It seems like people older than myself are always complaining about the way young people communicate.
There is always someone bemoaning the state of the English language, insisting that proper communication is over and we are all doomed to suffer and die in a world of meaningless abbreviations.
Bloody millennials, they mutter, as their beloved child sends them a text message they just can't understand. What does ‘‘omw'' mean, they curse, rubbing their thighs and shaking their heads in agitation.
People my age and younger have grown up communicating via electronic devices. We mightn't be accustomed to writing letters on paper (though some of us are), but we are very familiar with written communication, particularly written communication that happens almost instantaneously.
I sigh so, so deeply every time I see another think-piece going on and on about how young people have made language shallow and frivolous, about how we've lost the ability to connect with other people because all we can manage is to send nonsensical fragments of code via the dreaded internet.
If you think about the subject for longer than five minutes you will realise that communication really hasn't suffered, and neither has language. I'm no linguist, but I do know that language isn't static.
In fact, the way we speak and the way we write is constantly evolving. For example, this week I tutored a class on Chaucer, and I for one am relieved that since the Middle Ages we have developed fairly standardised spelling and moved past telling stories entirely in verse.
I don't know much about how this all happened, but I can guess that it was the result of people working out how the written word was going to be most effective in terms of communication and reproduction.
As a society we've mastered the printing press and other means of long-form communication, and we've pretty much accepted that books, newspapers, and letters are effective means of communication.
So why are we so sceptical about what happens online?
Most kinds of instant messaging impose some sort of character limitation, or, at the very least, you're dealing with a screen that is small and not well suited to lengthy messages.
In order to cope with this, you're going to have to work with abbreviations, and these abbreviations are going to have to be standardised so that everyone knows what you mean.
And in order to be standardised, the abbreviations are going to need to be very effective when it comes to conveying meaning. Now, there isn't a big style guide put together every few months by a group of youths who decide which abbreviations work well and which don't.
People pick up on the most effective language to use in online communication almost by osmosis, it would seem.
Once you start communicating with someone who is using an abbreviation that makes a lot of sense to you, the chances are you will start using it too, and so it gets circulated enough until it's commonplace.
This doesn't seem like bad communication to me. But what about nuance, I hear the desperate cries, enough about silly shorthand; no-one has any nuance these days.
Again, this isn't true. While emojis might seem childish and ridiculous, they are actually a pretty good way of conveying nuance and feeling in an electronic message.
For example, if you want to let someone know that your message is light hearted or casual, you might end it with a smiley face. If you wanted to communicate via text message that you're angry or unimpressed, you might choose to end your message with a full stop.
Casual or uncertain messages where you don't want to come across as too serious might end with no punctuation, or the ever-useful ‘‘lol'' or one of its many variants.
Obviously you are not actually laughing out loud; in fact, it might be an indicator of self-deprecation, or a signal to the other person that you aren't really serious, or you're uncertain about what you've suggested.
What older generations see as a confusing mess of poor communication is actually just young people adapting to ever-developing technological advances.
We have developed ways to cope where elements of online communication aren't as effective as face-to-face communication, and we've embraced a society that expects us to constantly and immediately respond to what is going on around us at all times.(PS: omw means on my way.)
●Millie Lovelock is a Dunedin student.
