Teenager's Everyday Literacies

This article examines the context of new communication technologies as a kind of everyday literacy and how written features of "texting" function paralinguistically as cues to how the writing is to be understood.

It identifies and discusses how four features in particular - eye dialect, slang, emoticons and meta-markings work to clarify meaning.

Whilst clearly an academic treatise it is a very approachable piece to read.  What it has helped develop for me is greater insight into the world of digital communication, particularly some of the nuances of texting and ways of expressing emotions in print (though I've not yet entirely changed my position).  In so doing it assumes a degree of familiarity with the unwritten conventions of the medium  - something possibly lost on many over 40's brought up using pen and paper!

From an academic perspective it raises interesting issues about the models of teaching and the curricula we use and of course the ever present issue of what actually constitutes literacy in a multimodal world. 

In its conclusion, the article draws on Thurlow (2006) who suggested that "it appears that language and technology is (once again) ...being scapegoated for a range of adult anxieties about newness,change, and perceived threats to the status quo". [lowering of standards] when in fact teenagers are simply taking advantage of the technology available, and in actual fact writing more than than they did with traditional media because of its immediacy, while pushing the boundaries of what adults accept - just as teens always have!

References

Haas,C. Takayoshi, P. Carr, B. Hudson, K.& Pollack,R. (2011) Young Peoples Everyday Literacies: The Language Features of Instant Messaging  Researching in the Teaching of English, 45(4), 378-404

Thurlow, C.(2006) From statistical panic to moral panic: The metadiscursive construction and popular exaggeration of new media language in the print media. Journal of Computer Mediated Communication, 11(3), 667-701