0:00:00.743,0:00:03.605 We always hear that texting is a scourge. 0:00:03.605,0:00:08.445 The idea is that texting spells the decline and fall 0:00:08.445,0:00:11.945 of any kind of serious literacy, or at least writing ability, 0:00:11.945,0:00:14.588 among young people in the United States 0:00:14.588,0:00:16.889 and now the whole world today. 0:00:16.889,0:00:20.393 The fact of the matter is that it just isn't true, 0:00:20.393,0:00:22.896 and it's easy to think that it is true, 0:00:22.896,0:00:24.795 but in order to see it in another way, 0:00:24.795,0:00:28.464 in order to see that actually texting is a miraculous thing, 0:00:28.464,0:00:31.029 not just energetic, but a miraculous thing, 0:00:31.029,0:00:32.776 a kind of emergent complexity 0:00:32.776,0:00:35.237 that we're seeing happening right now, 0:00:35.237,0:00:37.543 we have to pull the camera back for a bit 0:00:37.543,0:00:40.961 and look at what language really is, 0:00:40.961,0:00:43.034 in which case, one thing that we see 0:00:43.034,0:00:47.658 is that texting is not writing at all. 0:00:47.658,0:00:49.480 What do I mean by that? 0:00:49.480,0:00:52.036 Basically, if we think about language, 0:00:52.036,0:00:55.837 language has existed for perhaps 150,000 years, 0:00:55.837,0:00:57.974 at least 80,000 years, 0:00:57.974,0:01:02.125 and what it arose as is speech. People talked. 0:01:02.125,0:01:05.149 That's what we're probably genetically specified for. 0:01:05.149,0:01:07.340 That's how we use language most. 0:01:07.340,0:01:10.822 Writing is something that came along much later, 0:01:10.822,0:01:12.878 and as we saw in the last talk, 0:01:12.878,0:01:15.546 there's a little bit of controversy as to exactly when that happened, 0:01:15.546,0:01:17.862 but according to traditional estimates, 0:01:17.862,0:01:21.384 if humanity had existed for 24 hours, 0:01:21.384,0:01:26.575 then writing only came along at about 11:07 p.m. 0:01:26.575,0:01:30.220 That's how much of a latterly thing writing is. 0:01:30.220,0:01:33.608 So first there's speech, and then writing comes along 0:01:33.608,0:01:35.370 as a kind of artifice. 0:01:35.370,0:01:39.376 Now don't get me wrong, writing has certain advantages. 0:01:39.376,0:01:41.959 When you write, because it's a conscious process, 0:01:41.959,0:01:44.097 because you can look backwards, 0:01:44.097,0:01:46.927 you can do things with language that are much less likely 0:01:46.927,0:01:49.391 if you're just talking. 0:01:49.391,0:01:53.292 For example, imagine a passage from Edward Gibbon's 0:01:53.292,0:01:57.098 "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire:" 0:01:57.098,0:02:00.349 "The whole engagement lasted above twelve hours, 0:02:00.349,0:02:02.651 till the graduate retreat of the Persians was changed 0:02:02.651,0:02:05.424 into a disorderly flight, of which the shameful example 0:02:05.424,0:02:08.011 was given by the principal leaders and the Surenas himself." 0:02:08.011,0:02:12.330 That's beautiful, but let's face it, nobody talks that way. 0:02:12.330,0:02:16.566 Or at least, they shouldn't if they're interested 0:02:16.566,0:02:19.080 in reproducing. That -- 0:02:19.080,0:02:21.799 (Laughter) 0:02:21.799,0:02:24.777 is not the way any human being speaks casually. 0:02:24.777,0:02:27.362 Casual speech is something quite different. 0:02:27.362,0:02:29.218 Linguists have actually shown 0:02:29.218,0:02:31.929 that when we're speaking casually in an unmonitored way, 0:02:31.929,0:02:34.607 we tend to speak in word packets of maybe 0:02:34.607,0:02:36.417 seven to 10 words. 0:02:36.417,0:02:39.096 You'll notice this if you ever have occasion to record 0:02:39.096,0:02:42.089 yourself or a group of people talking. 0:02:42.089,0:02:43.544 That's what speech is like. 0:02:43.544,0:02:47.849 Speech is much looser. It's much more telegraphic. 