返回首页

JohnMcWhorter_2013-_短信是语言杀手。开玩笑吧！_
We always hear that texting is a scourge . [00:13]
scourge:vt.鞭打;蹂躏;严斥;痛斥;n.鞭;灾祸;鞭子;苦难的根源;
The idea is that texting spells the decline and fall of any kind of serious literacy , or at least writing ability, among young people in the United States and now the whole world today. [00:16]
decline:v.下降;衰退;减少;谢绝;n.下降; literacy:n.读写能力;精通文学; United:adj.联合的; v.联合,团结; (unite的过去分词和过去式)
The fact of the matter is that it just isn't true, and it's easy to think that it is true, but in order to see it in another way, in order to see that actually texting is a miraculous thing, not just energetic , but a miraculous thing, a kind of emergent complexity that we're seeing happening right now, we have to pull the camera back for a bit and look at what language really is, in which case, one thing that we see is that texting is not writing at all. [00:29]
miraculous:adj.不可思议的,奇迹的; energetic:adj.精力充沛的;充满活力的;需要能量的;积极的; emergent:adj.紧急的;浮现的;意外的;自然发生的; complexity:n.复杂性;难以理解的局势
What do I mean by that? [01:00]
Basically , if we think about language, language has existed for perhaps 150,000 years, at least 80,000 years, and what it arose as is speech. People talked. [01:01]
Basically:adv.主要地,基本上; arose:vi.出现(arise的过去式);引发;
That's what we're probably genetically specified for. [01:14]
genetically:adv.从遗传学角度;从基因方面; specified:v.指定;具体说明;逐一登记;列入清单;(specified是specify的过去分词)
That's how we use language most. [01:17]
Writing is something that came along much later, and as we saw in the last talk, there's a little bit of controversy as to exactly when that happened, but according to traditional estimates , if humanity had existed for 24 hours, then writing only came along at about 11:07 p.m. [01:19]
controversy:n.争论;论战;辩论; according to:根据,据说; traditional:传统的,惯例的, estimates:n.估计;估价;估计的成本;v.估价;估算(estimate的第三人称单数和复数) humanity:n.人类;人道;仁慈;人文学科;
That's how much of a latterly thing writing is. [01:38]
latterly:adv.最近;近来;
So first there's speech, and then writing comes along as a kind of artifice . [01:42]
artifice:n.诡计;欺骗;巧妙的办法;
Now don't get me wrong, writing has certain advantages . [01:47]
advantages:n.有利条件; v.有利于;
When you write, because it's a conscious process , because you can look backwards, you can do things with language that are much less likely if you're just talking. [01:51]
conscious:adj.意识到的;故意的;神志清醒的; process:v.处理;加工;列队行进;n.过程,进行;方法,adj.经过特殊加工(或处理)的;
For example, imagine a passage from Edward Gibbon 's "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire:" [02:01]
Gibbon:n.[脊椎]长臂猿; Roman:n.罗马人;古罗马语;adj.罗马的;罗马人的;
'"The whole engagement lasted above twelve hours, till the graduate retreat of the Persians was changed into a disorderly flight, of which the shameful example was given by the principal leaders and the Surenas himself." [02:09]
engagement:n.婚约;约会;交战;诺言;n.参与度; retreat:v.撤退;退却;后退;退缩;n.撤退;退却;退缩;退避; Persians:n.波斯人;波斯语;百叶窗;波斯绸;adj.波斯的;(persians是Persian的复数); disorderly:adj.混乱的,无秩序的;骚乱的;无法无天的;adv.杂乱地,无秩序地; shameful:adj.可耻的;不体面的;不道德的;猥亵的; principal:adj.主要的;资本的;n.首长;校长;资本;当事人;
That's beautiful, but let's face it, nobody talks that way. [02:20]
Or at least, they shouldn't if they're interested in reproducing . That -- [02:24]
reproducing:v.复制;繁殖(reproduce的ing形式);重述;
(Laughter) [02:31]
is not the way any human being speaks casually . [02:34]
casually:adv.偶然;临时;
Casual speech is something quite different. [02:37]
Linguists have actually shown that when we're speaking casually in an unmonitored way, we tend to speak in word packets of maybe seven to 10 words. [02:39]
Linguists:[语]语言学家(linguist的复数); unmonitored:adj.无监视的;
You'll notice this if you ever have occasion to record yourself or a group of people talking. [02:48]
