John McWhorter - Txting is killing language. JK!!!

John McWhorter gives a speech on Ted Talks about written, spoken and texted language. 

John explains that texting compared to proper written language is so different. Text language is very loose, without the worry of including punctuation and capital letters. We can write the way that we talk, which is something that isn't normally acceptable for formal writing.

He also tells us that language has existed for at least 80, 000 years, and in this time, we have spoken a lot more than we have written. This is because it's 'what we're probably genetically specified for'. One quote that I love because he relates it to a way in which we will understand is 'if humanity had existed for 24 hours, then writing only came along at about 11:07 p.m.' This really puts into perspective how recent written language is compared to spoken language.

So, McWhorter begins with contradicting himself when saying 'texting spells the decline and fall of any kind of serious literacy' before 'texting is a miraculous thing'. The first statement highlights what a lot of people think about texting, but really, it's developing into a wonderful thing. I definitely agree with McWhorter when he thinks that it's a 
'linguistic miracle happening right under our noses.'