I know that when I use IM... (Score 1)

I try to contour my English to the medium I am using and the person I am speaking with. Sometimes that results in a bunch of grammatically incorrect nonsense although if you were to look at the details of a chat like that it's almost guarunteed that I was speaking with someone I am very close with and am clowing around.

Yes language is changing, but I feel at this point it's changing VERY rapidly due to IM. I think in chat people are trying to emulate and in some cases exceed verbal communication through the use of emoticons and 13375p33k, etc... I would guess that we are modelling what we type closer to how we speak and think. Language is being innovated upon through the use of technology but there will always be those who aspire to a more artful use of language. A new set of technologically specific colloquialisms are being developed but as opposed to be regional they are perhaps relative to class and technological savvy.

In other words, it's not that language is degrading per se, it's that it is developing in ways scholars do not fully comprehend.

I think people want to use technology to communicate as rapidly as possible. Surprisingly a number of linguistic innovations and shortcuts are being adopted by people who seem to chatter like eighth-grade schoolgirls. This doesn't, however, invalidate the usefulness of said innovations.

-e