A New Genre, A New Language

For centuries, shorthand writing has been a form of language used to jot quick notes. Many times journalists can be found using this form of language. Why do I bring up shorthand? Because as the web and technology further developed, we also developed our own version of shorthand writing. Transforming phrases into series of letters. We went from complete sentences to a short hand language of texting.

Something that was always buzzing in the media is that if we are using this new language in our social writing that it will start to enter our academic writing. So with that said, how many of you have used an LOL or TTYL in a paper. That's what I thought, none of you. We have discussed this phenomena in class as well. There is social writing and academic writing, both of which we as students can differentiate from.

I like to think of it as when I was in middle school and we all learned how to speak in Pig Latin. Did we speak that when we were in classes to our teachers, no. To each other though we spoke it all of the time. We knew when that language was appropriate and not. I find that today kids are not given the slack sometimes for how competent they (we) are. We are considered many times to be the dumbest generation that lacks all respect. It is statements like these that discourage.

My brother is working on a paper for his U.S. History class for the VFW writing competition. The topic this year is "Why I’m Optimistic About our Nation’s Future." My brother is 16-years-old. He has a lot of future ahead of him. Something he cited in his paper is that we are deemed to be one of the worst generations to have happened. How can we still have faith in ourselves when this is being crammed down our throats? We are recognized for our failures, and when we succeed everyone gets a ribbon.

So where is the credit for being individualistic? We have developed this short hand for communication but it is cut at the knees because it is believed that it will be misused. Our society needs to step back and see what we can do before assuming what we will do.