Lesson 3: New Literacies and Languages in an Online Global World

What to expect?
At the end of the lesson, the students can:
1. demonstrate understanding of the new literacies and language
in an online global world;
2. differentiate digital and non-digital environments (sociolinguistic
changes);
3. describe a phatic situation;
4. justify digital communication like instant messaging as a form of
speech;
5. describe changes in orthography and
6. examine the new digital communication literacies.

Pre-discussion
If you are a typical student reading this book, you will likely have some
other task going on at the moment. You may be watching television or checking
your Facebook page. You may also be instant messaging.
You may be checking some facts you have just read on your iPad. Perhaps you are
listening to music. Undoubtedly, your smartphone is charged, sitting on your desk. When you
use that cell phone, it is just as likely that you will send a text message as pressing the dial
button.
“What are we, as speakers and writers, doing to our language with our new
communication technologies, and how, in turn, do our linguistic practices impact the way we
think and the way we relate to other people?” (Baron, 2008). In other words, what is our
linguistic life like now that we are “always on"? There are many ways to examine language and
digital communication. Still, we will address the four most important ones in this section: We
will look at sociolinguistic changes, formal syntactical and grammatical changes, changes in
orthography, and possible cognitive impacts of these new literacies.

Lesson Outline
Sociolinguistic Changes. As we have already said, the use of language is
perhaps the most important reflection of one’s personal and social identity.

142
 However, language is who you are. In non-digital environments, our speech and dress
are the most conspicuous presentations of ourselves. However, we are constrained in many
ways in day-to-day, face-to-face real life. No matter how cool he talks and how baggy his pants
are, a fifty-year-old male college professor remains that, even if his ball cap is on backward.
However, on the Internet, these restrictions need to be improved. On the Web, not only
can we be anonymous, we can be anybody. All bets are off. Where previously the implicit rules
of social politeness may have kept my language informed, in a comment to a blog or an online
news story, I can say whatever I please without fear of social consequences.
Likewise, in face-to-face communication, you are compelled to interact with people and
conversations as they come up. You have to deal with meeting that old boyfriend on the quad;
I have to deal with that problem student who comes to the office for hand-holding every day.
We cannot avoid these encounters. However, in digital communications, we are all “language
Czars,” as Naomi Baron argues (2008).
We control whom we want to talk to, when, and on what terms. Although in the past,
letters and telephones allowed some degree of management of whom we would communicate
with, this complete control of accessibility we now have in the twenty-first century is
unprecedented.
The types of communications have also radically changed. For example, the
anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski (1923) proposed that some speech is phatic
communication, small talk for its own sake rather than for conveying information. Digital
communication offers both faster and more distant phatic communication. As any professor
can tell you, the moment class ends, the outcome to the cell phones. If it is a spoken
conversation, invariably, it is brief and very phatic: “It is me. How are you doing? I am fine. Just
got out of class. Yeah. Catch you later. Bye.”
Are Instant Messages Speech? Although obvious, we must remember that no matter how
superficially it may appear to be the same as face-to-face interactions, digital communication is
not exactly speech. Crystal (2004) suggests that there are at least three major differences.
1. First, for the most part, there needs to be more simultaneous feedback in an actual
conversation. All the proxemic and paralinguistic features need to be included. The
feeling that the other person is not “getting” what we are saying would allow us to
alter our conversational strategy in a face-to-face encounter.
2. Second (unlike at a party where we have to decide which of the many
subconversations to attend), in a chatroom or Facebook encounter, all messages

143
 are created equal. This is both a plus and a minus. “It has never been possible before
in the history of human communication to participate simultaneously in multiple
conversations.” You can now “contribute to as many as your mental powers and
typing speed permit” (Crystal, 2004).
3. Third, the rhythm of communication is different. The lag between sending a
message and getting a response in digital communication differs greatly in
telephone or face-to-face encounters. This can cause a fair degree of ambiguity:
Did Jane read my tweet yet? Did Professor Smith get my e-mail, or will he not give
me an extension? Did I return to Joe when he friended me, or did I forget?
Changes in Orthography. Converting spoken language into writing has always been
challenging, even though the school system tries to give us prescriptive rules and teach that
they are absolute and unalterable. However, even today, no complete agreement exists about
“correct” spelling and punctuation. Writing changes over time as fashions and opinions change.
That orthographic conventions are flexible is particularly true regarding digital
communication. Is it online or online, or e-mail or email? Is the Internet supposed to be
capitalized? What do we do about all those -s’s that are now -z’s, as in Dawgz, pirated software,
and shared files? Is it OK or okay? Is it acceptable to use the way for “by the way” in an e-mail
message—to anyone (even a professor)?
Digital Communication, Literacy, and Cognition. Digital communication literacy is
changing modern life in education and cognition. Leu et al. (2007) argue that there are four
defining characteristics of these new literacies:
1. New information and communication technologies involving novel literacy tasks
require new skills and strategies to be used effectively.
2. Though this is often resisted “overtly, by deliberate educational policies… or
covertly, by educators who sometimes are not nearly as literate with the Internet
as the students they teach,”—new literacies are now a critical component for full
participation in civic, economic, and social life in a global world.
3. These new literacies are deictic; they change as new technologies emerge. Of
course, literacy has always changed with technology (e.g., consider the intellectual
and social revolutions brought about by the advent of movable type and the
printing press). What is different about digital communication is its immediacy. It
took centuries for the full impact of the Gutenberg press to be felt, but the Internet
allows for the immediate and universal exchange of new ideas and technologies.

144
 4. New literacies are “multiple, multimodal, and multifaceted,” thus making them more
complex to apprehend and understand. How this will be integrated into the twenty-
first-century educational system remains to be seen.

Summary
Language is a reflection of one’s social identity. As to sociolinguistic
changes, a non-digital environment may need to show or come up for the
conversation.
In contrast, the digital environment largely involved “language Czars” (users). People
communicate or convey conversation differently from a lengthy interaction. They communicate
very quickly, and it is called phallic communication.
As Crystal (2004) suggested, instant messages may never satisfy the criteria of
becoming a speech. It lacks simultaneous feedback and excessive communication platforms,
and the rhythm of communication is different. Spelling is absolute and unalterable. Writing
changes over time as fashions and opinions change.
New digital communication literacies have emerged. New information and
communication technologies require new skills; new literacies are now a critical component for
full participation in civic, economic, and social life in a global world; literacy has always changed
with technology, and new literacies are “multiple, multimodal and multifaceted,” thus making
them more complex to apprehend and understand.

Assessment/Enrichment
1. How does digital technologies and the environment affect the
interpersonal relationship of people? What are the advantages and
disadvantages? (10 points)
__________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________

145
__________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________

2. List three (3) products of technologies that require additional manipulative skills or
literacies (15 points)
__________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________

References
Crystal, D. (2004) The language revolution. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.

Crystal, D. (Ed.). (2010). The Cambridge encyclopedia of language. (3rd ed). Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge University Press.

Jourdan, C., & Tuite, K. (Eds.). (2006). Language, culture, and society: Key topics in linguistic
anthropology (Vol. 23). Cambridge University Press.
http://196.189.45.87/bitstream/123456789/29011/1/18%20pdf.pdf

Salzmann, Z., Stanlaw, J., & Adachi, N. (2014). Language, culture, and society: An introduction to
linguistic anthropology. Westview Press.
https://dspace.ttu.edu.vn/bitstream/handle/123456789/3457/

Stanlaw, J., Adachi, N. & Salzmann, Z. (2017). Language, culture, and society: An introduction to
linguistic anthropology. New York: Routledge. https://b-
ok.asia/s/language%20culture%20society

146