1984 and net abbreviations.

In 1984 there is mention that the government is trying to "dumb people down" by limiting the spoken vocabulary, for most peoples thoughts are in the form of words. Basically all human interaction is through words, so no thoughts not encouraged by the government would come into play, if the very way people express themselves is controled by their lack of knowing. Okay, this sets the stage for my question/point.

Are abbreviations people use on the internet, such as "w/e", "nm", "lol", and others (append if you wish in your post), limiting peoples vocabularies? When they type these, do they think the word, or the abbreviation? Does it matter...? Is it concievable that this could lead to a 1984 like situation?

In my opinion, there could be am encouragment by the government to this limited way of think, or maybe the large corporations controlling our government, to produce a world in a 1984 like situation, with optimum control.

 

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Abbreviations aren't limiting our vocabularies. For instance with "lol" standing for "laugh out loud", the words "laugh" and "out" and "loud" still exist in our vocabularies for other instances. For instance: " I laughed out on the porch, it was very loud".

In linguistics there is a general rule saying that the more often the word is used, the shorter it is. For instance, when the Video Cassette Recorder came out, it soon became a common household item, and when it did, it was shortened to VCR. It's more efficient.

Actually if anything, abbreviations are expanding language, because not only do the old words still exist, a new word is created -expanding the human lexicon.

 

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Also, change within a language is inevitable. And who is to say that the new changes we take on to accompany our technological advancements are bad? I mean, for literature it is bad, but otherwise, we are constantly creating more efficient ways of communicating. This process always occured, however, it seems much more rapid now that we are advancing at a much faster speed.

 

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Well I don't think that anyone can blame the government or corporations on these abbreviations. These are things that lazy internet chatters have developed themselves, to keep from having to type out so many words.

Yes, when you respond to everything you think is funny as lol, or just say brb every time you get up from a computer, your vocabulary is becoming rather limited, as these things don't nessisarily describe what exactly is taking place. But then who wants ot continualy type out things like "I found that to be particularly amusing" or "I have to go use the toilet and will be back soon"? It doesn't really matter so much.

 

How do you know there aren't rooms in the basment of corporate america were 40 year old men are paid to sit and think of abbreviations, then use them, with the teenagers of america? Could these be the hot 17 year old girl you thought you were talking to? Or the 18 year old football star? It's easy to masquerade on the internet...

 

Well where's the gain, really? Do you see any particular direction when it comes to internet abbreviations? Yes, it's clear, they are simply used to shorten commonly used expressions that don't need a hell of a lot more explaining.

It's the same reason that every command in Unix is only about 2-5 letters long, most people apparently hate typing too much, so they make shortcuts to speed things up.

I'll admit that the government and corporations have wasted a whole hell of a lot of money in the past, but paying people to create internet abbreviations for no discernable gain is something I put as being beyond their level of idiocy.

Hmm an interesting thought, though: If there is a conspiracy by the nations dastardly power elite to get abbreviations into common usage, then what foul creature came up with 1337 speak?

Elite hacker owns you, sir.

 

In what sense? That poor excuse of a language is just an alternative way to type letters, nothing special or hard to decipher. It's not even abbreviations, it's just a bitch to type, not really a good example.

"heya wut's up w/u" - message i recieved earliar, when I started correcting thier abbreviations. I fled that conversation, it became too much.


Anyways, to your point, the point of theirs may be long term, if the societies vocabulary could become limited enough, then their minds would be easier to control, they would have problems thinking our of the box, they wouldn't have the tools neccesary to. With this form of control, the leaders can do whatever they feel neccesary to meet their ends, even if they be so petty as to live on top of a sky scraper and eat cavier all day. Though, I would like the hawaiin punch fountain... thats not a waste of resources, right?

 

I really don't think that the concept of eliminating words to keep people from thinking about certain things would even work. For one thing, if people generally don't have a word for something they'll make one up, or modify an old one so that they can communicate the idea to others. As for people thinking in words in their own minds, this is certainly true, but people also think of abstract concepts and usually make connections without using words- this is why even though some people may have big ideas they really have trouble putting them into words. If there wasn't any separation between a thought and actually putting it into words, then we'd probably all be award winning novelists.

It seems much more likely to me that these shorthand expressions came about fairly randomly and that they are influenced mostly by people chatting online who don't type very fast, and want some way to speed things along a bit so that they aren't typing for fucking ever to tell someone that they thought an event that happened five minuets ago was funny.

Also, wouldn’t this thread fit a little better in the pseudoscience forum than here in general philosophy?

 

How so.

