This blog entry is a response to Caroline’s entry – Langue de Snobe v/s Langue de Sauvage [ http://cagslemonde.blogspot.com/2009/11/langue-de-snobe-vs-langue-de-sauvage.html ]

Caro’s article in English – [ http://translate.google.com/translate?prev=hp&hl=en&js=y&u=http%3A%2F%2Fcagslemonde.blogspot.com%2F2009%2F11%2Flangue-de-snobe-vs-langue-de-sauvage.html&sl=fr&tl=en&history_state0= ]

Extracts:

Mais le hic c’est que je dois souvent me demander si je dois parler en francais ou en créole à la personne qui se montre à moi … la barrière sociale n’est pas prête à se dissoudre

j’ai été éducquée par une mère cultivée qui m’a appris tout le “tra-la-la” des bonnes manières

Dear Caroline, you were inculcated with good manners. Why the frak are you knowingly putting yourself in the out-group? How can you complain about the mass consisting of jackasses when you are alienating yourself by refusing to converse in a language you clearly master?

Speaking French to a Kreol Morisien speaking mass is an insult to both the latter and to your country. Shame on you! Kreol is your native language. French is not. English ‘PWNS’ French. Mandarin ‘PWNS’ all. My guess is that you love controversy and being an outcast helps your ’cause.’ Or do you like to be a punk who places herself on a high pedestal?

As far as the use of Kreol Morisien at schools goes, I see no controversy. Do you? Most of the written exams are in English. If all students speak language X, a teacher can provide oral explanations in language X. – where X can be any bloody language; Kreol Morisien, Mandarin,etc – You name it, girl! Written notes are given in English (official language.) There is no bloody controversy.

Sure, one can argue that students master English poorly. The use of Kreol in class does not impede the students’ ability to read books written in English.

Anyway, show some manners. When in Rome, do as Romans do – speak in Roman lingo, damn it! Thank you.

The metamorphosis of textual and multimedia content has rendered the latter less lengthy, less bulky and of lower quality but for the better. Although it can be viewed as a downside, it fits in the current environment of web 2.0 whereby communication, collaboration and information sharing is essential.

Metamorphosis of Textual Content

On the language/grammatical structure front, most people now use pictorial descriptions such as emoticons to express feelings and type in chatspeak.

: ) means a smile

hand means have a nice day

One may perceive that proper English grammar is being 'destroyed' by web 2.0+. However, chatspeak is a language on its own with no special rule. Some emotions are expressed pictorially and are much better than a thousand words.

This picture is a screenshot of a SMS being typed in a mobile phone.

The difference in size is significant.

English Sentence: Hi. Have a nice day. P.S See you tomorrow.

Chatspeak: hi.hand.ps cya2moz

Size (English Sentence) in bytes: 42

Size (Chatspeak) in bytes: 18

People are bound to modify George Herbert Mead’s second pillar, language in real life.

The English system of verb inflection has changed considerably over the past 1,100 years. [1] Rebecca Hughes states, speech and writing usually take place in very different contexts. [2] While written language is more written language has syntax, editors must abide to it.

Chatspeak makes people (editors) type without the constraints of syntax and form new words.

Koritti’s work which covers how ‘reactive tokens’ such as ‘yeah I know’, in Internet Relay Chat (IRC) language [3] shows that these tokens are common in chatspeak. Chatspeak resembles normal speech. The text messages are short, usually to the point but many parts of spoken speech are eliminated for they are not needed to convey the meaning.

People also feel the need to reengineer language in order to cater for the limitations of the devices and services being used. Shorter but concise information is a plus for it can be sent much quicker than bulky information.

Metamorphosis of Multimedia Content

As far as multimedia goes, it has been changed to micromedia for more and more people use products such as smart devices do not have the high end hardware capabilities to handle and spread bulky multimedia content. Nowadays, mobile devices have low end video cameras (as compared to professional cameras.)

It is worth noting that Multimedia Messaging Services also have limitations. A multimedia content being attached to a message usually is of less than of 500K size-wise and the length of a SMS message usually has a quota of less than 200 characters.

Information is now a combination of microcontent and micromedia. Microcontent is a shortened form of information which usually helps explain a larger form of information. Microcontent is usually textual and consists of less than 160 characters.

Micromedia, coined as ‘micro-media’ by Lev Manovich in a paper called “Beyond Broadband: Macro-media and Micro-media” [4] is digital microcontent whereby digital media is purposefully small and of poor quality. Phones are meant to come with low end/res. cameras for the image needs to be spread at one point of another and this process must be done quickly. Umair Haque explains in “The New Economics of Media. Micromedia, Connected Consumption, and the Snowball Effect” PowerPoint presentation [5] how micromedia is driven by technology, regulation and change in consumer preferences. The characteristics of micromedia are continuously evolving.

References

[1] Human Universality in Ubiquitous Computing: Maslow, Where Are You? Sebastien Duval, Hiromichi Hashizume, Christian Hoareau, (National Institute of Informatics)
URL: http://www2.computer.org/portal/web/csdl/doi/10.1109/EUC.2008.120

[2] Communications of the ACM archive, Volume 44 , Issue 3 (March 2001), Pages: 36 – 37, Year of Publication: 2001, ISSN:0001-0782, Cyborgs, Donald Norman

[3] Website: BBC h2g2. An Explanation of l33t Speak - URL: http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A787917

[4] Lev Manovich, Macromedia and Micro-media (summer 2000)
URL: http://www.manovich.net/DOCS/macro_micro.doc

[5] Umair Haque, The New Economics of Media. Micromedia, Connected Consumption, and the Snowball Effect, spring 2005 - URL: http://www.bubblegeneration.com/resources/mediaeconomics.ppt

George Herbert Mead was an American psychologist. He had a brilliant theory called ‘The Theory of Symbolic Interactionism’. [Lundgren, D.C. (2004) "Social feedback and self-appraisals: Current status of the Mead-Cooley hypothesis," Symbolic Interaction 27: 267-286.]

The theory relied on three pillars namely – meaning, language and thought.

Meaning is explained as the way one interprets things. Language is explained as the source of meaning. Without language, one would not be able to express oneself. George Herbert Mead goes further to explain that language is the basis of human society. He also explained the process of thoughts as being an ‘inner conversation’ with oneself to derive other thoughts.

George Herbert Mead’s theory helps us understand how one comes to spread information.

• Source A experiences/witness an event.
• Source A interprets the event.
• Source A converts the interpretation into meaning.
• At this point, Source A can spread information.
• Source A may receive new information from X, Y, and Z and develop new thoughts which lead to new interpretation and meaning. [loop]

The theory applies to social networking and to the basic principles of communication in real life too.