DONKEY TIMES 

A cause of different styles of speaking in adult and youth generation

Study shows that the evolving of technology has the biggest influence on generation gap in language

According to a recent study of cultural diversity and language by professor John Iwanaga from Tokyo University , technology has a significant influence on ways of speaking in youth generation.

  Mr. Iwanaga did interviews to 17 and 40 years old Canadian to find out causes of different style of English speaking in different generations. He asked same questions to both person to compare their answers, and found that older generation normally don’t use acronyms.    

  Acronyms or abbreviations are originated from teenagers’ text typing. Teenagers shortened words to type faster and easier because they are too lazy to type all the words in. For example, famous acronyms are “LOL” and “OMG”. LOL is a shortened word for “Laugh At Loud”, and OMG stands for “Oh My God.” In the interviews, both person agreed that abbreviations are common in youth generation’s language.

  “Kids are using abbreviations to speak with each other because it’s easier to say,” said Kristina, who is 40 years old Canadian. 17 years old Canadian teenager, Jasy said “We use acronyms a lot in our conversation because it’s much easier to say.”

  The linguist Mary Bucholtz supports Mr. Iwanaga’s research. She thinks that inasmuch the young are the most proficient and the most frequent users of the digital media, it is to be expected that new forms of language will continuously evolve from that source.

  Clinical professor of management and leadership communications at the college of William and Mary, Bob Stowers also claims that social media and texting allows teenagers to use acronyms.

   In the past generation, there were not much technologies that allows people to communicate with other people. However, in the present generation, people have technologies to do that, such as social medias and chat rooms. Since there are lot of opportunities to interact with someone, teenagers tend to create new languages. Mr. Luke, who took the course of culture at his university, also thinks that culture is formed by interacting.

   Because of generation gaps in language, people sometimes cannot understand  or misunderstand  true meanings  of words. “The world is becoming more globalized, and people need to reduce these misunderstandings as soon as possible,” professor John said.