Monday, October 1, 2012

Come on! It's not rocket science!

I am not going to lie, I spend more time on Facebook than I should. I also read a lot of different blogs and a lot of terrible gossip magazines. I am not a snob in my choice of literature. Unless when it comes to novels. I would rather re-read Cannery Row fifteen times than anything from the Twilight series. Sometimes I read, mostly out of curiosity, best-sellers such as the da Vinci Code or the Alchemist. I actually wrote a paper for my Bachelor's degree on the Alchemist by Paulo Coelho and I suspect that my loathing of the genre was born from countless hours spent dissevering it only to discover that behind the glossy and exotic surface there was not much of value left. I believe the Cat in the Hat said it best 'The fish is talking! Yes, but is he really saying anything? No!'.
However, the topic for today is not the Alchemist, but actually the kind of writing used in digital media, such as Facebook. It is nothing short of a miracle that I do not have grey hair yet, considering the amount of poorly written rubbish that is posted there. 'Were R U?', 'Havnt stage dove for years', 'their crazy' and so on and so forth. Alright that we are adults now, we are out of school (most of my 'friends' on Facebook at least) and there is no teacher or professor that will grade what we write. But there is me, the cunning linguist, and I am positive that I am not the only one who will judge you when you use poor grammar. The way things are going, it will not be long until prospective employers will read what you write and form their own opinion of you, based on that. They probably already do.
Communication is key and language is all we have in the digital society. It's not rocket science, it's basics! If you are not dyslectic, there is no excuse. Poor use of language is like a ripple of stupidity that grows and grows until it encompasses us. A lot like the brilliantly understated movie 'Idiocracy'. It seems that this blatant abuse of the English language is contagious. We are dumbing ourselves down because we want to fit in. This may seem outrageous, but let me give you a good example: An acquaintance of mine, a nice girl from a state in the south who moved to Hawaii as an adult. A perfectly normal and intelligent young woman until she opens her virtual mouth. The propositions suddenly disappear, the structure of her sentences get lost somewhere in her futile attempt at the onomatopoeia of the Hawaiian pidgin. Why would she do something like that? Because she wants to fit in. It is sad, altogether. Much like the feminists are against women who dress like prostitutes to gain acceptance through their cleavage, am I against conforming to a much lower standard of writing, and speaking, than you are capable of for the purpose of blending in. Would it not be lovely if the people who actually speaks and writes like children, decidedly stepped up their game and fell in with adults with a proper language? As far as I can remember, accurate use of language is taught already in primary education and is not reserved for college graduates.
If you think that you are acting out some latent rebellious desire by breaking the rules, I feel that it is my responsibility to tell you that you are not. There are far more intelligent ways to be rebellious with your use of language than that. But that is a different story that I may elaborate further on at another time.

No comments:

Post a Comment