Researchers: IM definitely infectious, but associated linguistic damage short-lived, haha

[Dennis Baron]

There's a new post on the Web of Language --

Researchers: IM definitely infectious, but associated linguistic  
damage short-lived, haha

James H. Billington, the Librarian of Congress, recently charged that  
internet chat and cell phone text messaging were causing “the slow  
destruction of the basic unit of human thought — the sentence.”

Despite the fact that neuroscientists are nowhere near isolating the  
basic unit of human thought, and linguists can’t agree on a  
definition of a sentence, Billington wants to place a Librarian  
General’s warning on all cell phones that texting kills thought.

But although you’ll have to pry their cell phones from their cold,  
dead hands before teenagers will give up messaging, their brains are  
in no danger from the controversial symptoms frequently associated  
with this popular activity: lol, brb, ttfn, gtg, lmao, and the use of  
u for you.

Writing in the latest issue of American Speech, two researchers at  
the University of Toronto have found that high-school-aged users of  
IM quickly abandon many of the stereotypical abbreviations associated  
with the activity, and that while some of them occasionally inject an  
“OMG, OMG,” into their conversation, such alphabetisms inflict no  
more linguistic damage than Ben Bernanke mentioning “NGO’s” at a  
meeting of the Fed or David Petraeus discussing the effects of  
“IED’s” before a Congressional hearing. OK, maybe IED’s aren't the  
best example....

Read the rest at the Web of Language

Dennis B.


Dennis Baron
Professor of English and Linguistics
Department of English
University of Illinois
608 S. Wright St.
Urbana, IL 61801

office: 217-244-0568
fax: 217-333-4321

www.uiuc.edu/goto/debaron

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www.uiuc.edu/goto/weboflanguage

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