That's what speech is like. [02:54]
Speech is much looser . It's much more telegraphic . [02:55]
looser:adj.未固定牢的;可分开的;未固定的;不受约束;(loose的比较级) telegraphic:adj.电信的;电报的;电报机的;
It's much less reflective -- very different from writing. [03:00]
reflective:adj.反射的;反映的;沉思的;
So we naturally tend to think, because we see language written so often, that that's what language is, but actually what language is, is speech. They are two things. [03:03]
naturally:adv.自然地;自然而然地;轻而易举;天生地;大方地;
Now of course, as history has gone by, it's been natural for there to be a certain amount of bleed between speech and writing. [03:13]
bleed:v.流血;失血;放掉;散开;n.[印]出血版
So, for example, in a distant era now, it was common when one gave a speech to basically talk like writing. [03:22]
distant:adj.遥远的;远处的;久远的;
So I mean the kind of speech that you see someone giving in an old movie where they clear their throat, and they go, "Ahem, ladies and gentlemen," and then they speak in a certain way which has nothing to do with casual speech. [03:32]
It's formal . It uses long sentences like this Gibbon one. [03:43]
formal:adj.适合正式场合的; n.(美)须穿礼服的社交集会; (口)夜礼服;
It's basically talking like you write, and so, for example, we're thinking so much these days about Lincoln because of the movie. [03:47]
The Gettysburg Address was not the main meal of that event. [03:55]
Gettysburg:n.葛底斯堡(美国一城市名);
For two hours before that, Edward Everett spoke on a topic that, frankly, cannot engage us today and barely did then. [03:58]
barely:adv.仅仅,勉强;几乎不;公开地;贫乏地;
The point of it was to listen to him speaking like writing. [04:07]
Ordinary people stood and listened to that for two hours. [04:11]
It was perfectly natural. [04:13]
That's what people did then, speaking like writing. [04:14]
Well, if you can speak like writing, then logically it follows that you might want to also sometimes write like you speak. [04:17]
logically:adv.逻辑上;合乎逻辑;
The problem was just that in the material, mechanical sense, that was harder back in the day for the simple reason that materials don't lend themselves to it. [04:26]
mechanical:adj.机械的;力学的;呆板的;无意识的;手工操作的; back in the day:在过去,在以前;
It's almost impossible to do that with your hand except in shorthand , and then communication is limited . [04:35]
shorthand:n.速记;速记法;adj.速记法的; limited:adj.有限的; n.高级快车; v.限制; (limit的过去分词和过去式)
On a manual typewriter it was very difficult, and even when we had electric typewriters, or then computer keyboards, the fact is that even if you can type easily enough to keep up [04:40]
manual:n.说明书;指南;使用手册;adj.用手的;手工的;体力的;手动的; electric:n.供电;adj.电的;用电的;电动的;发电的;
with the pace of speech, more or less , you have to have somebody who can receive your message quickly. [04:50]
more or less:或多或少;
Once you have things in your pocket that can receive that message, then you have the conditions that allow that we can write like we speak. [04:55]
And that's where texting comes in. [05:04]
And so, texting is very loose in its structure . [05:07]
structure:n.结构;构造;建筑物;vt.组织;构成;建造;
No one thinks about capital letters or punctuation when one texts, but then again, do you think about those things when you talk? [05:11]
punctuation:n.标点;标点符号;
No, and so therefore why would you when you were texting? [05:18]
What texting is, despite the fact that it involves the brute mechanics of something that we call writing, is fingered speech. That's what texting is. [05:21]
despite:prep.尽管,不管;n.轻视;憎恨;侮辱; involves:v.包含;需要;牵涉;牵连;影响;(使)参加,加入(involve的第三人称单数) brute:adj.残忍的;无理性的;n.畜生;残暴的人; mechanics:n.机械师;机械修理工;技工;力学;机械学;(mechanic的复数)
Now we can write the way we talk. [05:31]