0:02:47.849,0:02:51.539 It's much less reflective -- very different from writing. 0:02:51.539,0:02:54.475 So we naturally tend to think, because we see language 0:02:54.475,0:02:56.917 written so often, that that's what language is, 0:02:56.917,0:03:00.885 but actually what language is, is speech. They are two things. 0:03:00.885,0:03:04.139 Now of course, as history has gone by, 0:03:04.139,0:03:06.930 it's been natural for there to be a certain amount of bleed 0:03:06.930,0:03:09.944 between speech and writing. 0:03:09.944,0:03:14.767 So, for example, in a distant era now, 0:03:14.767,0:03:17.269 it was common when one gave a speech 0:03:17.269,0:03:20.386 to basically talk like writing. 0:03:20.386,0:03:22.736 So I mean the kind of speech that you see someone giving 0:03:22.736,0:03:25.269 in an old movie where they clear their throat, and they go, 0:03:25.269,0:03:27.802 "Ahem, ladies and gentlemen," and then they speak 0:03:27.802,0:03:31.073 in a certain way which has nothing to do with casual speech. 0:03:31.073,0:03:34.932 It's formal. It uses long sentences like this Gibbon one. 0:03:34.932,0:03:38.894 It's basically talking like you write, and so, for example, 0:03:38.894,0:03:40.889 we're thinking so much these days about Lincoln 0:03:40.889,0:03:43.100 because of the movie. 0:03:43.100,0:03:46.183 The Gettysburg Address was not the main meal of that event. 0:03:46.183,0:03:50.098 For two hours before that, Edward Everett spoke 0:03:50.098,0:03:53.338 on a topic that, frankly, cannot engage us today 0:03:53.338,0:03:54.835 and barely did then. 0:03:54.835,0:03:57.216 The point of it was to listen to him 0:03:57.216,0:03:58.772 speaking like writing. 0:03:58.772,0:04:01.120 Ordinary people stood and listened to that for two hours. 0:04:01.120,0:04:02.553 It was perfectly natural. 0:04:02.553,0:04:05.044 That's what people did then, speaking like writing. 0:04:05.044,0:04:07.510 Well, if you can speak like writing, 0:04:07.510,0:04:11.308 then logically it follows that you might want to also 0:04:11.308,0:04:14.174 sometimes write like you speak. 0:04:14.174,0:04:16.224 The problem was just that in the material, 0:04:16.224,0:04:19.679 mechanical sense, that was harder back in the day 0:04:19.679,0:04:22.986 for the simple reason that materials don't lend themselves to it. 0:04:22.986,0:04:25.006 It's almost impossible to do that with your hand 0:04:25.006,0:04:28.441 except in shorthand, and then communication is limited. 0:04:28.441,0:04:30.957 On a manual typewriter it was very difficult, 0:04:30.957,0:04:33.244 and even when we had electric typewriters, 0:04:33.244,0:04:35.403 or then computer keyboards, the fact is 0:04:35.403,0:04:37.702 that even if you can type easily enough to keep up 0:04:37.702,0:04:40.495 with the pace of speech, more or less, you have to have 0:04:40.495,0:04:42.840 somebody who can receive your message quickly. 0:04:42.840,0:04:46.051 Once you have things in your pocket that can receive that message, 0:04:46.051,0:04:48.655 then you have the conditions that allow 0:04:48.655,0:04:52.166 that we can write like we speak. 0:04:52.166,0:04:55.384 And that's where texting comes in. 0:04:55.384,0:04:59.153 And so, texting is very loose in its structure. 0:04:59.153,0:05:03.450 No one thinks about capital letters or punctuation when one texts, 0:05:03.450,0:05:05.808 but then again, do you think about those things when you talk? 0:05:05.808,0:05:09.481 No, and so therefore why would you when you were texting? 0:05:09.481,0:05:12.610 What texting is, despite the fact that it involves 0:05:12.610,0:05:15.436 the brute mechanics of something that we call writing, 0:05:15.436,0:05:18.734 is fingered speech. That's what texting is. 0:05:18.734,0:05:22.199 Now we can write the way we talk. 0:05:22.199,0:05:24.978 And it's a very interesting thing, but nevertheless 0:05:24.978,0:05:29.834 easy to think that still it represents some sort of decline. 