John Mcwhorter's Txting Is Killing Language

Although writing and speech are commonly both considered as language, both are categorized very differently. In today’s society, writing is much more formal compared to speech. Texting is a mixture of both using informal speech in writing. Texting is often criticized due to the informal nature and improper vocabulary. In John McWhorter’s speech “Txting is killing language. JK!!” the author convinces readers that texting language is not as harmful to society as many would assume while adding his own professional and personal experiences as evidence.

The author of “Txting is killing language. JK!!” John McWhorter begins the passage by giving historical background and facts about speech and writing. The first main topic described is the difference

between speech and language. In the past, speech was similar to writing, but as time grew on speech became much looser and casual. That is where texting evolved. Although texting is a type of writing, it is written in the form of speech. Texting is much more casual without any emphasis on punctuation or capital letters. Texting has always been a controversial issue because a majority of older adults believe it is a nuisance due to the improper writing technique. McWhorter begins to explain that the improper writing technique is the foundation for texting because it is meant to be similar to casual speech.
Being a bilingual speaker has become much more stressed in our society today because it is beneficial.

“Increasing evidence is that being bilingual is cognitively beneficial.” This statement from the author that being bilingual can help individuals in a much deeper aspect other than just knowing two languages. This also applies to being bidialectal. McWhorter continues on to explain that texting would be considered a dialect and many young adults are able to balance this bidialectal aspect unconsciously. McWhorter emphasizes most of his speech on the benefits of texting. These statistics along with McWhorter’s background as a linguistic persuade the reader to follow his claim. Although the statistics are not completely related, they are still relevant and the reader is able to comprehend what the author is trying to prove. McWhorter is also a professional linguistic which gives more reasoning and support behind his statistics, because he is

credible.
Throughout the speech, John McWhorter uses many allusions to references that the reader would be familiar with. A majority of the allusions were used to compare the specific piece to current writing. The author gives the example of Edward Gibbons’s “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”. He stresses how formal the writing style is but in reality that is not casual speech and a majority of society does not talk that way. The main emphasis of this example was to explain to the readers what is casual speech. The author used an example that is very different from casual speech to illustrate what it is not.
Over the generations, speech has evolved greatly.

During the 19th century and earlier, speech was much more formal similar to writing. McWhorter used an allusion with Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg address as an example to indicate the changes of speech over the years. During Lincoln’s era people spoke as they wrote, nowadays speech is much more casual. The author alludes to Abraham Lincoln because he is a very credible and well-known historical figure along with a work that is very familiar to the audience as well. This example persuades the audience well because it is logical to the audience along with the ethical appeal. The author uses historical stories and compares the stories to current scenarios. This allows the audience to analyze the facts and develop ideas

further.
John McWhorter also used a different type of allusion. He used a recurrent allusion, but it was not of the same piece, it was of different pieces of the same topic. McWhorter needed to illustrate the criticism young adults and adolescents have received about their writing over many generations. McWhorter used many prominent allusions from Connecticut schoolteachers in 1917 to the President of Harvard complaining, “Our freshmen can’t spell, can’t punctuate”. This reinforces the statement that young adults are constantly criticized for their writing. The author continues on to state that texting is a whole new way of writing that allows young adults to express themselves without worrying about being criticized.
Along with his own personal expertise, McWhorter was able to use statistics that are in reality to support his claim with statistics. McWhorter uses many allusions to compare casual and formal writing to elaborate on the fact that texting is a form of casual writing. Although many of the readers have seen the writing style of adolescents in today’s generation, they have not compared it to the writing style of the previous generations. As a result McWhorter was able to use this advantage to compare the differences over the large time periods that he used as examples. Linguistics considers speech and writing two very different categories. Speech is a necessity to life and was what humans were made to do, while writing was just an addition. Although the differences in writing and speech are visually seen in today’s era, it was not always this way. Texting has the closest relationship to speech even though it is greatly overlooked. Texting describes our actual everyday speech in which formal writing does not.