Technology, Lexicon, Professionalism

[Chad Nilep]

Tony McEnery has addressed the BBC piece via Mark Liberman's blog, Language Log.
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003926.html

I gather two things from reading this response and a linked press release from
Lancaster University, McEnery's institution.

(1) I was wrong: Tesco is donating, not selling, its products to British
schools.

(2) The research seems to have nothing to do with the influences of technology
on verbal development per se (though the data did include blogs). According to
the Lancaster release, "[T]eenagers are still developing their oral
communication skills, underlining the need to ensure that they are given
appropriate support by schools in doing so."

The "overuse of technologies such as computer games and MP3 players" bit seems
to appear first in the BBC piece, where it is attributed to McEnery.

-Chad

P.S. Liberman seems particularly interested in the claim that "the top 20 words
used...account for around a third of all words." As Liberman point out, this is
not a deficiency, but average for English.

Quoting Chad Nilep <nilep at colorado.edu>:

> This sounds a bit suspicious to me. Notice the last paragraph:
>
> "Tesco, which commissioned the report, said it was responding by launching a
> scheme which allows all UK comprehensive schools to interact and communicate
> with other schools around the country using its internet phone technology."
>
> The BBC seems to be playing into a scheme to sell a product. Tesco appears,
> from
> their web page, to be a retailer and communications company.
>
> The Ars Technica piece doesn't mention Tesco, but they appear to be reporting
> on
> the BBC report, not on McEnery's study, whatever it may have said.
>
> This could perhaps be noted in any blog piece on the subject.
>
> -Chad Nilep
>
> Quoting Alexandre Enkerli <enkerli at gmail.com>:
>
> > Fellow LAers,
> >
> > A very bloggable report about negative influences of technology on lexical
> > development, leading to issues with younger people on the job market.
> > http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/6173441.stm
> > http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20061215-8431.html?tag=nl.e777
> >
> > New forms of reductionist linguistic determinism?
> >
> > --
> > Alexandre
> > http://enkerli.wordpress.com/