Summary of readings

In our investigation, I explored 4 sources. These 4 sources brought me new light about the subject matter, and there were some interesting implications. Best of all, I found that our subject topic is in fact relevant in the real world. That there was a copyright scare on facebook made me feel that excessively using that technology impacts our abilities to discern right from wrong, instead just following the herd.

In his book "Txtng: the Gr8 Db8", David Crystal argues that texting is not detrimental at all to the development of linguistic skills. He points out, using linguistic analysis, how texting actually looks at and emulates sounds, much like the very root of phonetic languages. There are also references to how certain aspects of texting (such as emoticons like the smiley face ": )") originate in the same way that pictorial languages (such as Chinese) do. Perhaps the most surprising part of his work was how he was able to make a good argument for the benefits of texting in developing linguistic skills. It was not at all an opinion I expected.

Sook Jung Lee studied 4 hypotheses regarding the effects of internet use. They were: displacement, increase, rich-get-richer, and social compensation. Each of the hypotheses had their own predictions on the durations and qualities of relationships that subjects would have at the end of the study. Interestingly, the data pointed to the rich-get-richer hypothesis, which suggests that children who started out with good relationships continued to use online communication and build even stronger ties. This implies that social skills are not necessarily impaired by online communication; those with strong social skills are in fact able to use online media as a channel to reach their friends.

Mark Warschauer wanted to find out if participation rates in the classroom would differ between face to face classrooms and online classrooms. In short, he found that online classrooms tend to have a more even spread of participation, that is students would participate at roughly closer rates among each other, in contrast to the face to face classroom. In a face to face classroom, he found that typically a small subset of the class participates disproportionately more than the rest of the class. This is quite an interesting result to me. While it suggests that online communication might encourage the shyer students to participate more, I feel that this would create an even smaller comfort zone for those students. Hence, if students from the online classroom were placed in a face to face classroom, the disparage between the groups of students would be even more drastic. However, whether this is considered a good or a bad thing, I cannot say. That would depend on what the status quo is, online or face to face classrooms. It might be face to face classrooms for now, but it will change. The world always changes.

Jane Westlake's point of view is also interesting. She explored how using facebook to interact with people is a form of exhibitionism because of how open it is. Instead of just talking to one close friend about things, users can usually post a status and talk to all of their friends about it. She observed that how a person behaves online usually differs from how a person behaves in real life. For example, not many of the facebook users would actually (in real life) talk to all of their friends at once about things the way they would on facebook. I found this very interesting as I recognize that the subjects she used were mostly digital immigrants; this technology is a new thing for them and they were introduced to it after they acclimate to the old face to face method. I am curious to see how this will affect digital natives, the generation that grew up with facebook.

In conclusion, I think that all of the sources were very interesting. They provided a diverse range of viewpoints. As for my personal opinion after reading these sources, I believe that things are definitely changing. Linguistic skills are changing (deteriorating, if seen from the old criteria for linguistic skills). However, I think that the criteria for linguistic skills will probably change. In the same way that right now, letter writing is a very important and quite rare skill (as opposed to back in the olden times when everyone knew how to write letters), perhaps typing up a clever tweet will one day be held in the same light.

Sources:

Crystal, David. Txtng: the Gr8 Db8. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.

Lee, S. J. (2009), Online Communication and Adolescent Social Ties: Who benefits more from Internet use?. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 14: 509–531. doi: 10.1111/j.1083-6101.2009.01451.x

Warschauer, M. (1996). Comparing face-to-face and electronic discussion in the second language classroom. CALICO Journal 13(2), 7-26.

Westlake, Jane E. "Friend Me if You Facebook: Generation Y and Performative Surveillance." TDR: The Drama Review: A Journal of Performance Studies 52.4 (2008): 21-40. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 10 Oct. 2012.