e-Newspeak

Here I type in a media that has been the subject of my scorn and admiration. The proliferation of cell phone use and the exponential growth of the internet as a communication tool has led to a transmutation of the English language, one that I have seen creep its way into my students' papers and has, thus, been a cause of concern for me.

Consider the following. If I were to, say 10 years ago, express my love for someone in written form, asking her to meet me for dinner later in the evening, it might read as follows (please excuse the melodramatic sappiness, it is done only for effect):

My dear, my breath stops short for you, my heart slows then races then slows again. Your smile makes my soul smile. Please meet me at our place this evening, the place where first we met and fell in love.

Translated in computer or cell-phone language, this might now read: I <3 <3 <3 u! :-) C U l8r @ McD's?

Granted this may be exaggeration, but the Orwellian elements of Newspeak are certainly alive and well in our time. The question I have been tossing back and forth for some time is this: To what extent will these new media affect people's abilties to effectively communicate in a variety of contexts?

I will never forget my first year as a high school teacher, reading my first-ever batch of student essays. I was flabbergasted to see e-Newspeak in my students' papers. "U" as a substitute for "you"; "r" as a substitute for "are" (and in one horrific case, "our"). Surely, I thought, they must jest? However, when I confronted those offenders of good English and good sense, they informed me that such use was acceptable among many of their former and current teachers. In fact, it was the only manner in which several of my students felt comfortable writing. I did my best to teach them that writing in a variety of contexts for a variety of audiences was a skill that must be mastered -- or at the very least, acknowledged as a necessity.

As we teachers encounter increasing numbers of internet-savvy students who navigate (and read) more websites than their predecessors, will we be forced to more aggressively combat e-Newspeak? As more students join sites like LiveJournal and MySpace at the behest of their friends and, therefore, expose themselves to further bastardizations of the English language, will teachers eventually spend more time teaching students to write properly than to write well? While the "world at my fingertips" mentality among students is certainly one I hope they espouse, as I believe this can foster greater critical analysis of ideas and create more informed citizens, the fact that students will -- by sheer probabilities-- read a far greater percentage of poor writing than good writing leads me to fear the inevitability that they will acquire and apply poor habits in their own writing.

My future research, then, must focus on a search for literature related to this topic, and as I move throughout my graduate studies I hope to find evidence that will either allay my concerns or provide me the impetus to do my part to fix this problem. My greatest fear is the realization of Orwell's dystopic, language-impaired society.