Language students know, or will do, the significance of the impact of technology on language use. Is there anything about this post that might be influenced by the fact that I am keying it into my mobile phone while lying on my bed, logged on to a mobile website by GPRS?
Anyhow, I really think you should all take advantage of the add comment feature here to introduce yourself. Don’t worry: your email address will not be available to the world. Nothing bad will happen as a result of your posting to this blog. On the contrary, you will gain a wealth of e-karma, courtesy of your online A-level English guru.
That’s me, by the way.
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Hi sir, thought i’d leave a comment because someone has to be the first! Please ignore the email address as it is very old and made up by my sister!
Charlotte
Hi sir, thought i’d leave a comment because someone has to be the first! Please ignore the fact that my email address is silly as it is very old and made up by my sister 🙂 !
Charlotte
I’m not sure why it sent twice :S
I got all excited when I saw there were three comments. Shame all three of them are from you, but it’s lovely to have you aboard, Charlotte. Using my omnipotent blogmeister powers, I could have got rid of the spurious ones , but I’ve decided to leave them there as authentic artifacts of the vagaries of online communication. I will try and find some kind of prize to mark the occasion of you making the very first post on this blog other than mine. How do you prefer your prizes: edible or legible?
Hiya sir, you asked for a comment so here is mine 😀
Hey sir, just thought I’d do my homework and leave a comment… so here it is 😀
i would say edible hehe! sorry i had you thinking you had three seperate comments, my IT skills are not what they perhaps should be!
Charlotte
Right, Charlotte, I’ll get on to my witchetty grub supplier right away…
By the way, there have been no takers on the substantive issue in the main post above. Even when I’m keying text on a mobile, I can’t help but take care over spelling, punctuation and capitalization, even if it takes much longer than would otherwise be the case, so there’s not much about that post that is characteristic of txt msg lingo. There is, however one aspect of the graphology (as a marker of discourse structure) that is uncharacteristic of my writing.
Compare the original post with this one, and see if you can spot what it is.
I prefer not to abbreviate in text messages, it annoys me how people shorten the text so much that when I reply I have to ask “what does that mean?” but I think people abbreviate because otherwise you have to spend 20p because you have written two pages instead of abbreviating and spending 10p on one. I don’t have this problem because i get free texts 😀
also…….in your original post you didn’t leave a line between you paragraphs and on this one you have! did i get it right?
Correct, Tonia. Going into the ‘insert symbol’ menu and scrolling down to the the little ‘return’ arrow twice in a row is too much of a pain even for me.
Man, you’re accruing brownie-points at a rate of knots here (to mix a couple of metaphors). And what about ‘man’ as a generic discourse marker? Evidence of inherent sexism in language? (I could equally have started ‘Oh boy’, too.)
i was looking at the original piece of text for ages and did not spot that!
i always shrtn my txts nd eml nd lots of other thngs but i abbreviate nt cos im a cheap skate bt cos its quicker i thnk tht txts r ment 2 b shrt nd quick nt pieces of specific nd grammatically correct eng o well ttfn
yr rit v crs kat im just old fashnd
it takes me ages to figure out stupid little text bits and yeah by all means shorten, but to get rid of your entire word completely? it just baffles me and defeats the object of being able to communicate with someone because you spend your entire time trying to figure out what they’re saying!
Hello Sir! Just commenting on your blog, better late than never! One question. Why did you add the ‘that’s me by the way’ at the end of your blog? It was very clear that you were our ‘english A-level guru’ so why did you add the extra five words. Your attempt at humour works even without that additional phrase. Sorry for being picky, just curious. Thanks!
(By the way, nice to see I am the first boy who has commented, if I am not mistaken)
Yes, Paul, I suppose it was a bit obvious. Maybe I was underestimating the acuity of my audience 😉 Are you quite sure it’s five extra words, not six, though? And if you were trying to compliment me about the humour, doesn’t your use of the word ‘attempt’ undermine that, somewhat? Your post is fascinating when looked at using the framework of pragmatics. Consider, for example, the significance of the words ‘just’ and ‘even, the phrase ‘by the way’ and the subordinate clause, ‘if I am not mistaken’. However, I’m a bit too tired to start dissecting it in any more detail now, but look at the ‘Universal Teacher’ site guide to pragmatics, and the sections on ‘face’ and ‘politeness’
i dont bother with capital letters or basic punctuation in my texts-they take too long and you can still understand what it says 🙂 i think abbreviating some words like ‘gr8’ and ‘h8’etc are ok because they look exactly as you would pronounce them. other, longer words are just confusing when abbreviated! 😀