Interests Zone > ✑ ∙ Writers Corner

1337, SMS and tone tags!

(1/3) > >>

j:
howdy - i've just been having an interesting conversation with folks on IRC on tone tags, and how they impact ease of communication, especially with learners of English.

which got me thinking: language has always and almost certainly will always change over time, including the introduction and deletion of different language features and types of speaking, though i've definitely noticed that there's a difference in opinions to this. some folks are all for change whilst others have their beliefs firmly rooted in what's right and wrong.

so what do you folks think? i've always been descriptivist (that is: all for language change), but it'll be interesting to see where that differs!!

p.s. here's a neat video Tom Scott filmed on the difference between prescriptivism and descriptivism in language

Guest:
Heya, linguistics degree here x]

First of all, of course you cannot halt natural language change.
And opposed to what some people might think, a conscious social movement to change language (see for example pronoun use or shunning of slurs) is also considered natural language change, as long as it happens naturally to native speakers and is adopted by a considerable amount of them. Language is defined by whatever native speakers do. Descriptivism does not mean that you "support language change" though; it's merely an approach to language studies that says "hey, language is meant to be described and analyzed by linguists as it exists naturally, not engineered or altered".

When it comes to tone tags, I just think that tone tags won't work on a larger scale even if they are adopted widely, since it seems to be a linguistic universal to use language components for exaggeration, sarcasm and irony anyway regardless of meaning.

Think about how the word "literally" came to mean its opposite, "figuratively", by the manner of exaggeration and irony. Or how people use clarifying statements like "Oh no really I mean it!" in an actually sarcastic way occasionally to mean the opposite. Or how some people use ":)" as a smiley ironically to communicate how depressed they are. There's thousands of examples of this.

I don't think tone indicators are safe from that, and if it gains larger traction, over time people will use tone indicators in subversive ways that defy their purpose. And language cannot be controlled in some way to "stop" that by agreeing really hard not to, that's not how language works as we earlier established.

Besides, I don't really see the need for it either, even knowing what they are usually used for. Detecting sarcasm or tone is, contrary to many online opinions, not entirely impossible to do for neurodiverse people or learners, although for many it is an actively learned instead of passively absorbed skill (my legally severely disabled girlfriend for example comfortably communicates like any neurotypical person these days simply since she has learned how to detect tone and meaning like any other actively learned skill). On the other hand, they take away all kinds of nuance, beauty in double meaning, and the point of jokes and punchlines as a whole if applied to all of language feverishly.

I don't think detecting tone and subversive meaning out of all things really is the impossible barrier for neurodiverse people and language learners as it is made out to be, and psycholinguistics as far as I can see also do not support this claim. I think it's a movement born out of frustration of young people that it takes longer to learn so that in the heat of activism it is portrayed as entirely impossible, unholily ableist and whatnot to not use or like them, even though it's typical modern social media flaming exaggeration most of the time (my girlfriend herself got bullied out of the internet over things like this, which is absurd because she is supposed to be the one who its for! :/). It just takes more time to learn the cues, and it's definitely not impossible.

doubleincision:
i dislike tone tags for a few reasons: they actively make communication less clear for people who are not native english speakers and people who use screen readers, there are so many of them that committing them to memory is an extra task in and of itself(which defeats the intention of making communication easier), they are often used sarcastically which completely negates the point of being beneficial to autistic people, and, with how lengthy character limits are on social media now, you can literally just say something like "i'm being sarcastic" if you want to clarify that you're being sarcastic.

also, this, 100 times:


--- Quote from: /home/user/ on March 14, 2023 @426.62 ---I don't think detecting tone and subversive meaning out of all things really is the impossible barrier for neurodiverse people and language learners as it is made out to be, and psycholinguistics as far as I can see also do not support this claim. I think it's a movement born out of frustration of young people that it takes longer to learn so that in the heat of activism it is portrayed as entirely impossible, unholily ableist and whatnot to not use or like them, even though it's typical modern social media flaming exaggeration most of the time (my girlfriend herself got bullied out of the internet over things like this, which is absurd because she is supposed to be the one who its for! :/). It just takes more time to learn the cues, and it's definitely not impossible.

--- End quote ---

as an autistic person it feels more ableist to me to assume that i'm incapable of communicating without a total stranger holding my hand through the interaction, lmao. i don't need or want Special Phrases to talk to other people; i can simply ask someone what they mean if i don't understand. i don't think i know a single fellow autistic person who likes tone tags, and this is the most common complaint that i hear.

Necrosia:
Oh so this is what they are called!
I have only seem people use the /s (sarcastic) so I thought this was a standalone thing and not an entire subject.

I am not autistic therefore I cannot speak on that aspect but as someone whose main language is not english (and not any other germanic language either) this does add an extra layer of complexity.

We use english at work to speak mostly with brazilians and indians and we use emojis to demonstrate tone even if its a corporative environment, emojis are more of a standard thing since most people do own a mobile phone and use apps where the emojis are available.

Of course some emojis that require a bit more of previous knowledge may be lost on some people (like the infamous eggplant) but on my experience most non native speakers can tell the difference of:
" You did such a mess! 😫"  and  "You did such a mess!🤣" 

Cele:
Tone indicators can be useful in situations I think if there's a danger of a misunderstanding happening. But I'd never use them because I don't even have any idea what the letters mean lol. If someone puts a tone indicator in a message meant for me, well. It means nothing to me as I have no idea what those letters together are supposed to tell me. :ziped:

That being said. It's really annoying when you have places like Reddit where people can be very bad at reading the tone of message to the point that they will get very angry at an obvious joke just because it doesn't have /s at the end of it because they assume everything without /s is serious. Also, a non-native English speaker perspective: never ever have I found tone indicators necessary any more than in any other language. Sometimes misinterpretations about tone or intention happen even in your native language, and I have not found the situation much different in English.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page