Technology and Language

Question 1

When was the printing press introduced in Britain?

Answer 1

Introduced in Britain in 1476- brought around huge changes in the way people communicated.

Question 2

Explain more about the Printing Press.

Answer 2

Allowed a wider audience access to the written word and so literacy became more widespread, education developed (for middle class), and the process of standardisation began. SE is introduced to a larger range of people.

Question 3

Look at article notes for more detail on the impact of the printing press.

Answer 3

:)

Question 4

Mcluhan (1962)-Constraints

Answer 4

Coined the concept of technological determinism. Focused on the role of printing press as a catalyst for social change.
Term ‘typographic man’- identify and beliefs are shaped by the media we use.
Technologies of mass media make sure culture transmission is a social fabric which ultimately changes man’s social behaviour.
Both constraining and enriching.
Focuses on constraints on language.

Question 5

What quote did Mcluhan say?

Answer 5

‘We shape out tools and they in turn shape us’.

Question 6

Einsenstein (1979)- Affordances

Answer 6

Constraints Mcluhan- personal and social changes was afforded possibilities by technology and not constrained by them.
She argued that the capacity of printing allowed for the preserve knowledge and fundamentally changed the mentality of early modern readers.

Question 7

When was the telephone invented and what did it do?

Answer 7

1876. Communication on a wider scale focusing in spoken English and not written English.

Question 8

Schlegoff (1986)

Answer 8

Suggested a pattern for opening and closing of conversations.

Summons/answer
Identification
Greeting sequence igniting communication.
‘How are you?’- phatic talk to consolidate connections.
Pre-closing and closing: speech that focuses on the act of talking such as ‘enough for today’ and phatic talk such as ‘it’s been so good to catch up’ and discourse markers such as ‘well’ and ‘anyway’.

Question 9

Sacks et al. (1974)

Answer 9

Without paralinguistic features, turn taking is triggered through:

Intonation
Questions
Hesitations
Interruptions
Overlapping
Discourse markers such as ‘listen’
Backchanneling

(to overcome the constraints)

Question 10

Explain texting (SMS).

Answer 10

Initially introduced as SMS for engineers to communicate. People quickly realised the affordance of this technology and adapted to suit their needs. Has produced text speech, that uses features of both written and spoken language.

Question 11

Asynchronous

Answer 11

There is a delay between utterance and response (email).

Question 12

Synchronous

Answer 12

At the same time, a face to face conversation would be an example of synchronous discourse.

Question 13

How does Herring in 2007 define CMC (Computer Medicated Communication)?

Answer 13

Predominately text on a computer.

Question 14

Crystal (2008)

Answer 14

Identifies the telephony constraints of texting through green limitations of 160 characters, but recognises the affordances.
Abbreviations where letters represent syllables.
Logograms
Punctuation marks and letters adapted to express feelings like :/ :) ;)
Multiword sentences and response sequences minimised to initialisms and acronym: lmk, wtf
Consonants having higher information value than vowels: vowel omission common- pls, wt
Variant orthography- non standard and phonetic- cuz, shud, luv.

Question 15

What are typical features of SMS?

Answer 15

Phonetic spelling
Emoticons
Taboo language abbreviations (LMAO WTF)
Contractions

Question 16

Look at Crystal article notes.

Answer 16

:)

Question 17

When was the internet introduced, when was it established and how many users was there?

Answer 17

1983
1995- internet and WWW established phenomenon
Netscape Navigator- most popular browser at the time- 10 million global users.
By 2000 over 360 million people were established to be online.

Question 18

What did Crystal say about the internet?

Answer 18

Largest (written text) corpus of E vocabulary that has ever existed- new words or neologisms would traditionally rake approx 10 yrs to become embedded but now words can take days. e.g. unfriend, selfie, filter. Access to bigger vocabulary.

Question 19

Hamilton and Barton (1998)

Answer 19

Writing is central to digital communications. Hamilton and Barton refer to blogs and other forms of everyday writing as ‘vernacular literacy practices’. Vernacular writing means informal, non-standard writing. These practices provide interesting examples of how people use language. Informal register is used on these sites facilities the mimicking if colloquial language.

Question 20

Name some neologisms the internet has given to English? (or changed meaning-polysemic)

Answer 20

Selfie, unfollow, noob, derp.

Question 21

Explain about emails?

Answer 21

Asynchronous.
The language may overlap with that of texting and other forms of digital talk.
Email communication uses features of spoken language, yet is increasingly used in formal settings.

Question 22

What have the affordances of social networking sites allowed?

Answer 22

Users to create a different identity and share their experiences anonymously with a large number of people.

Question 23

What have false identities led to?

Answer 23

Criminal activities.

Question 24

What does Shanyang say about social networking sites?

Answer 24

Researched into anchored relationships and suggested that users use implicit strategies such as photos and wall posts to construct their identity. Only 20% provided explicit descriptions of themselves.

Question 25

What are anchored relationships?

Answer 25

An online relationship where two participants know each other in the offline world.

Question 26

What does sites like Facebook and Twitter have in common?

Answer 26

A multimodal element, they allow for photos, videos and even music to be posted alongside writing.

Question 27

Explain the characters (Crystal), the symbols and hashtags of Twitter?

Answer 27

Previous character limit of 140 now 280. Crystal suggests that due to this, contractions are commonly used.

The symbol @ is used as a prefix next to usernames (logogram).

Hashtags, the symbol used to signify tweets on the same topic.

Question 28

What does Crystal (2011) say about Twitter?

Answer 28

Found that the majority of tweets were simple observations followed by advertisements and those intended to develop personal relationships were in the minority.

Question 29

Explain the features, people, agenda of Chatrooms?

Answer 29

Chatrooms share many features with that of text messages.

Most users are usually unknown to one another and use screen names.

The agenda of chatrooms are usually rigidly fixed and people will join based on a specific topic.

Question 30

What does Herring (1996) say about Chatrooms?

Answer 30

Identifies gender specific differences in chatrooms. Men post longer messages and assert strong feelings, occasionally use flaming, engage in self-promotion, ask fewer questions and make fewer apologies. Women use more emoticons.

Question 31

What does Crystal say about Chatrooms?

Answer 31

Identifies that in chatrooms emotive punctuation is often used as nonce formations (yes, really that’s its name…) : words created for a special occasion.