PUBLIC discussions about language often include worried questions about the role of technology on "kids these days". After observing the rampant rise of texting, e-chatting and whatnot, the questioner will then wonder whether the youths of today are forgetting how to write properly.
Johnson has seen a lot of moral panic around this concern, but little hard evidence. This is because most people have an innate sense of occasion with language. Just as you would not use the word "ain't" in a job interview, most pupils know not to write about Hamlet's "2B or not 2B" soliloquy in term papers. Johnson suspects that, once again, the kids are going to be all right.
But this is not to say that technology isn't changing the language. One of the most obvious ways is of course the presence of new vocabulary. (Nobody needed to say "e-mail" 30 years ago or "tweet" ten years ago.) Another change is the proliferation of acronyms. These are nothing new, but chat-speak has lead to a proliferation of LOL, WTF, BRB, G2G and so on. Indeed they are being coined and spread faster than ever before.
Such acronyms rise so fast that they can cause confusion. "LOL" originally meant "laughing out loud", but now it merely conveys a quick, world-weary smirk. Acronyms are also making the jump to speech. Sarah Palin, briefly an American political celebrity, used "WTF" on television. This also helps illustrate the acronym's subtle change in meaning, as Ms Palin, a family-values conservative, would never have said "what the fuck" on the air.
But this is hardly the debasement of the language. When words and phrases mutate, they do so in order to fill some niche that needs filling. Often, that change involves taking a formerly powerful word or phrase ("awesome", "oh my god", "what the fuck") and turning it into a wry comment ("If you could stop tapping your foot, that would be awesome"; "My boss was in a weird mood all morning and I was like WTF?" "OMG this cheesecake is amazing.") This is why people actually speak "OMG" and "LOL" out loud, though they are no shorter than the phrases they replace. ("WTF" takes even longer to say than "what the fuck".) As organisms adapt to ecological niches, so do new bits of language.
What are the long-term effects of all this? We might see language littered with ever more phrases born of keyboard brevity. Another intriguing possibility involves the rise and spread of speech-to-text technology. One quirk of these systems is that they require speakers to enunciate punctuation and other typographical manoeuvres. (Eg: "Are you coming tonight question mark; New paragraph on another point, I'd like to mention that...") As speech recognition software improves, we might go from language designed for a tiny keyboards entering our speech (people speaking "OMG" out loud), to language designed for speech recognition software entering our speech (people speaking "new paragraph" out loud to signal a change in topic). Such spoken punctuation would probably find the same special niche function as "WTF" and "LOL" have today. "Wow, I can't wait to read your screenplay exclamation point" would mean something quite different from "Wow, I can't wait to read your screenplay!"—namely, semi-ironic detachment.
Long-term language change is inevitable. People need to convey a wide range of emotions, and they will always find the words to do so, even if formerly powerful words ("awesome") and phrases ("oh my God") are debased. Technology may speed up this process (in ways that can be unsettling to some), but it also allows people (and not just the young) to be inventive and experimental, perhaps more than ever before. Only dead languages never change.