What is the relationship between online text and spoken language?

Texting and speaking in general are like two different languages. Speaking is more formal than texting. While texting or communicating on social media, we use a completely new dialect that involves devices such as slang and emoji’s . The younger generation are now using this language in real life conversations and new words are added to the language which quickly spread to all the youth over the country due to social media and its affect on this generation. Formal speaking is something that you switch too in certain occasions, like if you were talking to your parent or if you had an interview. This is the dialect that is used when it comes to important thing such as jobs and meetings. What we need to understand is that it is essential to know how to speak formally. We don’t need teach them slang because it is something generation after generation will pick as the get older. So the relationship between both online texting and spoken formal language is that you won’t survive socially or financially without knowing how to communicate with two totally opposite types of situations and people.

Nearly everyone that texts people has an idiolect , which is an overused word to fill in blank spaces when you are thinking of an answer. The words that that commonly used as somebody idiolect are words such as ‘like’ and ‘um’. Short word that just get repeated to take away the silence while you think of a reply. Everyone has a idiolect but you rarely notice as it is triggered by the silence and your brain reacts and repeats a certain word over and over again until you are confident in knowing what you are going to say.

In a text conversation of my own I noticed that we didn’t greet each other with the use of ‘hello’ or ‘hi’. We just asked the question and waited for the response. The answer given didn’t end the conversation it sprang a new topic of the the conversation. With my conversations it either end with ‘kl’ (cool).

Texting can introduce new vocabulary to someone. I’ve have witnessed the use of language due to the overall words the me and other people use. For example I know some that is from Weymouth and had never heard of the words such as ‘beg’ which seemed weird to me at first because it a world I hear all the time, because he hears me use it in different contexts it has got to the stage he is capable of using the word in the right context. So me speaking and using a word that was never said where he is from to were he can saying knowing what it means when he says it in a conversation.

1 Comment

  1. You have written a detailed introduction that covers some excellent ground when you consider the purpose of this essay.

    It is now time to write the real meat of your essay and focus on the analysis from your social media/text message conversations.

    You have identified certain features that you use in your social media interactions but you must now spend more time focussing on the purpose of these devices or what they might mean.

    What other patterns are there (you have done this part, mainly) and explore what these patterns might mean.

    As a form of communication – how do the different mediums (text and physical) influence one another (or not)?

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