Alright, I've noticed that issues of language, spelling, and grammar keep popping up in other areas of the forum. I figured that this topic comes up enough to warrant creating a thread for it. Plus, as a linguist, I find discussions on language to be infinitely fascinating. [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-smile.gif[/img]
So, the question that often comes up is: "Is it really important how I type my posts?"
And the answer is yes. You see, since this is an online forum, the only way we interact with each other is through the written word. No one has the benefit if being able to speak to you face-to-face, therefore all their opinions of you are based upon what you write and how you write it. People only generally consider the first aspect as being important: the content. And while the content of a post reveals a lot about who someone is, they often don't realize how much the manner in which they say it also shapes others' perceptions of them.
There have been linguistic studies done on this, and I'm not gonna bother to dig them out, but if anyone is interested, I could probably hook you up with some statistics. Basically, the outcomes are as follows: People who use a 'standard' form of a language are regarded as being more intelligent, and are likely to be more successful, whereas people who use non-standard dialects are often thought of as being below average intelligence, even if this is not the case.
Language can also show aspects of your personality. Let me pick on a couple gotwoot members here for examples. Souryusen always starts his sentences with a capital letter and ends them with a period, even in the irc channel where barely anyone uses ending punctuation. Also, the words that he uses are always very precise. This reflects a few things about his personality, namely an attention to detail, and a meticulousness that does not give in to the laziness that everyone else adopts (Sou, correct me if I'm wrong here.....I'm randomly speculating from what I know of sociolinguistics). And in fact, I'm glad that he is like that, because his profession leaves very little room for sloppiness or shortcuts.
Second example is one of our newer members, Chaoskiddo, who's been hassled for his grammar and spelling recently. The question that was posed to him was why would he use 'wuz' in the place of 'was' since they both have the same amount of letters and hence it's not saving him any time. I think the answer to this lies in fact that language is often used not just to convey information but also to build solidarity between people. One of the ways that this is done, is by having a certain dialect that you use with your friends, with which you relate to each other, but don't necessarily use with outsiders. In my opinion, Chaoskiddo's use of 'wuz' and such, words that he normally uses with his friends, signifies that he regards us as his peers, and is relating to us on that level.
Whew, this is getting longer than I thought. Sorry about that guys. I just like linguistics so much that I get carried away. So, I have other random thoughts and theories, but I'll save them for another time if anyone seems to be interested. Otherwise, feel free to post any thoughts you have about language, spelling and grammar on the forums or just in general. Let's try to keep this away from flaming anyone in particular though. So no posts like "so-and-so types like a retard". And if you didn't make it through reading all of this massively long post, it's ok. It's all rambling anyways.
Reply With Quote
