WHY DO I CARE?As a writer, I suppose it's become my business to understand the different facets of rhetorical language, but more than that, they fascinate me. Digital space has completely altered the way we speak to and interact with each other. As a professional writer, I will most likely be working in digital space, so understanding the way people use that space is imperative. To be honest, it's also ridiculously interesting to watch the change as I follow one person across several different spaces and watch his/her rhetorical decisions.
In a time when we had to text using a normal phone dialpad, it was very difficult to write full words, because unless you were a mutant, it required a number of clicks just to get to the case and letter you wanted. This caused a great shortening of language. We came up with new ways to say long--and sometimes short--words. Thx, plz, lol, jk, brb, g2g, cya, k, l8r, u, r, ur--and the list goes on. Despite the fact that most of us now have fully functional qwerty keyboards on our phones, these changes to the language have stuck. When we chat informally, we tend to use them instead of full words because they're quick and we're used to them. Of course, digital space has also necessitated completely new words, and new meanings for old words. Hashtag, unfriend, selfie, and emoticon would not exist as terms at all if not for the internet. No one could have lols or get rickrolled or any of that. If I were to travel to an alternate dimension that did not have the internet, I'm not even entirely sure I could speak to them, since there's no way of knowing how many of our slang words and changes in vernacular have happened because of the digital age. In a sense, we've created an entirely different web-based vernacular. Digital space has not only altered the language, but it has altered its physical appearance. Often, we type "lol" though we're not really laughing, we write in all caps for emphasis when we wouldn't have yelled. We've created a visual version of tone in order to communicate beyond what is written, to communicate those underlying parts of our conversation that would have initially been portrayed by body language. Most of us haven't even realized that that's what we've done. We write long sentences with no punctuation so people read as though we're speaking quickly and excitedly about something, we write in italics to emphasize a point for humor. We purposefully misspell words. These are conscious decisions we make as communicators to indicate a particular thought or feeling that may not be explicit or even implicitly available when given only a textual representation of our language. It's amazing that we can associate these squiggles with sounds and have meaning meet somewhere rooted in the middle, even more amazing is that the appearance of these squiggles alters the way we interpret their sound. I MEAN COME ON HOW COOL IS THAT!? |
WORDS THAT HAVE BEEN APPROPRIATED FOR A DIGITAL SPACEAvatar
You know it to be a representation of yourself on the internet, a picture or a small cartoony recreation of yourself, but really it is a word used to describe the physical embodiment of Gods on an earthly plane. The reason this makes sense is because our Avatar is our stand-in self that lives in what could easily be considered a separate plane of existence. Spam
The word "spam" was originally a portmanteau of Hormel's "spiced ham," fondly known as SPAM. The word took on a new connotation after this Monty Python skit where the word SPAM is repeated over and over and over and over again. Then, in the 80's, the word SPAM was used in reference to the skit to describe the clogging up of a discussion with the same word or phrase over and over again, and thus, the incessant posting of the same thing is now called "spamming." Geek
Beginning as a phrase to describe sideshow freaks, and then becoming a phrase describing socially awkward teenagers, geek has since transmigrated some into a cool term for cool stuff. With the proliferation of digital space, geekery has become cool. The word geek is still used negatively, but never before has it been so positive. Digital space has changed the label's connotation immensely. I never know whether to be excited about this, or feel ripped off, because my life would've been much simpler were geekery cool when I was a kid. |