There has been much discussion on the effect that digital is having upon handwriting and literacy as a generation grow up using keyboards and touch-screens instead of pens and pencils. We’ve already touched on the fact that young people are choosing to read online over print by quite a margin. All of these factors have a seemingly negative impact on literacy right? Especially considering the transient nature of information represented on screens. However, It has been suggested that digital information is allowing young people to write and express themselves more than any generation previously.

With 8.5 million 14-24 year olds Facebook users in the UK there has been some past suggestions that so much informal writing has lead to deterioration in literacy. Teachers have become worried about the appearance of ‘text speak’ in exams. While there is a certain amount of hysteria surrounding this phenomena, there is also contradicting research suggesting that “Children’s use of textisms is not only positively associated with word reading ability, but it may be contributing to reading development”. While these two arguments may not have reached a conclusion in any respect and will not for quite some time, one thing is clear. The generation growing up with digital is writing far more than any other more before it.

A recent study at Stanford University has supported this and it’s organizer, professor Andrea Lunford stated that “we’re in the midst of a literacy revolution the likes of which we haven’t seen since Greek civilization”. Largely because much socializing takes place in the digital sphere, an amazing 38% of the writing done by the students surveyed has nothing to do with school. This percentage is amazing if you think back twenty years to how those who might be writing outside of school would be looking to make their careers out of it through academia or journalism. The social nature of this writing also disposes the writers to be fully aware, more aware than the young people of previous generations, of who their audience is beyond university professors. Previous generations did not even write for an audience, which must surely have an impact on honing their literacy skills. Digital will impact literacy further as its presence is increasingly felt beyond the desktop. A university in Australia is adding a course on how to Twitter, showing the importance now being instilled in what Clive Thompson calls “haiku like concision”. With the e-reader set to ascend in popularity in 2010 and physical libraries set to up their amount of digital reading devices there is clearly a movement towards digital literacy that is not going to slow down, with it’s impact only just being able to be assessed.

LOL Cats have complete language driven by users

While there are those that would shoot down any suggestion that digital is improving literacy, the 1,616 students interviewed at Stanford said “they defined good prose as something that had an effect on the world” suggesting that the role of the audience could be progressing language in some ways, and that the significance of the message is becoming more important than the medium. There is a view that the progression of language is natural. There are many silent letters in English. Will writers of English hundreds of years in the future continue to spell ‘through’ with a ‘g’ if it hasn’t been spelt with one for a very long time? We haven’t pronounced ‘olde’ phonetically in hundreds of years.

This again raises questions of phonetics in particular from writing, and recalls the perhaps absurd recent story of the London translation company that required a fluent speaker of ‘Glaswegian English’.The recent film ‘Made In Jamaica’ was also wholly subtitled. Languages do diverge and progress over time. Grammar has always been open to subjective opinions. It’s now common not to spell ‘internet’ with a capital ‘I’. The impact digital is having on language could easily be seen as larger step in this progression. Abbreviations like ‘LOL’ are beginning to convey their own particular connotations, meaning and significantly impact on the message of conversations and dialogue. However, like with any generational conflict that the internet and digital is helping to bring to the fore (copyright is another which we will explore next week), it’s not as straight forward as one way or the other. Websites like http://savethewords.org/, a brilliant campaign from the Oxford English Dictionary highlights the beauty and striding connotations in rare underused words, and so like the copyright argument, a balance between progression and the status quo must be struck without each party entirely dismissing the other argument. The new digital literacy and language that young people are driving and creating is not going to disappear, or shrink in any respect, so it must be down to society as a whole to decide which words both convey the meaning of our messages and yet don’t mutate language beyond comprehension.

We'll see...