Psyche!

Grammar is alive and well. You got really excited there for a minute, didn’t you? Fish those prepositions out of the trashcan, and put your reading glasses back on: it’s time hear from Canada for a minute.

Instant msg-ing messes with grammar? As if! lol!
Teens adopting unique linguistic shorthand but not ruining syntax
http://www.news.utoronto.ca/bin6/060731-2474.asp
Sonnet L’Abbé, Jul 31 2006

With 80% of Canadian teenagers using instant messaging and adopting its unique linguistic shorthand, many teachers and parents are concerned about the medium’s potential to corrupt kids’ grammar. But instant messaging doesn’t deserve its bad reputation as a spoiler of syntax, suggests a new study from the University of Toronto.

This research focuses not only on characteristic features of computer language, such as, acronyms like lol, but goes deeper by looking at four features of grammar; intensifiers, as in that’s so cool; the future system as in, the show tonight is going to be fun; quotatives, as in “he was like oh hi“; and deontic modality, as in “I have to go to work.

The study finds that instant messaging language does mirror patterns in speech, but that teens, surprisingly, are actually using a fusion of different levels of diction. Teens are using both informal forms that their English teachers would never allow, yet they also use formal writing phrasing that, if used in speech, would likely be considered “uncool.”

“Everybody thinks kids are ruining their language by using instant messaging, but these teens’ messaging shows them expressing themselves flexibly through all registers,” says Tagliamonte. “They actually show an extremely lucid command of the language. We shouldn’t worry.” [...]

Good news am i rite?

Just thought we could use a light story after all these reports of testing and everything. Note that I’m not even coupling this with a story about instant messaging or texting resulting in thumb-crippling injury!