Language and Texting, WTF?

I want to offer a recent TEDtalk to inaugurate this blog about Eco because it discusses an emerging aspect of our fundamental relation to language that was Eco's core focus as an intellectual.

As you will see elsewhere on this site, Eco was an elite, highly traditional, academic theorist, with intellectual foundations as a scholar of the Middle Ages, who nevertheless believed that in the contemporary world we are surrounded by the impact of both elite and popular culture, and we need to understand their effect on us.  Consequently besides writing about the products of elite culture such as the novel Sylvie by the French writer Gerard de Nerval (1808-1855),  Eco wrote about the impact of Superman and Charlie Brown comic strips, Ian Fleming spy novels, pop songs, television shows, and even modern technology such as cell phones. 

For that reason, I thought it would be especially useful to consider the following TEDtalk by John McWhorter, a Columbia University professor of linguistics and English, on the impact of texting on our use of language entitled "Txting is killing language.  JK!!!"

Most younger generation cell phone users will undoubtedly recognize that "JK" means "Just Kidding." But, as someone who could be referred to as an "immigrant" to digital technology because I was born in 1947 long before the advent of information technology, I usually have to google these expressions to learn what they stand for.

Although some traditionalists among the "older generation" may feel that the slang shorthand expressions used in cell phone texting and the lack of concern for punctuation, spelling, grammar, etc. are having a degrading effect on language, the "JK" indicates that McWhorter obviously thinks otherwise.  He offers what I think is a very useful cultural analysis of the impact of texting language as an "emergent" aspect of popular culture that is rapidly changing over time.  

McWhorter's TEDtalk offers an excellent example of what Eco embraced as an intellectual in attempting to understand all aspects of contemporary culture from elite expressions of high culture to the seemingly most banal and common aspects of popular culture.

We are the linguistic species!

https://www.ted.com/talks/john_mcwhorter_txtng_is_killing_language_jk?utm_source=Hidden+voices&utm_campaign=6c5377b912-HIDDENVOICES_2017_03_20&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_586d19e607-6c5377b912-295870625