0:05:29.834,0:05:33.118 We see this general bagginess of the structure, 0:05:33.118,0:05:36.467 the lack of concern with rules and the way that we're used to 0:05:36.467,0:05:38.739 learning on the blackboard, and so we think 0:05:38.739,0:05:41.978 that something has gone wrong. 0:05:41.978,0:05:44.941 It's a very natural sense. 0:05:44.941,0:05:48.975 But the fact of the matter is that what is going on 0:05:48.975,0:05:52.546 is a kind of emergent complexity. 0:05:52.546,0:05:55.302 That's what we're seeing in this fingered speech. 0:05:55.302,0:05:58.288 And in order to understand it, what we want to see 0:05:58.288,0:06:03.033 is the way, in this new kind of language, 0:06:03.033,0:06:06.609 there is new structure coming up. 0:06:06.609,0:06:12.332 And so, for example, there is in texting a convention, 0:06:12.332,0:06:15.254 which is LOL. 0:06:15.254,0:06:17.998 Now LOL, we generally think of 0:06:17.998,0:06:20.462 as meaning "laughing out loud." 0:06:20.462,0:06:22.755 And of course, theoretically, it does, 0:06:22.755,0:06:25.184 and if you look at older texts, then people used it 0:06:25.184,0:06:27.704 to actually indicate laughing out loud. 0:06:27.704,0:06:31.947 But if you text now, or if you are someone who 0:06:31.947,0:06:35.244 is aware of the substrate of texting the way it's become, 0:06:35.244,0:06:36.934 you'll notice that LOL 0:06:36.934,0:06:39.004 does not mean laughing out loud anymore. 0:06:39.004,0:06:42.794 It's evolved into something that is much subtler. 0:06:42.794,0:06:46.241 This is an actual text that was done 0:06:46.241,0:06:50.173 by a non-male person of about 20 years old 0:06:50.173,0:06:51.668 not too long ago. 0:06:51.668,0:06:54.620 "I love the font you're using, btw." 0:06:54.620,0:06:58.382 Julie: "lol thanks gmail is being slow right now" 0:06:58.382,0:07:00.124 Now if you think about it, that's not funny. 0:07:00.124,0:07:03.024 No one's laughing. (Laughter) 0:07:03.024,0:07:04.994 And yet, there it is, so you assume 0:07:04.994,0:07:06.351 there's been some kind of hiccup. 0:07:06.351,0:07:08.185 Then Susan says "lol, I know," 0:07:08.185,0:07:10.482 again more guffawing than we're used to 0:07:10.482,0:07:13.712 when you're talking about these inconveniences. 0:07:13.712,0:07:16.456 So Julie says, "I just sent you an email." 0:07:16.456,0:07:18.007 Susan: "lol, I see it." 0:07:18.007,0:07:21.625 Very funny people, if that's what LOL means. 0:07:21.625,0:07:23.753 This Julie says, "So what's up?" 0:07:23.753,0:07:26.395 Susan: "lol, I have to write a 10 page paper." 0:07:26.395,0:07:28.709 She's not amused. Let's think about it. 0:07:28.709,0:07:31.390 LOL is being used in a very particular way. 0:07:31.390,0:07:35.081 It's a marker of empathy. It's a marker of accommodation. 0:07:35.081,0:07:38.330 We linguists call things like that pragmatic particles. 0:07:38.330,0:07:42.169 Any spoken language that's used by real people has them. 0:07:42.169,0:07:43.945 If you happen to speak Japanese, think about 0:07:43.945,0:07:47.303 that little word "ne" that you use at the end of a lot of sentences. 0:07:47.303,0:07:49.648 If you listen to the way black youth today speak, 0:07:49.648,0:07:51.434 think about the use of the word "yo." 0:07:51.434,0:07:53.380 Whole dissertations could be written about it, 0:07:53.380,0:07:55.654 and probably are being written about it. 0:07:55.654,0:07:59.448 A pragmatic particle, that's what LOL has gradually become. 0:07:59.448,0:08:03.497 It's a way of using the language between actual people. 0:08:03.497,0:08:06.736 Another example is "slash." 0:08:06.736,0:08:09.504 Now, we can use slash in the way that we're used to, 0:08:09.504,0:08:11.144 along the lines of, "We're going to have 0:08:11.144,0:08:14.626 a party-slash-networking session." 