fatman17
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OMG, when did we start talking like txt msgs?
ILY! Susan Mausharts 16-year-old daughter often calls out over her shoulder as she leaves the house. Sure, actual words would be better. But Mom knows not to complain.
A mother of teenagers is pathetically grateful for an `I love you no matter what form it takes, she observes.
Then there are the various forms of LOL that her teens use in regular parlance its become a conjugable verb by now. And of course, theres the saltier acronym used by son Bill: WTF, Mom?! But before you judge, note that former VP candidate Sarah Palin just used that one in a TV interview. And CNNs Anderson Cooper used it on his show the other night.
Acronyms have been around for years. But with the advent of text and Twitter-language, it certainly feels like were speaking in groups of capital letters a lot more. Its a question that intrigues linguists and other language aficionados even though theyll tell you they have absolutely no concrete research on it.
Its fascinating, says Scott Kiesling, a socio-linguist and professor at the University of Pittsburgh. Whats interesting to me as a linguist is figuring out which words get picked up, and why. What is it that makes OMG and WTF and LOL so useful that they spread from the written to the spoken form?
One possibility, Kiesling proposes, is that some of these acronyms actually become a whole new thought, expressing something different than the words that form them. For example: You wouldnt say, `OMG, that person just jumped off a cliff, he explains. But youd say, `OMG, do you see those red pants that person is wearing?
Which brings us to WTF, an acronym that needs no translation. When Palin used the expression recently in a Fox News interview twice in two sentences, actually some pundits were a little shocked. (Palin was playing on the presidents Win the Future message in his State of the Union speech.)
Thats going to be a tough one for her to come back from and explain, remarked conservative commentator Pat Buchanan on MSNBCs Morning Joe. Host Joe Scarborough simply shook his head and said: Not very presidential. But the chatter died down quickly. I havent seen any big blowup, says Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania and an expert on political communication. It was misplaced humor. But I assume she thought it was clever and thus would not be judged.
Clever may be in the eyes of the beholder. But Palin is not the only prominent person to use the expression on TV recently. On Anderson Cooper 360 Monday night, the host was commenting on rapper B.O.B.s use of an airplanes public address system to perform for the captive passengers. WTF, B.O.B.? Cooper asked. Imagine if hed said the actual words a quick call from network executives might have ensued. But WTF seems to have become a winking way of saying something with a little edge, a little bite, without being truly offensive. ap
ILY! Susan Mausharts 16-year-old daughter often calls out over her shoulder as she leaves the house. Sure, actual words would be better. But Mom knows not to complain.
A mother of teenagers is pathetically grateful for an `I love you no matter what form it takes, she observes.
Then there are the various forms of LOL that her teens use in regular parlance its become a conjugable verb by now. And of course, theres the saltier acronym used by son Bill: WTF, Mom?! But before you judge, note that former VP candidate Sarah Palin just used that one in a TV interview. And CNNs Anderson Cooper used it on his show the other night.
Acronyms have been around for years. But with the advent of text and Twitter-language, it certainly feels like were speaking in groups of capital letters a lot more. Its a question that intrigues linguists and other language aficionados even though theyll tell you they have absolutely no concrete research on it.
Its fascinating, says Scott Kiesling, a socio-linguist and professor at the University of Pittsburgh. Whats interesting to me as a linguist is figuring out which words get picked up, and why. What is it that makes OMG and WTF and LOL so useful that they spread from the written to the spoken form?
One possibility, Kiesling proposes, is that some of these acronyms actually become a whole new thought, expressing something different than the words that form them. For example: You wouldnt say, `OMG, that person just jumped off a cliff, he explains. But youd say, `OMG, do you see those red pants that person is wearing?
Which brings us to WTF, an acronym that needs no translation. When Palin used the expression recently in a Fox News interview twice in two sentences, actually some pundits were a little shocked. (Palin was playing on the presidents Win the Future message in his State of the Union speech.)
Thats going to be a tough one for her to come back from and explain, remarked conservative commentator Pat Buchanan on MSNBCs Morning Joe. Host Joe Scarborough simply shook his head and said: Not very presidential. But the chatter died down quickly. I havent seen any big blowup, says Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania and an expert on political communication. It was misplaced humor. But I assume she thought it was clever and thus would not be judged.
Clever may be in the eyes of the beholder. But Palin is not the only prominent person to use the expression on TV recently. On Anderson Cooper 360 Monday night, the host was commenting on rapper B.O.B.s use of an airplanes public address system to perform for the captive passengers. WTF, B.O.B.? Cooper asked. Imagine if hed said the actual words a quick call from network executives might have ensued. But WTF seems to have become a winking way of saying something with a little edge, a little bite, without being truly offensive. ap
