#technology and language

[marklakshmanan]

How Tech Giants Are Redefining Language: The New Words You Need to Know

The Impact of Technology on Language In an age where technology permeates every aspect of our lives, it comes as no surprise that language

[uniquelingominds]

As its title suggests, this timeline is about the history of technology in language learning. We can examine the projects, apps, and software created for ELT purposes over the years. While I was creating this timeline, I had trouble organizing all the information by years. Especially, some timeline tools made this process really difficult. Some of them wanted a lot of details while I was trying to choose the basic and important ones. In the end, I came up with "Microsoft Timeline Template". It was so practical to use. The fact that I was using this template on Power Point made everything so easy and familiar for me.

[uniquelingominds]

Introduction

In this blog, we will learn many things about the historical relationship between technology and language learning. You will have a chance to engage your language learning process in some technological tools whether you are a student who is taking language classes in a school environment or a person who is trying to learn a language on his/her own. It is good news, especially for those who are no longer intrigued by the traditional ways of language learning.

[fuckyeahhightech-blog]

Comparative Commentary

The influence of technology in language is a major theme in several articles nowadays. As an example of this, we are going to analyze two articles referring to this subject. The first one, “How internet is changing language” by Zoe Kleinman was published in BBC News Technology section and it is basically a report on the internet phenomena, such as memes, that are changing language. The second one, “The Rise of the Zuckerverb: The New Language of Facebook” by Ben Zimmer appeared on The Atlantic Technology section and it talks about the incorporation of verbs to the Facebook jargon and how this social network is changing the English language.

Both of these articles have as common theme the changes that technology has brought upon language. Although both articles were published on a Technology section for a newspaper, their target audience is people whose career has to do with language and communication –such as translators, linguistics, language teachers, writers, etc. It is unlikely that someone interested in technology alone will be searching for language-related topics on the news. As for the tone, both articles are written in a very easy-to-understand way: they are informative, clear and simple.

Let us analyze a bit more about these articles content. Kleinman’s article deals with technology influence in language in a more general way. We are given examples of how internet memes, text messages and social networks have been causing an interesting effect on the way people write. On this article, we can even see examples of such changes in Ukrainian. On the other hand, in Zimmer’s article, the main focus in Facebook on English language only. The examples given to illustrate how language has been changing are from English only and it is not clear how would that affect other languages in which Facebook is also available; moreover, the main concern on this article is not writing in general but grammar and a bit of semantics.

Another aspect of Kleinman’s article is its focus on slang and word play. From the perspective of this article, the changes on language caused by technology are very complex, creative and meaningful, and thus, the article is pretty optimist about such changes. On the contrary, the changes that Facebook is causing in English are considered as simplistic. Zimmer’s article draws attention to the fact that the structure of English sentences are becoming really simple –Subject-Verb-Object- and thus it may be a drawback to the development of a more complex and structured writing. However, Zimmer is also optimistic about this change and claims it would become more complex with time.

In conclusion, Kleinman’s article is a good way to have a first approach to the technology-language issue, as Zimmer’s article is a good example of how exactly is language changing because of technology. Apart from that, it is interesting the fact that both articles show the bright side of having technology changing our world in such ways that we will never express ourselves as we used to do before technology took over our lives.