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Language is evolving, says US professor

Gulf News interviews Dr Leslie Barratt, professor of linguistics at Indiana State University in the US, about how the English language is evolving.

  • Staff Report
  • Published: 09:28 May 23, 2008
  • Gulf News

Gulf News interviews Dr Leslie Barratt, professor of linguistics at Indiana State University in the US, about how the English language is evolving.

How would you describe the history of using shorthand writing that has led to today's method of quick typing?

Children have long used homophones in their informal writing. So '2' and 'u' have been around in public writing in birthday cards and such.

Once acronyms entered the language with 'OK' in the 19th century and then flooded the language (from the 1940s onwards), all of these short forms started to appear in advertising.

The invention of SMS and e-mail has facilitated its emergence in more of our daily writing. I think online chats probably deserve a large part of the credit because chatting is quite difficult if one is not a fast typist, so every shortcut helps participants keep up with the others.

Do you believe that this modern language could be the language of the future?

Yes, I believe that this type of writing is indicative of the future of at least some forms of writing, but the language itself is not simpler, nor is this writing really simpler because readers have to know the context and the possible meaning to know what "LOL" means ['laugh out loud' or 'lots of luck' or 'lots of love']. So there is plenty of complexity in this new writing.

Academic and professional writing will be slower to change, of course, but there will probably be some effects of this 'quick typing' in punctuation and in some spellings.

Apostrophes, for example, have been disappearing for at least 20 years, and their absence in e-mails seems to be quite common and accepted.

Do you believe this form of communicative language is a progression or regression of the English language?

We cannot call this a regression because English was never like this before. Is it degrading? No, the language is evolving, and the way it is written is evolving.

Many languages have revised their spelling systems or their writing systems as the language changed; English has been very conservative in its spelling with a few modifications, such as those Webster introduced in the US. It is natural for the language to have revisions given this new technology.

As a linguist at a university, do you believe the common use of this language is influencing students' professional writing skills?

University students have trouble with writing, but they did when I started teaching in 1980. I do not find that these writing shortcuts cause most students confusion.

There has always been a percentage, confused by homophones ('to' versus 'too', for example), and there still is, but none of them have ever written ''2" on a class assignment.

I think these changes [and all language changes] are fascinating, and it is far more fun to watch them and study them than to bemoan their existence.

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