This morning I went through my typical online routine which usually includes checking all my social media apps, reading emails, responding to text messages and on the occasion, updating my blog. This task in itself requires me to reflect on my previous online activity in order to gauge the presence I am creating when posting online. Although, for me, I am usually posting unapologetically about how I feel and the things I do, it is important to understand that most of my posts are clouded by the online persona I present through language. It is not often that I will wake up in the morning, and say “heeeyyyyy babez, hru 2day? It’s gonna b a hawt 1!” to my local barista. In fact, my online language is something I would never dream of performing outside the safety of the internet… Why?
For me, I believe our digital environment allows us to become lazy, we see it in everything we do, but, in the name of cohesion, we will stick to language. Noticing the way I manipulate and transform words to become something totally different, even sounding different if ever said out loud (the horror!), is very new age of me. Dare I say, millennial. #ngen
Often, we see our online communication being misinterpreted, even with friends who know us well. Online language is not easy to judge due to tone and body language being eliminated as well as the hidden meanings behind new slang created, such as “lol” often being used in a sarcastic manner, but literally meaning “laugh out loud”. Existing words lose their primary meaning, and become highly context specific, and although the ability to write is a basic learnt behaviour, I constantly question… Are we unlearning/going backwards with writing/communicating due to our heavy online presence? Or, are we in fact becoming more efficient in our writing ability, saving time, adapting to our new technology driven lifestyles and applying multimodality to our text?
#LING248 #PARTA #44935412
Reflective Blog Posts 