M1: It’s great to welcome two researchers from the university linguistics department, Angela and George, to lead our discussion of what’s happening to our language today. Folks are pointing to communication on the internet as evidence of a language collapse. Are they right, Angela? F: Well, traditionally we’ve had two mediums – speech and writing. Now we have a third – electronic communication – producing a fundamental difference in the way language is communicated. The internet’s many things: emails, chat rooms and so on. In each you see a new form of language – an amalgam of writing and speech, if you like, with its own conventions. What do you think, George?

M2: Throughout history, technology has allowed us to do new things with language, starting with printing in the 15th century, via the telephone to broadcasting. Just think of all the varieties of usage on radio and television that have come into existence. But with each advance there have been people who’ve prophesised doom. Now naysayers are proclaiming that the net is allowing the language structures to fall apart. But we’re in a transitional period, so the jury’s still out. F: Another thing that people are moaning about is the language in text messaging.

M2: There’s a difference, in my view. All the usual stuff people worry about with language, has some basis. If somebody says, ‘Splitting infinitives is making the language go down the drain,’ it’s because people do actually split infinitives. With text messaging though, it’s people fantasising. Their main criticism is, ‘Texts are full of strange made-up words and misspellings.’ They firmly believe that, although they’ve probably never texted. And one of the first planks of my research was to examine large quantities of texts, to find that more than 90% of words have standard spelling. So it’s a myth.

F: But texts do contain some abbreviations and they’re what people find salient about them.

M2: That’s a fair point, but there are other aspects of the myth too. Some people believe that the culprits are teenagers who are forcing the language into unknown directions. Though if you look into it, as I have, you find virtually every commonly used abbreviation has roots that go way, way back.

F: And interestingly, if we did a survey of texting, we’d find the amount kids generate is probably under 20%. Adults of all ages text now, and institutions text more than everyone put together – that’s texts sent by companies and the stock market, or universities and broadcasters. When you consider the etiquette, most of these organisations bar abbreviations, because they’re concerned they cause ambiguity.

M2: Well, what about this new ‘literary’ genre – text-poetry? What’s your take on it?

F: Its supporters say the length constraint in text-poetry fosters economy of expression, just as other tightly constrained forms of poetry do. To say a text-poem must be written within 160 characters at first seems just as pointless as to say a poem must be 14 lines, but put the form into the hands of a master, and the result can be magic. Of course, text-poetry has some way to go before it matches traditional forms, but they’ve had quite a head-start!

M2: There’s something unparalleled about it. This is nothing to do with the use of texting language or length. It’s more the way the short lines have an individual force. With a textpoem you stay focused on each line as it appears on the tiny illuminated screen. It can be very powerful, though, of course, most are nauseating rubbish. So what’s new?

F: So, what conclusion can we reach?

M2: As far as linguistics is concerned, we need to observe the rapid changes and do research. There are still an extraordinary number of doom-laden prophecies about damage to the language that things like texting are unleashing. But research has begun to dispel these notions. The most important finding is that texting doesn’t erode children’s language. In fact, it improves it in certain aspects. The latest studies have found strong links between text language and the skills underlying success in standard English in pre-teenage children. The more short forms in their messages, the higher they scored on reading and vocabulary. And the younger they received their first phone, the better.

F: People assume that children are learning poor spelling and non-standard grammatical structures. They fail to realise that before you can write and play with short forms, you need a sense of how the sounds of your language relate to the letters. If you’re aware that your texting behaviour is different, you must have already intuited that there’s such a thing as a standard.

Int:
Today, we’re talking to marine biologists Gina Kelso and Thomas Lundman, who you will recently have seen in their award-winning TV series about Antarctica. So, Thomas, what’s it like to suddenly become a household name?

Thomas:

Well, we’re being interviewed for all sorts of publications and programmes since our television series about the wildlife in Antarctica won a major award. I’m often asked if I’ve always been interested in marine wildlife, and I find that hard to answer. What about you, Gina?

Gina:
That’s an easy one for me, Thomas. I grew up on African shores, where my father worked for an international company. I could swim by the age of four, snorkel at five. I guess I was destined for marine biology because I’ve always been as happy in the water as on land. I remember a particular evening when I was about eleven. It was dusk and I was snorkelling, and I came across hundreds of stingrays entwined together. It was extraordinary; another world, and that was the moment that decided me. Although I later went to school in the middle of England, I’d lie awake at night dreaming of the ocean. Fortunately, I got in to university to do zoology and went on to do research in marine biology.

Thomas:
And, like me, you’ve been in wildlife filmmaking for how long… about eight years now?

Gina:
Yeah, I knew it was what I wanted to do, but instead of following the normal route of joining a TV company as a researcher, I was lucky enough to be chosen to take part in that first wildlife programme we did together. Do you remember?

Thomas:
Yeah, where we made the first ever live broadcast under the sea. The practice run was very funny. I had to dive into a swimming pool and give a running commentary on some plastic plants that had been borrowed from a studio to make it look more realistic. Fortunately, the programme itself was a success and so one thing led to another after that, and we both moved more into the production side.

Gina:
And it was tough making this latest series in Antarctica, wasn’t it?

Thomas:
Well, the series is introduced by a well-known naturalist, dressed in a thermal anorak with the hood drawn so tightly that you can only see his nose.

Gina:
And you get an idea of what conditions were like, but he was only the presenter – flown in to do his bit and flown back out again. We spent eight months there filming with a team of cameramen and researchers, living on a specially adapted boat.

Thomas:
I didn’t think I’d stand a chance of working on the programme, because I imagined they’d be looking for rugged types and I’m more the quiet academic. So I was quite taken aback when they asked me. We went for the spring and then returned the following spring, because the winter would’ve been too cold. Even then, on the Antarctic peninsula it can drop to minus fifteen degrees.

Gina:
We were involved mostly with the underwater scenes. It’s a lot warmer in the sea, but we still had to wear extra-thick wetsuits and thermal underwear. The thing about living in that remote research community was I missed hanging out with my friends.

Thomas:
But the Antarctic’s a place of incredible beauty and even after working sixteen-hour days, there were still moments of peacefulness.

Gina:
But being with the animals for so long, we got to see things the other scientists hadn’t. One guy’s been studying fur seals for years – knows everything about them – but he’s never seen them eat. He was thrilled when we were able to tell him about it. And if we’d had his input at the time, we would have realised the significance of what we’d seen and focused more on it.

Thomas:
Absolutely. And the highlight of the trip was the day we entered a bay carved into huge glaciers to find around forty humpback whales feeding. It was very quiet, and then we heard a soft explosion. It was the noise of the whales’ blowholes. What they do is dive down, and as they start to come up again they release air bubbles from their blowholes. Then they swim round each other, trapping the krill they eat in a curtain of bubbles. So it’s an extraordinarily effective piece of teamwork that really increases their feeding efficiency. We filmed them for ten days because we wanted a shot of them as they finished eating. We waited and waited and then one day they just suddenly stopped.