Is Technology Changing the Way We Communicate?

In this and the next chapter, I will discuss to what extent technology is changing the way we speak, read, and write. The present chapter takes the form of a debate or discussion where we look at different positions on the issue. This issue is taken up early on in the book because its consequences come up again and again throughout the book, as it is one of the main themes of the book. In chapter three I do a particular study of reader preferences vis-à-vis electronic and e-books and their traditional hard copy counterparts. The chapter is structured as follows. In the first part, I outline and define more clearly the aims, objectives and theoretical positions that constitute the discussion in the chapter. Following this I then take up the question whether there is a causal relation between new forms of language and new technologies, and discusses whether the internet in particular and other ICT tools are changing forms and uses of language. After that I then provide a list of the most frequent shortenings as an example of the new forms of linguistic expressions that emerge through the use of the internet, championed mostly by young people. The chapter concludes with a summary of the issues discussed in it.

New Forms of Reading and Writing

“This is the story of Rita, who carries a vital piece of information on which depends the future of India. It is written by RoGue, but controlled by you. The author keeps landing her in trouble and only you can save her. After each chapter, predict what RoGue’s going to do next and upset his plans. Suggest an alternate course for the story, via comments, and fight the author. Download Chapters I-XV and start playing.” The above quotation is an online introduction to a novel titled Cloakroom at the following website: http://cloakroom.blogspot.com/2004/11/cloakroom-chapter-11. html (retrieved, July 7, 2008). Cloakroom is widely regarded as India’s first cell phone novel or mobile phone novel, a kind of writing that seems to have been largely ignored by the established literary world but that has been gaining widespread popularity among the youth, especially young users of the internet in places like Japan, China, and India.

Insights from an MSN Corpus

In this chapter I look closely at one type of Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC), Microsoft Network (MSN) instant messaging. MSN instant communication is quite popular among the youth in most parts of the world. In Hong Kong, it has fast replaced I-seek-you (ICQ) and QQ (in mainland China) as one of the primary instant communication tools among the youth. In this chapter I will be looking particularly at the linguistic features of this kind of communication. More specifically, Hong Kong being a trilingual and biliterate society, one would want to see how participants juggle these languages within the medium of the MSN instant messaging and what linguistic features are thus produced. As is usual with most chapters our observations are based on a case study. So first I present this study in the next section. A distinctive feature of this chapter from some others is that I present and describe a comprehensive corpus as an example of an actual CMC exchanges. This will give us insights into the actual communication sessions of young people who use MSN in Hong Kong.

Evaluating Learning Technologies

In this penultimate chapter of the book, I will continue with my discussion of how we can take advantage these youth interests and practices with ICTs for enhancing learning and teaching by actually evolving ways to evaluate these communication and learning environments. As with most chapters in the book, I focus on a case study as a way to give an in-depth study to the subject matter. In this case, interactivity is the subject matter. Interactivity was discussed at length in the previous chapter, leading the creation of a new learning theory, the Conversational Learning Theory, and a new leaning model, the Conversational Learning Community. Rather than explaining the concept and the learning theory and model again in this chapter, I refer the reader back to the previous chapter. Once the basic tenets of these concepts are grasped the reader can now begin to read the discussion about how to increase interactivity in learning environments.

Educational Technologies (WebCT)

In this chapter, I will discuss how to take advantage of youth interests in these new technology that have been discussed at length in previous chapters by showing how we can turn them into learning and pedagogical technologies, leading to a model for language learning using these media – the Conversational Learning Community. Two main concepts, constructivism (Bodomo 2005b, 2007) and interactivity (Bodomo 2006, 2008, will be highlighted as important concepts in the area of using learning technologies to create good pedagical environments for teaching issues of linguistics and literacy, and for that matter any other subject. The first study is on constructivism while the second part deals with interactivity.

The Grammar of Mobile Phone Written Language

In the last chapter, I concentrated mainly on mobile phone voice communication. In this chapter, I will focus on mobile phone text communication. Mobile phone texting or communication through short message service (SMS) started slowly, as we saw in chapter 6, but has quickly emerged as a frequent daily linguistic, literacy or general communicative practice in which two or more people exchange messages by coding and decoding texts received and sent from their cell phones. Mobile phone texting is almost now as pervasive and as ubiquitous as mobile phone voice communication, if not more among some segments of users like young people. This communication process can be witnessed in buses, at homes, in offices, in restaurants, out in the woods, on the high seas, and even in the air! Hong Kong’s main English language newspaper, the South China Morning Post (SCMP) edition of April 11, 2004 indicates that as huge a volume of 200 million SMS messages are exchanged monthly. SMS has become a multi-million dollar business for service providers.

TeLCU

In line with our theme of investigating the relationship between new communications technology and the way we process (i.e. speak, read, and write) natural language, in chapter 2 I outlined different views about language forms and language use in the context of new technologies, and in chapter 3, I looked at new ways of reading and accessing reading materials with the advent of new computer-mediated communication platforms that promote the production of e-materials. We found in chapter 2 that there were two main views about the relationship between CMC technology and language. One was that CMC technologies cannot actually change language and that whatever transformations we observe are part of a larger social transformation; indeed that technology itself is part of social transformation. The second view was that technology actually has a causal effect on language structures and use, leading to the idea that new forms of language and new ways of using and processing language arise from the introduction of new communications technologies.

Insights from Mobile Phone Voice Communication

Mobile phone communication as an instance of computer-mediated communication (CMC) has not received as much attention as email and others. Indeed, it may be argued that it is not a typical instance of CMC as some people do not consider the mobile phone a computer and also because there is hardly any Internet Protocol (IP) address involved in sending SMS, one might claim. However, as has been mentioned by writers like Prensky (2004) the mobile phone has reached such sophistication that it is indeed more powerful than some computers in terms of processing power, and indeed internet facilities are easily incorporated into mobile phones. While many have studied email and its effects on writing and the school curriculum, among other issues (e.g. Abdullah 1998, 2003, Akers-Jordan 2002, Baron 2001, Crystal 2001, Healey 2007, etc), little has been done on the mobile phone until now (but see Bodomo 2003, 2007, Bodomo and Lee 2002, Thurlow 2003 and Prensky 2004). This chapter and the next focus particularly on the use of mobile phones through case studies based on reports of completed research projects. There are, at least, two aspects of mobile phone communication, voice mobile phone communication and text messaging. Chapter 6 focuses mainly on voice mobile phone communication aspects while chapter 7 dwells on mobile phone texting, especially its grammatical aspects.

New Languages, New Literacies and the School Curriculum

We have in previous chapters undertaken a quite detailed analysis of the features of language and literacy practices within the medium of communication technologies, including email, ICQ, MSN, mobile phone speech, and mobile phone texting. This has given us the opportunity to examine carefully new or peculiar linguistic structures, and new ways of communicating and expressing oneself within these new technological environments.

Definitions and Basic Conceptual Notions

Given the multi- and inter-disciplinary nature of computer-mediated communication in an era that is often referred to as the Information Age or even the Knowledge Society, it is necessary to carefully delineate the key terms and concepts of this complex area of study in this first chapter. In this age and society we constantly witness a massive explosion of new types and styles of communications gadgets such as computers of all types (including desktops and laptops), PDAs, mobile phones, Blackberries, etc; and media like the internet, emails, ICQ, chat, text messaging and others. We can expect that new ones will be invented. All these types and styles of communication gadgets lead to new terms and concepts that can potentially have differing interpretations from context to context.