Mesmerized, we listen to eloquence incarnate. At the same time, we KIT using as few characters as possible to discuss Really Important Things. It goes like this: "hey .. sup .. j/cu .. same .. wut r u doing 2nite .. n2m ..cu" According to those in the know, "this new lingo combines writing and speaking to a degree that we've never seen before" and "is really an extension of what teenagers have always done: recreate the language in their own image" (Neil Randall, English professor at the University of Waterloo and author of "Lingo Online: A Report on the Language of the Keyboard Generation"). It is worth noting that Professor Randall capitalizes the word language in the title of his treatise and thus indicates that IM lingo already has matured from a simple way of writing to a language in its own right.
Yet, is it really something we have "never seen before"? Is it really a language in its own right or just a new type of shorthand? Is it new at all?
"Know what I mean. Accept my poor little pres enclos. Ask her no answ. Hold on. Bye for today. Yes, yes, will tell you. Want to. To keep it up. Call me that other." This is how James Joyce verbalized stream of consciousness and interior monologue. Thus, is IM lingo, which also attempts to reduce a message “to its simplest and most efficient terms not exceeding the span of casual vision and congruous with the velocity of modern life” (Joyce), maybe just an “interior dialogue,” a shared stream of consciousness?
Stream of consciousness and interior monologue, of course, do not care about grammar but invent their own lingo and jump from reference to reference. Yet, even though James Joyce introduced all those techniques into fiction, neither his tendency to write without punctuation nor his many neologisms have really caught on – unless, we consider IM lingo an offspring of the Joycian language, an idea which literati would abhor and Joyce shrug of with “K.M.R.I.A.”
Yet, is it really something we have "never seen before"? Is it really a language in its own right or just a new type of shorthand? Is it new at all?
"Know what I mean. Accept my poor little pres enclos. Ask her no answ. Hold on. Bye for today. Yes, yes, will tell you. Want to. To keep it up. Call me that other." This is how James Joyce verbalized stream of consciousness and interior monologue. Thus, is IM lingo, which also attempts to reduce a message “to its simplest and most efficient terms not exceeding the span of casual vision and congruous with the velocity of modern life” (Joyce), maybe just an “interior dialogue,” a shared stream of consciousness?
Stream of consciousness and interior monologue, of course, do not care about grammar but invent their own lingo and jump from reference to reference. Yet, even though James Joyce introduced all those techniques into fiction, neither his tendency to write without punctuation nor his many neologisms have really caught on – unless, we consider IM lingo an offspring of the Joycian language, an idea which literati would abhor and Joyce shrug of with “K.M.R.I.A.”
More about texting and spelling.
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