The Effect of New Technologies on English

David Chrystal: Now when new technology comes along, it influences language. It has to.
Technology always has influenced language quite dramatically. Think of the technologies of the
past. Printing arrives in the 15th century. Suddenly we have new varieties of English that weren't
there before. New varieties of any language of course, but we're talking about English today. We
have newspapers eventually and look at the style of a newspaper with its headlines and all and
the cartoons and the captions and the editorials and all the things you now know about a
newspaper. Once upon a time there was no such thing. So fast forward to the 19th century and
we have the development of the telephone. You know when the telephone arrived people did not
know how to deal with it. They didn't know what to say. When they picked up the phone they
would shout and say: "Who is that? Are you there?" and so on. Today we just go "Hello" or "We
give the telephone number" or whatever it is, we do. People thought the telephone was going to
be the biggest disaster in society because it would mean people would no longer go out of their
houses to talk to each other. And it would be a disaster. Of course, it hasn't been like that. When
broadcasting comes along in the 1920s a lot of people thought it was a disaster, they thought this
is going to be a medium of... Um... People have been brainwashed by this new system of getting
into our heads, into our homes. It hasn't been like that. But broadcasting has introduced new
varieties of the language. Think of all the things you can do on the radio and on television that
you couldn't do before, like... Sports commentary... Think of the football commentary. You
know it didn't exist until... You know... The last few decades... Think of news reading, weather
forecasting, chat shows, all of these come in as a result of broadcasting.
Now the Internet is doing exactly the same thing. The Internet arrives not so long ago. You guys
here most of you have never known the world without the internet. Those of us who are slightly
less young... Um... Well remember a world without the internet. We're talking only since the
1990s remember. The world wide web arrives in 1991. Only. When could you have first done a
search on Google? Not before 1999 because Google didn't exist before then. Those of us who are
older, when did we first send an email? Not before the mid of 90s. So, text messaging on your
mobile phones, when did that come in? Not until the early 2000s. Instant messaging - early
2000s. Blogging... The word "blog" arrives in 1997. It's short for "weblog", meaning "the kind of
diary that you can put on the web". Nobody blogged before about 2003. Facebook... FACE-
BOOK! 2004, only! Facebook has not been here forever. Only2004... Youtube - 2005, Twitter -
2006... How many of you tweet? Any of you? Any of you actually use twitter's a couple of hands
going up? Anybody read other people's tweets very much? Again, not many of you, but
Facebook... Yeah? Nods, yeah, nod, nod, nod, nod, nod, nod, nod, yeah? All over the place...
Yeah... But these are examples of new technologies developing into new styles of English. Now,
each of these Internet outputs that I've talked about has a distinctive English style. "Oh, heck!"
it's not just English, distinctive Serbian style, too, a distinctive any language style. The style you
use when you're texting is not the style you use when you're blogging or facebooking, or
twittering and so on.
And notice that the technologies influence the language in quite specific ways. The most obvious
examples are the short messaging services like text messaging... and... Tweeting. So, text
messaging is 160 characters, isn't it? That's your maximum. If you're sending a message to your
mobile phone, that's your lot. If you're going to tweet, you've got 140 characters. The reason for
the difference is that if you're tweeting, which is really sending your text message to the web,
that's what tweet twit twitter is all about, sending your text message is normally just to one
person, so that everybody can read it. And now you've got 140 characters and the reason is you
have to have 20 characters for your ID, you see, you've got to say who you are, that leaves you
