Technology and Language Flashcards
When was the printing press introduced in Britain?
Introduced in Britain in 1476- brought around huge changes in the way people communicated.
Explain more about the Printing Press.
Allowed a wider audience access to the written word and so literacy became more widespread, education developed (for middle class), and the process of standardisation began. SE is introduced to a larger range of people.
Look at article notes for more detail on the impact of the printing press.
:)
Mcluhan (1962)-Constraints
Coined the concept of technological determinism. Focused on the role of printing press as a catalyst for social change.
Term ‘typographic man’- identify and beliefs are shaped by the media we use.
Technologies of mass media make sure culture transmission is a social fabric which ultimately changes man’s social behaviour.
Both constraining and enriching.
Focuses on constraints on language.
What quote did Mcluhan say?
‘We shape out tools and they in turn shape us’.
Einsenstein (1979)- Affordances
Constraints Mcluhan- personal and social changes was afforded possibilities by technology and not constrained by them.
She argued that the capacity of printing allowed for the preserve knowledge and fundamentally changed the mentality of early modern readers.
When was the telephone invented and what did it do?
- Communication on a wider scale focusing in spoken English and not written English.
Schlegoff (1986)
Suggested a pattern for opening and closing of conversations.
Summons/answer
Identification
Greeting sequence igniting communication.
‘How are you?’- phatic talk to consolidate connections.
Pre-closing and closing: speech that focuses on the act of talking such as ‘enough for today’ and phatic talk such as ‘it’s been so good to catch up’ and discourse markers such as ‘well’ and ‘anyway’.
Sacks et al. (1974)
Without paralinguistic features, turn taking is triggered through:
Intonation
Questions
Hesitations
Interruptions
Overlapping
Discourse markers such as ‘listen’
Backchanneling
(to overcome the constraints)
Explain texting (SMS).
Initially introduced as SMS for engineers to communicate. People quickly realised the affordance of this technology and adapted to suit their needs. Has produced text speech, that uses features of both written and spoken language.
Asynchronous
There is a delay between utterance and response (email).
Synchronous
At the same time, a face to face conversation would be an example of synchronous discourse.
How does Herring in 2007 define CMC (Computer Medicated Communication)?
Predominately text on a computer.
Crystal (2008)
Identifies the telephony constraints of texting through green limitations of 160 characters, but recognises the affordances.
Abbreviations where letters represent syllables.
Logograms
Punctuation marks and letters adapted to express feelings like :/ :) ;)
Multiword sentences and response sequences minimised to initialisms and acronym: lmk, wtf
Consonants having higher information value than vowels: vowel omission common- pls, wt
Variant orthography- non standard and phonetic- cuz, shud, luv.
What are typical features of SMS?
Phonetic spelling
Emoticons
Taboo language abbreviations (LMAO WTF)
Contractions
Look at Crystal article notes.
:)
When was the internet introduced, when was it established and how many users was there?
1983
1995- internet and WWW established phenomenon
Netscape Navigator- most popular browser at the time- 10 million global users.
By 2000 over 360 million people were established to be online.
What did Crystal say about the internet?
Largest (written text) corpus of E vocabulary that has ever existed- new words or neologisms would traditionally rake approx 10 yrs to become embedded but now words can take days. e.g. unfriend, selfie, filter. Access to bigger vocabulary.
Hamilton and Barton (1998)
Writing is central to digital communications. Hamilton and Barton refer to blogs and other forms of everyday writing as ‘vernacular literacy practices’. Vernacular writing means informal, non-standard writing. These practices provide interesting examples of how people use language. Informal register is used on these sites facilities the mimicking if colloquial language.
Name some neologisms the internet has given to English? (or changed meaning-polysemic)
Selfie, unfollow, noob, derp.
Explain about emails?
Asynchronous.
The language may overlap with that of texting and other forms of digital talk.
Email communication uses features of spoken language, yet is increasingly used in formal settings.
What have the affordances of social networking sites allowed?
Users to create a different identity and share their experiences anonymously with a large number of people.
What have false identities led to?
Criminal activities.
What does Shanyang say about social networking sites?
Researched into anchored relationships and suggested that users use implicit strategies such as photos and wall posts to construct their identity. Only 20% provided explicit descriptions of themselves.
