I haven’t done a study of “emailese”, but my guess is that there is “correctnees” and “incorrectness” within this evolving writing system. That’s just the way language works. It moves toward a model of “native writer” norms.

Old Norse is gone and we’re still able to communicate.

HA HA HA HA....

HTML to the rescue.

I’m the first to comment. This makes me tremble a bit; I never feel as though I adequately articulate what I’m trying to say when it comes to my discussion of language with you linguist-types.

HOW ARE YOU GENTLEMEN !!
ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US.
YOU ARE ON THE WAY TO DESTRUCTION.

YOU HAVE NO CHANCE TO SURVIVE MAKE YOUR TIME.
HA HA HA HA….

Sorry. I just couldn’t resist posting Classical Engrish. It’s a quarter past 3 at night, please bear with me.

All else being equal, fluency in any language/dialect/register should be as highly valued as any other. But such fluency is probably only valuable within the culture that it pertains to, in which case everyone will have equal status, since every mentally competent human being will learn at least one language with effectively the same ability.

I suppose it’s alright then, to judge someone’s ability to learn, beyond their native dialect of a given language, a sociologically defined prestige form, since it demonstrates more highly tuned learning ability. But I still can’t shake the notion that fluency in non-standard dialects or registers is fluency nonetheless.

There have been plenty more people weighing in as well. Yesterday morning there was a reply from Pierre Mol, the token descriptivist in this conversation, and this morning there were three varied responses including this corker from Ron Sinclair of Bathurst, whom regular letters page readers will probably recognise:

In north-east England Geordies speak an English which suffices for communication within that specific environment, but is a handicap in the wider world, where few understand it. Similarly, though Pierre Mol rightly says nothing can be done about the disease I call “emailese”, its misspellings, lack of punctuation, limited vocabulary, lack of capacity to express complexity and stream-of-consciousness gibberish grossly impede communication outside its in-group. Such limitations ensure it won’t become a standard form of English any time soon.

“Disease”? If it were really a disease, surely it’d have a name like emailitis.

Claire, Zing!

Here’s what I think: the fact is that the world largely DOES judge people based on how well they can manipulate whatever form of language is considered “standard” at the time. You demonstrate this beautifully in your own writing, and I’m willing to bet that many of us would take you far less seriously if you were to write things in a colloquial or non-standard register (“R U gettin’ me, dood?”).

As someone who teaches writing to young adults (my average student is 20 years old), I can tell you that there IS a serious decline in literacy in my environment. My students DON’T read, and freely admit that they don’t – it’s almost a point of pride. Books are “boring” and, more often than not, my students can be found texting or playing (admittedly complex) video games. Does this render them less intelligent than they would be if they were readers? I don’t know for SURE, but I CAN tell you that my voracious reader eight year old is a far more complex thinker already than almost any of my students are. For example, Beanie was able to speak intelligently and meaningfully about JFK’s inauguration speech – the same speech that left most of my students dumb in their seats. She was able to explicate the similes and discern the main points of the speech, two feats that I had to coax out of my class. Whether my daughter’s ability to think critically about a speech is a result of her inherent intelligence or helped by the fact that she’s almost ALWAYS reading, I don’t know. I would be hard-pressed, though, to say that her experiences in reading have NOTHING to do with her capacity for complex thought.

I’ve rambled long enough. This really does interest me, though, and I’m looking forward to seeing if the paper deems it a worthy enough subject to continue allotting column inches to.