idk

American society relies largely on text messages for any kind of coordination and communication. While most people don’t worry about whether that is a good or bad development in American ‘culture’ some have strong opinions on when and how texting is socially acceptable.

There are those who argue that texting is disruptive to personal interactions as well as writing abilities of those using abbreviations as much as possible. I agree to the extent that texting for some people has higher priority than a personal conversation. When you meet someone for coffee and you’re on your phone most of the time, you effectively have more conversation through your phone than with the person in front of you. I’m not saying that no one should check his/her phone anymore but when you can’t even finish one part of a conversation because of constant text message interruptions, you may want to limit your responses to essential texts only and continue other conversations when you actually meet the person you’re texting. Basically, when with other people, texting should be more coordinating immediate concerns and not entire text message discussions.

Abbreviations on the other hand, should be eliminated. It is horrifying how texting abbreviations and ‘grammar’ make their way into all ways of communication. When the differentiation of your and you’re in actual writing is lost to ur in text messages, it should be worrisome to everyone. Btw, just reading abbreviations is a pain unless when used occasionally by people who normally don’t, then they can be hilarious. But other than that, plz refrain from using abbreviations and dare use and enjoy the entirety of the language for a change; I’m sure most of us have unlimited texting anyway.

While I see the downsides of texting in most social situations as well as the negative influence it can have on the linguistic abilities of people, it can be quite challenging to hold a real conversation over text messages when no other form of communication is available. It is rather difficult to get an actual message across when intonation and facial expressions are absent from the process. Sender and receiver have to know each other well to understand what the words in a text aim to express. The sender has to be very distinct in his/her choice of words to avoid misunderstandings and even punctuation, that is mostly absent in everyday texting, can be quite important in this case. From personal experience, I can say that discussing and solving problems over text messages is enlightening and rewarding because it demands a sufficient command of language and more importantly an extensive knowledge of the person on the other end.

Rhetoric is personality

Ever since I came back to the US last summer, I realized that I pay some attention to the way people talk – to their personal rhetoric. By that I mean their choice of words and repetitions therein as well as intonation, articulation and use of sarcasm. Funnily enough, that constant analysis of language only comes to me in my first foreign language and not in my native tongue. When I hear or speak German it is simply information to me and I notice hardly any patters or let alone actually pay attention to how I communicate. I say communicate because as we all know there’s a lot more to language than ‘just’ words but I had never witnessed the application of that statement on an day-to-day basis so clearly before.

What it comes down to is that a person’s rhetoric is also part of her personality. I found myself drawn to people who speak in a matter that appealed to me, that I found to be mentally engaging, also hoping that the same was true for them. People that can hold a conversation on the same level and that I get to know not by merely the information they convey but the way they do it. 

 

During my first couple of days at Penn State I was simply excited about a certain choice of words; for example witty qualifying adverbs in front of adjectives: you are decently entertaining. As the semester progressed and I got more familiar with my new friends, the repetition of certain words and their actual meaning to the person became most fascinating for me. When you tell my girlfriend a story you will most-likely get either of two responses: uhm, delightful! or oh, precious! Both of which seem sincere and are definitely signature replies of her. However, it quickly became clear to me that when she was delighted, she actually cared what you had to say. If it was precious to her, she didn’t give a damn and just didn’t want to be mean (or she was making fun of someone…). When I started calling her out on that she made me stop because even people that are and have been around her a lot don’t realize the difference and she wanted to keep it that way.

While I could give you many more examples of her and other friends’ signature statements (and even sounds/moves) I just want to emphasize that how someone speaks can tell you a lot more about them and their personality than anyone realizes until you actually start paying attention. I would even go as far as saying that rhetoric can be a good match-maker, not only in love but also in friendship.