Writing, according to an article in Times Magazine titled “Is Texting Killing the English Language” by John McWhorter, is an art that has been around for about 5,500 years. Since writing is deliberate and takes more time to compose, it’s usually better thought out and sounds more sophisticated. Speech, on the other hand, is more of an “unconscious” practice. A few years back, there was some concern over the fact that texting may be affecting the writing composition of teenagers. John McWhorter from Times Magazine wrote, “Is Texting Killing the English Language” on this very phenomenon, with the rhetorical aim to persuade people that this wasn’t the case. In the article, McWhorter refers to historical texts to persuade his audience, middle-aged …show more content…
adults, into seeing his angle of vision, or point of view, as true. Although McWhorter successfully uses ethos and logos to persuade his audience into seeing his angle of vision as true by using different sources such as the Old Testament and The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, he also fails in using logos when he generalizes that "No one" forms written sentences that mimic casual speak. Referencing outside sources helps to establish the credibility of yourself and makes you look appealing to the audience; McWhorter does a great job of this multiple times throughout "Is Texting Killing the English Language?" He utilizes the Old Testament to convey the idea that writing, when it was originally manifested, was "based on the way people talk, with short sentences." The text is one that is well known throughout the world and prevalent in a large number of cultures. The text is also one that is very easy to obtain, in part because of the Internet. Because of its easy accessibility and universality, McWhorter is able to appeal to and establish his ethos with a greater audience. The Old Testament, as well as The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, is a text that McWhorter uses to very well establish himself as a credible writer. McWhorter enhances his ethos throughout "Is Texting Killing the English Language?" through another source titled The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. McWhorter uses this source to prove his point that writing is “deliberate and slow” (McWhorter) by quoting a passage from the text. The text itself isn’t as popular as the Old Testament by any means, but is a historical text published in 1776 by Edward Gibbon, an Englishman who was an expert in Roman History, that gives the audience a great look at how writing has evolved since its inception. The text is also available online in various PDF forms, which also helps McWhorter accomplish the same goal he did with the Old Testament in appealing to a wider audience. Ethos is only the first of the two literary devices McWhorter successfully uses to persuade his audience into believing that texting is not “killing” the English language. McWhorter uses the Old Testament to not only appeal to ethos, but logos as well. When McWhorter mentions how writing was “based on the way people talk, with short sentences”, he references the writing in the Old Testament to prove his statement. The fact that the origins of the Old Testament date back to before even the Roman Republic by many scholars, helps give the audience a true look at early writing, which also in turn continues to prove his angle of vision. The many people then who have read the Old Testament will start to think back and say, “you know what, that’s true” or “I’ve never thought of that before”. The people will see the logical connection between McWhorter’s statement and the writing in the Old Testament and are then more inclined to view things from McWhorter’s angle of vision. As well as successfully appealing to logos with the use of the Old Testament, McWhorter also is appealing to it through the use of the earlier mentioned work, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. The next time McWhorter appeals to logos is when he references The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. McWhorter uses the source to further his argument that since writing is "deliberate and slow" (McWhorter); writers began to craft more sophisticated sentences. He quotes: "The whole engagement lasted above 12 hours, till the gradual retreat of the Persians was changed into a disorderly flight, of which the shameful example was given by the principal leaders and the Surenas himself." (McWhorter). This quotation does a very good job of supporting McWhorter's argument by showing the evolution of writing from its inception, to the late 1700s. The source clearly shows how writing, as time went by, developed from shorter, spontaneous statements, into longer and more complex sentences and continues to prove his angle of vision. Though McWhorter is able to well establish his logos, he unfortunately hurts it with generalizations. Though McWhorter establishes a sound ethos and logos by calling upon outside sources, he fails to keep logos by generalizing with the phrase "No one".
He uses this generalization twice throughout his article, "Is Texting Killing the English Language?" At the beginning of the article, McWhorter says, "No one talks like that casually - or should" (McWhorter), when discussing how nowadays, the way that people speak is different from the way that they write. McWhorter uses the "No one" phrase a second time when he discusses how the meaning of LOL has changed from it's original meaning of "Laughing Out Loud" to a signal of basic empathy. McWhorter says: "Of course no one thinks about that consciously." (McWhorter).The simple reason as to why it diminishes logos is because there is almost never 100% of anything. There is a very minute chance that there will be a particular act that has a 100% consensus. The fact is everybody is different and has different things that they do that make them different. Someone reading "Is Texting Killing the English Language" who does talk the way that they write, will be more inclined to look at the article with distrust and stop reading, rather than continue reading and give McWhorter a second chance. What the generalizations also do is make McWhorter look like an individual who believes that just because he or the people he knows believe something, everyone else follows the beat of the same
drum. Throughout “Is Texting Killing the English Language” McWhorter does a great job of establishing ethos and logos by using sources that not only prove the facts that he mentions to prove his angle of vision, but that are also well known by a large part of the world and are easily accessible. Unfortunately he hurts his logos by generalizing with the phrase “No one” to prove his point further. In doing so, it makes him look ignorant and like who’s not sure of what everyone else thinks. Overall, McWhorter does a great job of appealing to his audience, middle-aged adults. Though he fails in further establishing logos with his generalizations, his referencing of the Old Testament and The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire shows his audience, who makes up a large percentage of well knowledgeable professionals in society, that he is well knowledgeable in his field and should be trusted with this subject and is able to successfully convince it of his angle of vision.
