Laziness or linguistic creativity?
Use of informal grammar and text slang in messaging can lead to accusations of dumbing down and making people lazy. But Ms McCulloch points out that using slang or incorrect spellings actually takes more effort in an age of autocorrect and predictive text. Online messaging also forces people to develop new ways of conveying emotion and meaning without the use of body language or tone of voice. "Going back to the 1500s there have been proposals for an irony punctuation mark but none of those caught on," says Ms McCulloch. "But within a few short decades of being online we've come up with so many ways of conveying irony and other meaning." For example, the acronym "lol" (laugh out loud) can be used sarcastically, as can the upside-down face emoji. "Things like emojis raise awareness of language and can help us understand subtleties in other types of communication, like politics or propaganda," says Ms Darics. "It encourages linguistic creativity."DISCLAIMER: The Views, Comments, Opinions, Contributions and Statements made by Readers and Contributors on this platform do not necessarily represent the views or policy of Multimedia Group Limited.
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