Language: September 2008 Archive Page

When I first introduced my Seton Hill students to blogging in 2003, before Facebook had mainstreamed social networking into a neatly wrapped package, my students posted a mixture of personal and academic material.  Now that even my committed bloggers do most of their social networking elsewhere, I have started pitching the academic blogs as a more professional practice for real-world writing.  But my student Andy LoNigro just posted a thoughtful reflection on the weblog taxonomy promoted by Crawford Kilian in Writing for the Web 3.0.  Andy pushes back a little, in a way that makes me think that perhaps the reports of the death of social blogging have been greatly exaggerated.

I began to think about what categories our blogs for Dr. Jerz would fall into? I first thought about a category called Academic Blogs but what we write isn't always for academics. We have the opportunity to express our freedom and creative abilities. The more I looked into it and thought about it I realized that my blog here at SHU has an aspect of each of the categories that Kilian talks about in this section, thus creating a blend of all of them spawning the name: Blender Blog. It's like taking all of the cateogories and throwing them in a blender. -- Andy LoNigro

So, will "blender blogging" catch on?  My colleague Mike Arnzen coined the term "pedablogue," I use "xenoblogging" in my blogging rubrics, and my former student Evan Reynolds coined the wonderful term "drive-by blogging" (to describe the sudden bursts of not-too-terribly-focused blogging energy necessary to catch up when a blogging portfolio is fast approaching).

As it happens, in another class I teach a design tool called Blender 3D, and there are plenty of hits for "blender blog" in that sense.

An informative review of Crystal's Txtng: The Gr8 Db8, a book I need to put on my reading list.  I've said many times that I've *never* encountered a student who absolutely cannot switch between txtspk and standard English.  Thus, to unpack that double-negative, I think students can and do regularly make the shift between social texting and more formal writing  -- though I do think I'm seeing more instances of the lowercase "I" than when I first started teaching.

Crystal does an excellent job exposing these illusions in Txtng, even if he doesn't designate them as such. And people seem to be listening. On his blog, Crystal notes that British media coverage has fairly addressed the book's six main points. The first three map precisely to the Zwickyan trifecta of illusions:

• Text messages aren't full of abbreviations - typically less than ten percent of the words use them. [Frequency Illusion]
• These abbreviations aren't a new language - they've been around for decades. [Recency Illusion]
• They aren't just used by kids - adults of all ages and institutions are the leading texters these days. [Adolescent Illusion]

For completeness, here are Crystal's other main points about texting:

• Pupils don't routinely put them into their school-work or examinations.
• It isn't a cause of bad spelling: you have to know how to spell before you can text.
• Texting actually improves your literacy, as it gives you more practice in reading and writing.

It remains to be seen if American media outlets will be as responsive to Crystal's arguments. (The book was released in the UK in the beginning of July and in the US in the beginning of September.) Here's hoping they get the (text) message.

Peter (age 10, having just read another book on the Civil War): Daddy, what do you know about William TECK-um-suh Sherman?

Me: Te-CUM-suh.  Not much. Other than during the Civil War, he lead a march to the sea that split the Confederacy into north and south sections, which pretty much led to the end of the Civil War.

Peter: (disappointed) Daddy, It was more like east and west.

Me: Northeast and southwest? (I take a bite of dinner.)

Peter: It just gets preciser and preciser. (Quickly, before I can say anything.) Except for my grammar.

Me: (After swallowing) Peter, did I tell you today that I love you?

(I go into the next room and start typing.)

Peter: Are you blogging this?

Me: Yes.

Peter: Make sure you cite your sources!