0:08:14.626,0:08:16.720 That's kind of like what we're at. 0:08:16.720,0:08:20.259 Slash is used in a very different way 0:08:20.259,0:08:23.217 in texting among young people today. 0:08:23.217,0:08:25.070 It's used to change the scene. 0:08:25.070,0:08:28.019 So for example, this Sally person says, 0:08:28.019,0:08:29.824 "So I need to find people to chill with" 0:08:29.824,0:08:31.343 and Jake says, "Haha" -- 0:08:31.343,0:08:34.231 you could write a dissertation about "Haha" too, but we don't have time for that — 0:08:34.231,0:08:36.720 "Haha so you're going by yourself? Why?" 0:08:36.720,0:08:39.330 Sally: "For this summer program at NYU." 0:08:39.330,0:08:42.224 Jake: "Haha. Slash I'm watching this video with suns players 0:08:42.224,0:08:44.021 trying to shoot with one eye." 0:08:44.021,0:08:45.296 The slash is interesting. 0:08:45.296,0:08:48.452 I don't really even know what Jake is talking about after that, 0:08:48.452,0:08:53.193 but you notice that he's changing the topic. 0:08:53.193,0:08:55.011 Now that seems kind of mundane, 0:08:55.011,0:08:56.453 but think about how in real life, 0:08:56.453,0:08:59.111 if we're having a conversation and we want to change the topic, 0:08:59.111,0:09:00.723 there are ways of doing it gracefully. 0:09:00.723,0:09:02.442 You don't just zip right into it. 0:09:02.442,0:09:06.637 You'll pat your thighs and look wistfully off into the distance, 0:09:06.637,0:09:10.747 or you'll say something like, "Hmm, makes you think --" 0:09:10.747,0:09:13.107 when it really didn't, but what you're really -- 0:09:13.107,0:09:15.342 (Laughter) — 0:09:15.342,0:09:18.050 what you're really trying to do is change the topic. 0:09:18.050,0:09:19.977 You can't do that while you're texting, 0:09:19.977,0:09:23.708 and so ways are developing of doing it within this medium. 0:09:23.708,0:09:25.960 All spoken languages have what a linguist calls 0:09:25.960,0:09:29.353 a new information marker -- or two, or three. 0:09:29.353,0:09:33.647 Texting has developed one from this slash. 0:09:33.647,0:09:36.632 So we have a whole battery of new constructions 0:09:36.632,0:09:39.219 that are developing, and yet it's easy to think, 0:09:39.219,0:09:41.666 well, something is still wrong. 0:09:41.666,0:09:45.441 There's a lack of structure of some sort. 0:09:45.441,0:09:47.347 It's not as sophisticated 0:09:47.347,0:09:49.553 as the language of The Wall Street Journal. 0:09:49.553,0:09:51.327 Well, the fact of the matter is, 0:09:51.327,0:09:53.778 look at this person in 1956, 0:09:53.778,0:09:56.060 and this is when texting doesn't exist, 0:09:56.060,0:09:57.895 "I Love Lucy" is still on the air. 0:09:57.895,0:10:01.658 "Many do not know the alphabet or multiplication table, 0:10:01.658,0:10:02.995 cannot write grammatically -- " 0:10:02.995,0:10:05.204 We've heard that sort of thing before, 0:10:05.204,0:10:09.195 not just in 1956. 1917, Connecticut schoolteacher. 0:10:09.195,0:10:11.896 1917. This is the time when we all assume 0:10:11.896,0:10:15.147 that everything somehow in terms of writing was perfect 0:10:15.147,0:10:17.565 because the people on "Downton Abbey" are articulate, 0:10:17.565,0:10:18.776 or something like that. 0:10:18.776,0:10:21.720 So, "From every college in the country goes up the cry, 0:10:21.720,0:10:24.353 'Our freshmen can't spell, can't punctuate.'" 0:10:24.353,0:10:26.761 And so on. You can go even further back than this. 0:10:26.761,0:10:29.945 It's the President of Harvard. It's 1871. 0:10:29.945,0:10:32.487 There's no electricity. People have three names. 0:10:32.487,0:10:34.912 "Bad spelling, 0:10:34.912,0:10:38.180 incorrectness as well as inelegance of expression in writing." 0:10:38.180,0:10:40.329 And he's talking about people who are otherwise 0:10:40.329,0:10:42.220 well prepared for college studies. 