Good Essay About Technology And Language

The current shift in technology has managed to change the world over a short period of time. At one point, there were handwritten letters and phone calls, and then came emails and text messages. People have different opinions on the changes in the forms of communication; some appreciate the old means of communication while some consider the modern means of communication that has been influenced by technology. Irrespective of either side, the fact remains that technology has changed the spoken and written language forever.
One of the noticed changing trends in language these days is the use of abbreviations. The use of internet brought a whole new version of language when technology took over. Some people, who used letters as the old way of communication, find themselves more often using internet abbreviation. Among the popular words in the internet languages are ‘LOL’ to mean laughing out loud; ‘IMO’ to mean in my opinion; ‘BTW’ to mean by the way; ‘BFF’ to stand for best friend forever and ‘SMH’ to mean shaking my head or somehow. Many people also make use of emotion icons in expressing the emotions through words. Examples of this include: ‘J’ to expresses happiness, ‘L’ means sad and ‘<3’ to mean love. These new methods of emotions expressed through words are much complex but easier in conveying fast message to another person who is not near to experience the facial expressions of the sender.
Another recognized change in the language through embracing the new technology is that few actual conversations are taking place. Most people opt for text messaging over talking. The use of text messages is slowly replacing the act of calling and conversing through the phone. One of the frustrating and annoying habits is when you call someone and they do not answer your call, a few minutes later you get their text message which has been paraphrased through the use of abbreviations. This is a clear indication of the change in communication etiquette through technology and therefore people are not keen while using correct language in their daily lives. Though technology is good and comes in the form of new devices like touch screen cell phones and iPads, and have some benefits, we should not allow the features in it to overturn spoken words. The new technology has also affected the language structure in that more people use wrong spellings and sentence structure while texting a message, but they do not care since their recipients understand the message sent. This has greatly contributed to the degradation of the written language.
Social media have been responsible for a lot of new words, for example, re-tweet, and twitter verse. The word “friend” has taken the verb form of “he friended me on Facebook’, instead of ‘he sent me a friend request’. The term ‘check-in’ is no longer used in airports and hotels. Instead, it has been embraced in the social media such that people write ‘I just checked-in to school’.
Although technology is seen as the major source of change in today’s language, there are some positive impacts technology has brought in language and communication in general. One of the positive impacts of technology is on how it has made it possible to store and transmit information. Through email, transmission of large document with other files attached has been made easier. With this technology, information can be sent anywhere across the globe. Technology has also helped to ease understanding of a wide range of information. For example, through the internet, one can translate information from one language to another. This makes it possible when sourcing for accurate information in a foreign language.
In conclusion, it is important to understand that long term language change is inevitable, and technology will continue to influence languages in many ways. The main purpose of language is for people to communicate and if embracing technology can ease this communication process, then it should be applauded.