Don't kill the messenger

by Selma Moss-Ward, a lecturer in the Department of English, who has taught expository writing and British literature at Brown since 1987.

Recently a New York Times article discussed the exasperation of public school teachers whose students’ spelling has been corrupted by Instant Message shorthand. For example, some high schoolers spell “people” “PPL” and “school” “skool.” Defenders of Language crank out the jeremiads whenever such an article appears — and they appear often, because the Decline of Civilization is a perennially-thrilling topic to many. But computers, e-mail, and a utility of Microsoft Word called “tracking,” which enables a teacher to grade students’ essays on screen, have allowed me a more optimistic vision.

To tweak a cliché: Instant Messaging doesn’t kill language, lack of engagement kills language. I am delighted that Instant Messaging, e-mail and other bells and whistles of computer communication have captivated tomorrow’s college students. A rising generation now views writing as a normal and enjoyable aspect of daily life, not merely as assignments to be periodically turned in. Beyond the ease of contact that computers provide, they encourage students to play with language, to invest in the back-and-forth patterns of discourse. This participation fosters a love of writing and a love of words. In important ways computers have sensitized us to language and aligned the function of writing more closely to the function of speech in our daily life.

Obviously we speak in a more or less elevated manner, depending on whom we’re addressing. Children recognize this, just as adults do. They don’t talk to their teachers as they talk to their friends. Similarly, what needs to be clarified in the shift from Instant Messaging and e-mail to essay writing is the definition of audience. Once done, other techniques and strategies fall into place. Any savvy writer does this automatically by defining her readers and making suppositions about them. But a naive writer may not in fact see “skool” as unorthodox and confusing in the context of an academic essay because she may mistakenly assume an audience of peers. It’s the writing instructor’s task to help students understand the traits of different audiences.

Students’ IM contacts are, like friendly phone calls, extremely casual; hence the shorthand and slang. Although ephemera, Instant Messages record social relationships, information and linguistic innovation. They have their own rationale and seductive charms — of which immediacy is one of the most powerful — and that’s why they’re so popular. Whatever one thinks of the nonstandard IM spellings, the fact is that the genre, like e-mail, makes writing enjoyable for many people. But spelling is not substance – and word processing programs come with spell-checkers. More important than correct spelling is that when someone is comfortable with Instant Messaging or e-mail, it’s an easy transition to longer, more durable written forms.

Besides, the integration of jargon benefits English, which is adept at incorporating neologisms. Words from the tech world have infiltrated and expanded our parlance: “web,” “hardware,” “software,” “interface,” etc. So if, thanks to Instant Messengers, new words creep into the language (on little mouse feet), who is to say that they won’t offer us viable expressions of new concepts? Like “web” and “hardware” which have more archaic meanings, “skool” may come to connote something that’s different from “school,” “PPL” something different from “people.”

Perhaps “skool” and “PPL” connote new ideas already, and I, bereft of IM dictionary, am unaware. Those who regularly practice Instant Messaging, however, will effect some of the infusions necessary to keep English contemporary and robust. The rapid electronic transmission of writing and ideas between teacher and student, the less-restricted, less-mediated concept of prose form, the more instantly gratifying (and therefore positively reinforcing) engagement with language—these are the direct benefits of writing with computer programs. From the perspective of this instructor, such uninhibited wordsmithing promises linguistic vitality, intellectual growth and the further evolution of essay writing in the 21st century.