0:10:42.220,0:10:44.066 You can go even further back. 0:10:44.066,0:10:47.919 1841, some long-lost superintendent of schools is upset 0:10:47.919,0:10:51.096 because of what he has for a long time "noted with regret 0:10:51.096,0:10:54.605 the almost entire neglect of the original" blah blah blah blah blah. 0:10:54.605,0:10:59.893 Or you can go all the way back to 63 A.D. -- (Laughter) -- 0:10:59.893,0:11:02.274 and there's this poor man who doesn't like the way 0:11:02.274,0:11:03.495 people are speaking Latin. 0:11:03.495,0:11:06.651 As it happens, he was writing about what had become French. 0:11:06.651,0:11:13.053 And so, there are always — (Laughter) (Applause) — 0:11:13.053,0:11:15.224 there are always people worrying about these things 0:11:15.224,0:11:18.497 and the planet somehow seems to keep spinning. 0:11:18.497,0:11:23.144 And so, the way I'm thinking of texting these days is 0:11:23.144,0:11:26.724 that what we're seeing is a whole new way of writing 0:11:26.724,0:11:28.350 that young people are developing, 0:11:28.350,0:11:32.110 which they're using alongside their ordinary writing skills, 0:11:32.110,0:11:35.277 and that means that they're able to do two things. 0:11:35.277,0:11:38.174 Increasing evidence is that being bilingual 0:11:38.174,0:11:40.407 is cognitively beneficial. 0:11:40.407,0:11:42.562 That's also true of being bidialectal. 0:11:42.562,0:11:45.652 That's certainly true of being bidialectal in terms of your writing. 0:11:45.652,0:11:50.570 And so texting actually is evidence of a balancing act 0:11:50.570,0:11:53.872 that young people are using today, not consciously, of course, 0:11:53.872,0:11:57.559 but it's an expansion of their linguistic repertoire. 0:11:57.559,0:11:58.788 It's very simple. 0:11:58.788,0:12:02.498 If somebody from 1973 looked at 0:12:02.498,0:12:06.604 what was on a dormitory message board in 1993, 0:12:06.604,0:12:08.437 the slang would have changed a little bit 0:12:08.437,0:12:10.255 since the era of "Love Story," 0:12:10.255,0:12:13.568 but they would understand what was on that message board. 0:12:13.568,0:12:16.292 Take that person from 1993 -- not that long ago, 0:12:16.292,0:12:19.550 this is "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure" -- those people. 0:12:19.550,0:12:21.919 Take those people and they read 0:12:21.919,0:12:24.819 a very typical text written by a 20-year-old today. 0:12:24.819,0:12:27.710 Often they would have no idea what half of it meant 0:12:27.710,0:12:31.638 because a whole new language has developed 0:12:31.638,0:12:33.932 among our young people doing something as mundane 0:12:33.932,0:12:36.203 as what it looks like to us when they're batting around 0:12:36.203,0:12:37.878 on their little devices. 0:12:37.878,0:12:41.539 So in closing, if I could go into the future, 0:12:41.539,0:12:45.914 if I could go into 2033, 0:12:45.914,0:12:48.827 the first thing I would ask is whether David Simon 0:12:48.827,0:12:52.720 had done a sequel to "The Wire." I would want to know. 0:12:52.720,0:12:55.703 And — I really would ask that — 0:12:55.703,0:12:58.793 and then I'd want to know actually what was going on on "Downton Abbey." 0:12:58.793,0:13:00.302 That'd be the second thing. 0:13:00.302,0:13:02.838 And then the third thing would be, 0:13:02.838,0:13:06.029 please show me a sheaf of texts 0:13:06.029,0:13:07.986 written by 16-year-old girls, 0:13:07.986,0:13:10.440 because I would want to know where this language 0:13:10.440,0:13:12.395 had developed since our times, 0:13:12.395,0:13:16.028 and ideally I would then send them back to you and me now 0:13:16.028,0:13:18.548 so we could examine this linguistic miracle 0:13:18.548,0:13:20.898 happening right under our noses. 0:13:20.898,0:13:22.414 Thank you very much. 0:13:22.414,0:13:27.582 (Applause) 0:13:27.582,0:13:31.189 Thank you. (Applause)