David Crystal's Thumbspeak: Is Texting Here To Stay?

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Caleb Bigley Professor Katherine Lang English 101 4 June 2016 Compare and Contrast: Authors’ Views on Texting Every author has their own unique and individual style of writing. That’s just who they are. In David Crystal’s article, “2b or not to b”, he talks about his personal opinion of texting in today’s era. Crystal mentions what he sees as pros and cons to texting, as well as the effects it has on people overall. Louis Menand’s article, “Thumbspeak: Is Texting Here to Stay?", brings up his own opinion about text messages and how there are several benefits and disadvantages to using them. Whereas Menand thinks texting is extremely revolutionary, Crystal believes the use of texting is sending us back in time. Crystal tells the readers, from the start of his writing, he is against people texting. At the beginning of his article, Crystal mentions how “people have been arguing that new technology would have disastrous consequences for language”. (Crystal) Such a …show more content…

People don’t like to have to perform the amount of self-presentation that is required in a personal encounter. They don’t want to deal with the facial expressions, the body language, the obligation to be witty or interesting. (Menand) Being able to express what you want to say can be really hard sometimes in person, especially for people who are shy or have anxiety. This is a benefit for many people, even if they don’t have any issues. Although Menand is all for texting, he has spotted some disadvantages with the use of it. “Texting has probably done some damage”, Menand says, “to the planet’s cultural ecology”. (Menand) Other languages are mixing abbreviated texts, and this destroys languages from all across the world. As for that, these is Menand’s view of the pros and cons to “modern

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