 

Because you are talking about secret conspiracies using psychological and technological means to subvert the masses.

This isn't a philosophy, it's just a general crackpot conspiracy theory. Pseudoscience is typically where we dump those.

 

Mystech, the concept of limitations on vocabulary coming hand-in-hand with limitations of the engagements of the mind is fairly down-to-earth, not anything of pseudoscience. I don't really know about conspiracies, though. I assumed the "40 year old men" post was a joke.

Fafnir presents a legitimate, and not fantastical postulate, the very same spoken of in Orwell's 1984. This idea is that a lessened grasp of one's language will hinder one's ability to express thoughts. Thus, the thoughts themselves, without a mode of expression, would cease to enter the mind of one afflicted.
One deprived of verbiage becomes one deprived of ideas.

Personally, I see the degeneration of the English language, vivid and perturbing, around me every school year. This rot that pervades the collective American mind is hideous at best, and in my opinion it must forebode a grave increase in the simplicity of the common man.

Most adults seem to have be either slatternly good-for-nothings or frustrating Philistines. I mean, I know more about my own tongue than any of my close relatives, and that isn't an exaggeration. Though none of them are in the scholar's avantguard, I still couldn't say with certainty if this paucity afffects their creativity.

As for people of my age, they're mostly foppish, consumerist plebs connected by unseen umbilical cords to the "Hive-Mind".

I can descry a definite correlation between the loss of vocabulary and the loss of independent thinking . . . at least in my own age
group.
The notion of a conspiracy to encourage this loss is rather farfetched though, seeing that the mollification of the intellect to the point of dumb servility could take eons . . .

 

Can anyone show any specific instances in how the English language is degenerating. So far everything shown has been natural language evolution.

 

Xenu:
Look at the newspapers and how they shy away from "big words".

Further evidence?

When's the last time you heard a sentance as artful as this? Translated into vulgar English, it'd be something like:

Language is, like, getting shitty.

Anecedotal, yes, but telling.

 

Artful? It sounds more like Mike Tyson trying to use some of his ten dollar words that he learned while getting his GED in prison. To be honest I had to struggle to keep from cracking up when I read it. I wouldn't doubt that Redoubtable can indeed write very well, but in this instance I think he was trying just a little too hard.

 

Another thing which I find to be distinctly lacking in youth today is reading comprehension skills.

Redoubtable, I was not arguing that this thread be moved to pseudoscience on the grounds that eliminating words from people's vocabulary was a formula for making dumber people, but on the grounds that Fafnir665 is proposing that there is some sort of government or corporate conspiracy behind this.

If I haven’t made myself clear enough about this with my last post, I'd have to say that simply eliminating words from common usage is not going to suppress ideas. I would say that this concept is a bit backwards, and that it is more likely that words being removed from usage is a sign that the ideas which they expressed are disappearing; Be that because people are becoming stupider, or simply because the culture of the time has pushed a certain concept out into the realms of obscurity for other reasons.

 

Thats not my sole reason, that was an offshoot of what i was thinking. Part of my viewpoint. You chose to challenge that point, I choose to defend it, it is not the sole basis for this thread.

 

Well alright, then, lets get talking about some of those other basses then. And my God man, are you just laying in wait here on the forums all day, watching for people to post on your threads? You respond quicker and more consistently than anyone else I've ever run into.

 

Xev,

Do big words equate to a more effective language?

 

Fafnir I can see your point. I think 1984, even though I don't know it, has a wider social context. 'Big brother' is already here and I think Orwell's point was that boundaries will be set so strictly that people will be afraid to even think anything they shouldn't. This entrapment of thoughts will inevitably lead to a violent overspill however, and the outpouring will be much more severe than the initial thoughts.
By trapping human nature (which is evil) all that is being produced is bodies of evil! People should be allowed to grow and flourish away from the evil that is within us. I have to say the U.S Government is particularly responsible and I beleive this was the authority he was writing about. They set such immediate boundaries and rules that no one is allowed to grow. People can't drink until they are 21 (

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) and people who are caught with cannabis are sent to jail. The prisons are full of these minor offenders, I am informed. By constructing such a country it seems that the Governement has been built on attemping to rid any bad genetics to leave only pure goodness, however I think genetics has less effect on things here than was thought at the time. It is human nature that is bad and a country that squeezes on this will only destroy itself. No one can deny human nature, not even the president!

 

I'll second that. And here's a delayed message to our little friend Redoubtable post marked especially for him. Read it:


Redoubtable:

I've read your posts, and they're all gymnastics in grammar. "Big" words and florid verbosity have their places, and 'everywhere' is not one of them.