The technologization of youth culture Crispin Thurlow

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The technologization of youth cultureCrispin
Thurlow

• Guest lectureCOM 597 MC Program18 November 2003

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Why Nokia's getting all excited In 2002, we
estimate the global subscriber base to have grown
to an estimated 1,125 million users, and project
this number to exceed 1.5 billion users in 2005.
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Why Nokia's getting all excited
Some young end users
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Media framing
Catherine
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Media framing
Geek
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Corporate branding
If you don't have a mobile, you're effectively a
non-person.
Orange
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SMS What end users really want
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Mobile phones and text-messaging
Everyone is jmping on the bndwgn
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Young people andnew technologies
Young and free but tied to the mobile.
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Language and communication technology
Hell is other people talking webspeak on mobile
phones.
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Thurlow, Crispin Brown, Alex. (2003).
Generation Txt? The sociolinguistics of young
people's text-messaging. Discourse Analysis
Online.
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SMS Looking to length
ill be there later today.what time are u
coming?
R u ok? (7)
Hay suga havent spoken 2u 4 ages!how ru? U had
xams.had 4 got 1 2 moro.the hardest im scared.u
got hopuse yet 4 nxt ear?dont even know who im
gona live with yet.Rx (166)
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Communication orientations

• Friendship work
• Humour
• Chain messages
• Sex and flirting

• Hyper- coordination...

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Communication orientations

• Friendship work
• Humour
• Chain messages
• Sex and flirting
• Hyper-coordination
• Co-presence and subversion...

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The language of SMS
Netspeak is a development of millennial
significance. A new medium of linguistic
communication does not arrive very often, in the
history of the race. (Crystal, 2001 238-9)
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New linguistic forms?

• shortenings, contractions clippings
• acronyms and initialisms
• letter/number homophones
• misspellings and non-conventional spellings
• accent stylizations

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The language of SMS
Three maxims 1. Dual maxim of brevity and
speed (a) the abbreviation of lexical
items (b) minimal use of capitalization and
punctuation 2. Paralinguistic restitution 3.
Phonological approximation
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hey babe.T.Drunk.Hate all luv.Have all men.Fuck
them.how r u?Were ou utery drunk.im
changing.Now.Rachel.xxx.Hate every1

• the blurring of f2f and mediated communication
• linguistically banal and phenomenologically
  mundane
• distinctive (not unique) generic feel
• length
• non-standard typographic markers
• small-talk orientation

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The futures bright, the futures
planned obsolescence, technological convergence
and corporate mergers Geek meets butterflies VZN
and MSN
The WiFi Opportunity for Developing Nations
UNICTTF (United Nations Information
Communication Technologies Task Force)