While preparing for one of his college lectures, Dennis Baron, a professor and linguistics at the University of Illinois, began playing with the idea of how writing has changed the world we lived in and materials and tools we use in everyday life. This lecture slowly transitioned into “Should Everybody Write?” An article that has made many wonder if technology has made writing too easy for anyone to use or strengthens a writer's ability to learn and communicate their ideas. Baron uses rhetorical strategies in his article to portray to his audience his positive tone, the contrast and comparison of context and his logical purpose.
Michaela Cullington, a student, wrote a paper “Does Texting Affect Writing?” in 2010 for an English class. The paper is an examination of texting and the belief that it negative effective student’s writing. Cullington goes into detail about textspeak- “language created by these abbreviations”- and their use in formal writings. She organizes the paper in a way that is confusing to understand at first (pg. 1). At the end of the paper, she discusses her finding in her own research which comes to show that texting does not affect writing. But this is contradicting to the information she received from the teachers. The students and the teachers were seeing differences in the use of textspeak in formal writing. Cullington has good support for her
John Horvat II, from “Five Ways Technology Is Taking Over Your Life,” is an illustrator, researcher, international speaker, and a contributor to “The Blaze” website, and also an author of books. The main point from this article is that technology is a bigger problem now, technology is supposed to be a beneficial resource but not to the point that we get handled by it. The author strongest asset is the use of pathos to get to the audience emotions and make them believe that he’s right. The audience of this article are people who use technology in an excessive way, which is majority of the people, so he is basically referring to everyone who have a relationship with technology.
Pathos is the most effective appeal used in Food, Inc. because many strong visual images evoke the viewer’s emotions. The food industry’s maltreatment of farm animals provides several examples of pathos. A particularly disturbing scene of a close up of a dying chicken lying on his back, bleeding and gasping for air appears early in the film when a farmer allows cameras into her chicken houses. A farmer, Carole Morrison, explains quite candidly that the chickens are grown too quickly and that their bodies cannot support the rapidly growing internal organs and oversized breasts. The crowded filthy conditions in which the chickens live are deplorable. Later sick cows, unable to walk and mistreated by workers, further illustrates the deplorable treatment of farm animals. The filmmaker reinforces his point that the industry is inhumane to the animals prior to slaughtering them for food, while visually appealing to the viewer’s emotions.
Car crashes are no laughing matter. Being in a car crash and seeing a family suffer because of the crash is devastating. The only thing being more horrific than witnessing the crash is being the reason it started. There is no need to be on your phone while driving. Emails, texts, and social media can wait. In their editorial, Editorial Board, Star Tribune explains why a bipartisan plan to restrict cellphone use while driving should get approved this session in Minnesota. First, Star Tribune incorporates specific details to emphasize the significance of this bill getting put in place. Then, Star Tribune appeals to your logos by adding statistics into their editorial to express the injury and death
Clive Thompson asserts in his essay, The New Literacy, that people today are writing more than ever as they socialize online. Nowadays, almost everybody uses social media, but it is more popular amongst younger people. Teenagers text and tweet every little thought that pops up in their head. However, numerous scholars can argue that texting and tweeting defiles the serious academic writing with slang and “text speak.” By way of contrast, Thompson claims that using shortened language and smileys online does not degrade a person’s abilities to write well in an academic paper. Furthermore, composing texts and tweets online can help an individual with their writing. By communicating online, we are able to learn grammar and writing through our own
Sherry Turkle’s article in The New York Times “The Flight From Conversation”, she disputes that we need to put down the technology and rehabilitate our ability to converse with other human beings because we are replacing deep relationships with actual people for casual encounters on technology. Turkle tries to convince young and middle age individuals who are so enthralled by the technology that they are losing the ability to communicate in a public setting. Sherry Turkle unsuccessfully persuades her audience to put down the technology and engage with others in public through her strong logos appeal that overpowers her weak logos and doesn’t reliably represent herself and her research.
Text messaging has become a norm in our generation, as technology rapidly advances and gives way to more efficient forms of communication in a fast-paced world; and many are skeptical about the influence this new form of interaction is having on our society, especially with our younger generation. David Crystal, a professor at the University of Wales, writes “2b or Not 2b?” in support of text messaging. He insists, despite those who underestimate or negate the beneficial influence text messaging has on language proficiency, that “there is increasing evidence that [texting] helps rather than hinders literacy” and that the fairly recent form of communication has actually been around for a while and “is merely the latest manifestation of the human ability to be linguistically creative and to adopt language to suit the demands of diverse settings. In contrast, Jeffery Kluger argues in “We Never Talk Anymore: The Problem with Text Messaging” that text messaging is rapidly becoming a substitute for more genuine forms of communication and is resulting in difficulty among young peoples of our generation to hold a face-to-face conversation, engage in significant nonverbal expression, and ultimately build effective relationships with family, friends and co-workers. Both writers’ present valid arguments, however, my personal experience with text messaging has led me to agree more with Crystal’s view on the matter. Text messaging is indeed having a positive effect on society by making frequent texters primarily aware of the need to be understood, as well as offering betterment of spelling and writing through practice, and reinventing and expanding on a bygone dimension of our language through the use of rebuses and abbreviations.
