you actually use
Twitter a couple of hands going up
anybody read other people’s tweets very
much again not many of you but
Facebook yeah nods yeah nod nod nod no
no not not not yeah all over the place
yeah but these are examples of new
technologies developing into new styles
of English now each of these internet
outputs that I’ve talked about has a
distinctive English style oh heck it’s
not just English a distinctive Serbian
style too a distinctive any language
style the style you use when you’re
texting is not the style you use when
you’re blogging or Facebooking or
twittering and so on and notice that the
Technologies influence the language in
quite specific ways the most obvious
examples are the short messaging
services like text messaging and
tweeting so text messaging is 160
character isn’t it that’s your maximum
if you’re sending a message through your
mobile phone that’s your lot if you’re
going to Tweet you’ve got 140 characters
the reason for the difference is that if
you’re tweeting which is really sending
your text message to the web that’s what
tweet tw Twitter is all about sending
your text message which is normally just
to one person so that everybody can read
it and now you’ve got 140 characters and
the reason is you have to have 20
characters for your ID you see you’ve
got to say who you are that leaves you
140 short well yes but not that short I
mean 140 characters for English that’s
about 30 words you can say quite a lot
in 30 words you know so it’s not as
short as all that but anyway the point
I’m making is that that
technology all influences a language in
quite specific ways so let’s just take
Twitter as the example it arrives in
2006 if you tweeted if you went online
you would be given a prompt and the
prompt was in 2006 what are you doing
what are you doing so you would
say I am doing whatever I am on a train
really interesting stuff this I am
watching a film I am stuck in a lift
there was a famous example of Steven fry
you may know Steven fry who got stuck in
a lift in early 2006 or seven and he
tweeted to the whole world I am stuck in
a lift and millions and millions of
people wanted to see his next tweet to
find out when he was out of the lift and
it took a long time and it took all day
and he and he kept it going and going
and going and suddenly everybody
realized that Twitter could tell you
what was going on in people’s minds and
that’s how it started notice what are
you doing very introvert isn’t it I am
lots of first person pronouns present
tenses I am stuck in the lift and then
in 2009 Twitter changed its prompt
instead of what are you doing the prompt
became what’s happening tell us what’s
happening now think about that for a
second what are you doing says look into
yourself what’s happening says look
around you so suddenly there are no not
so many first person pronouns there are
third person pronouns now he’s doing
this she’s doing that they’re doing that
the tenses start to alter past tense as
well as future tense this has just
happened I’ve just seen something I am
about to see something the advertisers
come on Twitter and say look at our new
book this is what we’re selling and in
and Twitter suddenly becomes a kind of
news reporting service rather than a
diary and a fundamental linguistic
change takes place as a result simply
because not just the technology but the
software with the tech technology makes
you think in a different way from what
you were doing before so I generalize
that point now you see and say every
Internet domain that you’re dealing with
influences the way in which you use
language sometimes in quite specific
ways but it isn’t yet possible to
predict the future because it’s all so
recent it takes a long time before new
trends technological or otherwise
actually
influence the language in a permanent
sort of way you know the internet is is
too young yet to know exactly how much
influence it is going to have on English
or Serbian or whatever language I know
people think that the internet is having
a major major influence on language that
the English language today is not the
rubbish the English language today is
almost identical with what it was 20
years ago I know there are a new
abbreviations that have come into text
messaging like lol you
know LOL you know things like this but
this is cool stuff but there isn’t very
much like that this is a tiny tiny
fraction of the English language the
vast majority of English is exactly the
same today as it was 20 years ago in a
hundred years time maybe there will be a
lot of influence from the internet but
at the moment it’s pretty stable so
should authority figures be be worried
about texting and Facebook and social
media or should they just be encouraged
which does not affect the basics oh I
think very much that uh the the prophets
of Doom uh are out there and they always
come out when there is a new technology
there were prophets of Doom with
printing in the 15th century saying
printing is a terrible thing because it
will mean anybody can say what they like
in public I told you already the
prophets of Doom with with tele phones
they thought this is a disaster for
society prophets of Doom with the
internet as well yes there are some
famous figures that have gone into print
and said text messaging especially is a
disaster for the English language there
is a commentator in Britain who
everybody knows in Britain his name is
John
Humphries uh because he runs the morning
breakfast show and so everybody listens
you see he’s very well known and in the
Daily Mail a few years years ago he was
on record as saying that uh the young
people of today are ruining the English
language they are doing to English what
the vandals and Goths did to society all
those hundred centuries ago raping and
pillaging the English language
destroying it with your
abbreviations your horrible
abbreviations don’t you know what you’re
doing kind of
attitude again total rubbish
why because text messaging and likewise
all the other internet activities was
never never full of
abbreviations when you actually do
collect as linguists do a collection of
text messages and you look at them and
you count up all the abbreviations that
are in those text messages you find that
the average number of abbreviations in a
text is only
10% in other words 90% or so of the
English you know I mean it’s the or at
least your local dialect maybe but not a
brand new language full of crazy
abbreviations that nobody has ever seen