[xmca] Re: A novice takes a first shoot: spreading the symbol, not the meaning.

From: Lars Rossen (lhrossen3@gmail.com)
Date: Wed Jun 29 2005 - 12:21:14 PDT


Gordon,
I completely agree that the telegraph and the SMS and how the bend and
twist the language in order to squeeze the functionality out of it
holds huge similarity - but none the less I find it interesting how
the discourse in this case is shaped, not only to fit the medium, but
how they shape the process of developing an appropriate language
around their hormone ridden teen-age identity development and use it
as an means to and in when working on "becoming". This is nothing new
- I agree - but never the less an interesting case where we are able
to trace language and idio-culture in the making; from scratch to LOL
- to me it looks related to Hallidays pointing out the end of point of
development as the ability to "replenish everyday speech"...

However I am not sure to which degree this is on topic or not...
Lars

 

On 6/27/05, Gordon Wells <gwells@ucsc.edu> wrote:
> Lars,
>
> Thanks for your very interesting post. What you have observed is not
> altogether new, though.
>
> Halliday (1988 On the language of physical science. In M. Ghadessy
> (Ed,) Registers of written English: Situational factors and
> linguistic features. London Frances Pinter.) describes how scientists
> such as Newton developed a new genre in order to communicate
> effectively to other scientists. And think about the change in genres
> that accompanied the invention of the telegram. It seems to me that
> the girl you quote is doing something rather similar: transforming
> the genre in the light of the available technology to achieve her own
> and her peers' communicative purposes. What do you think?
>
> Gordon
> --
> Gordon Wells
> Dept of Education, http://education.ucsc.edu/faculty/gwells
> UC Santa Cruz.
> gwells@ucsc.edu
>

_______________________________________________
xmca mailing list
xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca



This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Jul 01 2005 - 01:00:08 PDT