140. Short? Well, yes, but not THAT short... I mean, 140 characters for English - that's about...
30 words. We can say quite a lot in 30 words. You know... So, it's not as short as all that. But
anyway, the point I'm making is that that technology, all influences a language in quite specific
ways. So, let's just take Twitter as the example. It arrives in 2006. If you tweeted, if you went
online, you would be given a prompt, and the prompt was in 2006. What are you doing? What
are you doing? So, you would say "I am doing whatever": "I am on a train "... Really interesting
stuff... "I am watching a film", "I am stuck in a lift"... There was a famous example of Stephen
Fry... You may know Stephen Fry, who got stuck in a lift in early... 2006 or seven. And he
tweeted to the whole world "I am stuck in a lift" and millions and millions of people wanted to
see his next tweet to find out when he was out of the lift, and it took a long time, and it took all
day, and he kept it going and going and going, and suddenly everybody realized that Twitter
could tell you "what was going on in people's minds?" And that's how it started. Notice: "What
are you doing?" very introvert, isn't it? "I(!) am", lots of first-person pronouns, present tenses "I
AM(!) stuck in a lift"... And then, in 2009 Twitter changed its prompt: instead of "What are you
doing?" the prompt became "What's happening? Tell us what's happening." Now think about that
for a second: "what are doing?" says "look into yourself"; "what's happening?" says "look around
you". So, suddenly there are not... Not so many first-person pronouns. There are third-person
pronouns now: "He's doing this", "She's doing that", "They're doing that." The tenses start to
alter: past tense, as well as future tense, "this has just happened", "I've just seen something", "I'm
about to see something". The advertisers come on Twitter and say "Look at our new book! This
is what we're selling". And int (*internet) and Twitter suddenly becomes a kink of new reporting
service. Rather than a diary. And a fundamental linguistic change takes place as a result simply
because not just the technology but the software with the technology makes you think in a
different way from what you were doing before. So I generalize that point now, you see, and say:
every Internet domain that you're dealing with influences the way in which you use language,
sometimes in quite specific ways. But it isn't yet possible to predict the future, because it's all so
recent. It takes a long time before new trends, technological or otherwise, actually influence the
language in a permanent sort of way. You know, the Internet is, is too young yet to know exactly
how much influence it is going to have on English, or Serbian, or whatever language. I know
people think that the Internet is having a major, major influence on language. The English
language today is not the same as it was 20 years ago. That's rubbish. The English language
today is almost identical with what it was 20 years ago. I know there are new abbreviations that
have come into text messaging like "LOL", you know, "lol". You know, things like this but...
Er... This is cool stuff, but there isn't very much like that. This is a tiny, tiny fraction of the
English language. The vast majority of English is exactly the same today as it was 20 years ago.
In a 100 years time maybe there will be a lot of influence from the internet but at the moment it's
pretty stable.
Interviewer: So should the authority figures be worried about texting and Facebook and social
media or should they just be encouraged to see it as temporary phenomenon which does not
affect the basics?
David Chystal: Oh, I think very much that... Uh... The prophets of doom... Uh... Are out there
and they always come out when there is a new technology. There were prophets of doom with
printing. In the 15th century saying "Printing is a terrible thing because it will mean anybody can
say what they like in public". I told you already the prophets of doom with... With telephones.
They thought this is a disaster for society. Prophets of doom with the Internet as well. Yes, there
are some famous figures that have gone into print and said "Text messaging especially is a
disaster for the English language". There is a commentator in Britain who everybody knows in
Britain, his name is John Humphries, because he runs the morning breakfast show and so
everybody listens, you see, he's very well known, and in "The Daily Mail" a few years ago he
was on record as saying that the young people of today are ruining the English language, they are
doing to English what the vandals and goths did to society all those hundred centuries ago,
raping and pillaging the English language, destroying with your abbreviations, your horrible
abbreviations, don't you know what you're doing... Kind of attitude. Again, total rubbish. Why?
Because text messaging, and likewise all the other internet activities, was never, never full of
abbreviations. When you actually do collect, as linguists do, a collection of text messages and
you look at them and you count up all the abbreviations that are in those text messages, you find
that the average number of abbreviations in a text is only 10 percent. In other words 90 percent
or so of the language you use in the text is standard English, you know... I mean it's... The... Or
at least your local dialect may be, but not. A brand new language full of crazy abbreviations that
nobody has ever seen before...