The “they say” is that texting and the language that it is created from, is actually hindering the writing abilities of students, while other say that texting has a positive effect on writing. Cullington’s “I say” is that texting has no serious effect on student writing. Cullington supports her argument by conducting her own research into this controversy by performing a survey on both high school and college students as well as two teachers. According to Cullington, “texting actually has a minimal effect on student writing.” Cullington’s point is that, she believes that the students are aware when to use formal writing and when not to. She notices that the writing that the students turned in had no texting abbreviations being used. Perhaps
“Our generation doesn't ring the doorbell. They text or call to say they're outside,” this line is from one of the well-known social networks, Tweeter, which shows how the way of communication has change in this modern life. According to 2013 statistics by Business Insider, in United States alone, smartphone owners aged 18 to 24 send 2,022 texts per month on average — 67 texts on a daily basis — and receive another 1,831 texts (Cocotas). Nowadays, technology such as text messaging has practically replaced traditional face to face communication among the society primarily in young generations because texting allows messages to be sent fast and effortless. In order to quickly type what they are trying to say in text messaging, people are frequently using textspeak; the language created by using abbreviation rather than complete words. Based on this phenomenon, David Crystal, an honorary professor of linguistics at the University of Wales has published an article entitled ‘2b or not 2b?’ in the Guardian on July 5, 2008 comes out with the research and studies that state texting can actually improve the literacy of children and create creativity of writing. However, by observing more critically, texting do decrease a person’s ability to switch between textspeak and the normal rules of grammar and adversely affect formal writing and conversational skills.
You can say that overuse in texting is determination the way teens, students write formally in the classroom. Teens that spend most of their eyes on their phone has already created their own texting style. Now I am able to answer the question, how does texting affect teen literacy? Texting affects teen literacy because, text messaging does affect our grammar because, teens text like for example; “ttyl”, “gtg”, “wyd”. They find an easy way of texting rather than using the correct way. In order to get what they want done, we wanted to see and learn about the damage that texting can cause on teens and we did learn, we learned that it can affect our grammar, grades, and even your future in trying to get a job, your skills in so much more. I wanted to inform the teens about the damage that texting in short terms can do to you. Encourage them not to write in short term because, they are too
Language is a form of verbal communication via words and its pronunciation that is used and comprehended by various people of the same nation, culture, or geographical background. It has been said to be dated back as far as one thousand years ago before writing. Like culture, language is passed on through the process of enculturation. Meaning that it is something that is learned (Kottak, 101). In the video, “TED TALK: Texting is killing language,” Ted starts off the video by saying that “The idea is that texting spells the decline and fall of any kind of serious literacy, or at least writing ability, among young people in the United States and now the whole world today (Ted, 2013). Throughout the film discussion, what stuck out to me the most was how drastic language has changed via technology. Although Ted disagrees with the above statement, in my opinion, I believe that a language can be altered if it is changed by enough speakers and writers. With the constant use of various forms of technology, communication via texting has become a very popular leisure activity for people all o...
We often hear news stories report on the possible negative effects texting has on students’ formal writing. These stories usually flash a picture of some student’s formal essay or class assignment containing a text-speak abbreviation in place of a formal word. For example, “u” in place of “you”. Stories like this cause educators and parents to worry that the use of texting is impairing students’ ability to write in a formal setting and is thus becoming detrimental to literacy altogether. However, do these news stories actually hold any merit or are they simply media hype? How often does textspeak actually appear in students’ writing? According to literary scholar David Crystal, “all the evidence suggests that belief in an impending linguistic disaster is a conseq...
Looking back over the course of the semester, I feel that I learned many new and interesting uses for technology within the classroom – both for classrooms that have a lot of technology and for classrooms that are limited with technology. For the majority of the class, we utilized William Kists’ book The Socially Networked Classroom: Teaching in the New Media Age (2010), which provided multiple modes of instruction that both utilized and/or created technology. One of the first things that I remember, and consequently that stuck with me through the course’s entirety, is that individuals must treat everything as a text. Even a garden is a text. The statement made me change the way that I traditionally viewed Language Arts both as a student and as a teacher, as I very narrowly saw literature and works of the like as texts only; however, by considering nearly anything as a text, one can analyze, study, and even expand his/her knowledge. Kist (2010) states that society is “experiencing a vast transformation of the way we “read” and “write,” and a broadening of the way we conceptualize “literacy” (p. 2). In order to begin to experience and learn with the modern classroom and technologically advanced students, individuals must begin to see new things as literature and analyze those things in a similar manner.
Ong, Walter. “Writing is a Technology that Restructures Thought.” Writing Material. Ed. Evelyn Tribble. New York. 2003. 315-335.