Alumnus speaks about social media
English is a continually evolving language that has undergone changes for centuries.
During his speech Friday, the latest installment of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences’ Distinguished Alumni Speaker Series, author Brandon Schrand spoke about issues regarding the way modern trends in the English language are perceived both positively and negatively.
Schrand called his speech “The Virtue of Misbehavior in the Digital Age; Or, How the Humanities Taught Me to Take the Time.”
Reading from his own essay, titled “Esto Perpetua,” named after Idaho’s state motto, which is Latin for “let it be perpetual,” the 2003 USU graduate spoke specifically of the way social media like Facebook and Twitter are changing the English language.
“Twitter is unabashedly all about compression and acceleration,” Schrand said. “Twitter has not only made email seem clunkish and antiquated, but it seems to be rerouting the way we communicate.”
Jasilyn Brinkerhoff, a sophomore majoring in English education, said she thinks language is destroyed when condensed too much.
“I feel there’s a certain structure in the way to make everything fit for what we need to say, but there are rules that apply,” she said. “You can change things and everything, and I feel like a big part of English is coming up with different creative ideas of how to switch things around and say it. But I feel when we to start to shorten things and be lazy about all those rules, you start to lose something more about the language.”
Brianna Anderson, a sophomore majoring in creative writing agreed.
“I think it’s also affecting people’s abilities to write,” Anderson said. “My little sister – I’d read over what she writes, and I could tell it’s like texting or Facebook or something.”
Brinkerhoff said she’s noticed things such as diverse vocabulary are going the way of the dodo because of 140-character limits in the way people have started to express themselves – Twitter posts are limited to 140 characters.
“There’s so many vocabulary words that are missing nowadays that can add so much to what you mean and what you say,” Brinkerhoff said. “I think everyone could speak a lot stronger and have more meaning to their words if people would stop shortening things.”
Schrand shared an experience he had in his current position at the University of Idaho as an assistant professor in which he defended the case to save letters written by famous people to the university about various “mundane or whatever” subjects because they were all handwritten.
“Those bits of writing are important because the presence of the human is on the page,” Schrand said. “There’s a trace element of human caught up in the type of paper that they choose and the envelopes and their handwriting, their signature.”
Anderson said she thinks handwriting should not become a lost art replaced by ones and zeros.
“I think that it seems like it’s becoming a dying thing, but I think it’s important still,” she said. “I don’t like ebooks or Kindles or anything, because I agree with what he said about how it’s breaking down language and artifacts and human history. It’s not something I’m a fan of. I like having a book that I can feel and touch.”
However, Schrand said it might not be a bad thing for the language to change.
“Even with the advent of the electric typewriter, written correspondence hasn’t really changed that much,” he said. “The language was still the same. The sentences were still wholly created. Once the language was sort of truncated and divided and broken into hashtags or broken into texts or tweets, then there’s a different kind of collapse.”
Ellen Reimschussel, a USU alumna who graduated in 2010 with a major in creative writing, said she agreed with Schrand on how shortening messages changes the way people think and speak.
“I think that it does limit the language,” she said. “The language is evolving, but I don’t know whether or not that’s good. I like that (Schrand) said that it is different, that it is shortening speech in a different way, and it’s not clear yet whether (it’s) that we’re just too worried about it or just being reactionary, or whether it is a big difference.”
Schrand said though he resists condensing changes, he also said he contributes to them because he owns an iPhone and has a Facebook account.
“Is this just another swan song?” Schrand asked, rhetorically. “Only time will tell.”
Schrand said while his parents were supportive of his work, it is important for writers to pen their words compassionately.
“Of course these were complicated things,” Schrand said. “If you have an axe to grind, it’s probably not a good idea to write it because it says more about you than it does about your subject matter. If you’re going to implicate someone, implicate yourself.”
Anderson agreed with Schrand and said authors should not apologize for telling their own stories.
“I agree with that,” Anderson said. “Your story is your story but I also agree with what he said about writing compassionately and thinking complexly because people are fallible. Maybe what you remember is something else than what they remember.”
– tavin.stucki@aggiemail.usu.edu