And it's a very interesting thing, but nevertheless easy to think that still it represents some sort of decline. [05:34]
nevertheless:adv.然而,不过;虽然如此;conj.然而,不过; represents:v.代表;维护…的利益;相当于;(represent的第三人称单数)
We see this general bagginess of the structure, the lack of concern with rules and the way that we're used to learning on the blackboard, and so we think that something has gone wrong. [05:42]
bagginess:n.膨胀状; concern:v.涉及,关系到;使担心;n.关系;关心;关心的事;
It's a very natural sense. [05:54]
But the fact of the matter is that what is going on is a kind of emergent complexity. [05:57]
That's what we're seeing in this fingered speech. [06:04]
And in order to understand it, what we want to see is the way, in this new kind of language, there is new structure coming up. [06:07]
And so, for example, there is in texting a convention , which is LOL. [06:19]
convention:n.习俗;惯例;协定;常规;
Now LOL, we generally think of as meaning "laughing out loud." [06:27]
generally:adv.通常;普遍地,一般地;
And of course, theoretically , it does, and if you look at older texts, then people used it to actually indicate laughing out loud. [06:32]
theoretically:adv.理论地;理论上; indicate:v.表明;显示;象征;暗示;
But if you text now, or if you are someone who is aware of the substrate of texting the way it's become, you'll notice that LOL does not mean laughing out loud anymore. [06:40]
substrate:n.基质;基片;底层(等于substratum);酶作用物;
It's evolved into something that is much subtler . [06:51]
evolved:v.(使)逐渐形成;进化;进化形成;(evolve的过去分词和过去式) subtler:微妙的;精细的;敏感的;狡猾的(subtle的比较级);
This is an actual text that was done by a non-male person of about 20 years old not too long ago. [06:55]
'"I love the font you're using, btw." [07:04]
font:n.字型;圣洗池(设于教堂中,常为石造);
Julie: "lol thanks gmail is being slow right now" [07:07]
Now if you think about it, that's not funny. [07:10]
No one's laughing. (Laughter) [07:12]
And yet, there it is, so you assume there's been some kind of hiccup . [07:15]
assume:v.承担;假定;采取;呈现; hiccup:n.打嗝;vi.打嗝;vt.呃逆着(或间断地)说出;
Then Susan says "lol, I know," [07:18]
again more guffawing than we're used to when you're talking about these inconveniences . [07:20]
guffawing:n.哄笑;狂笑;vi.哄笑;vt.大笑着说; inconveniences:n.不便;麻烦;vt.麻烦;打扰;
So Julie says, "I just sent you an email." [07:26]
Susan: "lol, I see it." [07:28]
Very funny people, if that's what LOL means. [07:30]
This Julie says, "So what's up?" [07:34]
Susan: "lol, I have to write a 10 page paper." [07:36]
She's not amused . Let's think about it. [07:38]
amused:adj.好笑的;逗乐的;v.逗乐;逗笑;(使)娱乐;(amuse的过去分词和过去式)
LOL is being used in a very particular way. [07:41]
It's a marker of empathy . It's a marker of accommodation . [07:43]
marker:n.记分员;书签;标识物;作记号的人; empathy:n.神入;移情作用;执着; accommodation:n.住处;办公处;住宿;调解;
We linguists call things like that pragmatic particles . [07:47]
pragmatic:adj.实际的;实用主义的;国事的; particles:n.微粒,粒子;粒子系统;碎木料(particle的复数形式);
Any spoken language that's used by real people has them. [07:50]
If you happen to speak Japanese, think about that little word "ne" that you use at the end of a lot of sentences. [07:54]
If you listen to the way black youth today speak, think about the use of the word "yo." [07:59]
Whole dissertations could be written about it, and probably are being written about it. [08:03]
dissertations:n.论文;学位论文(dissertation的复数形式);
A pragmatic particle, that's what LOL has gradually become. [08:08]
gradually:adv.渐渐地;逐步地;
It's a way of using the language between actual people. [08:11]
Another example is " slash ." [08:15]
slash:n.斜线;伤口;切口;斜线号;撒尿;vt.劈;大幅度削减;大大降低
Now, we can use slash in the way that we're used to, along the lines of, "We're going to have a party-slash-networking session ." [08:19]
in the way:妨碍;挡道; session:n.会议;(法庭的)开庭;(议会等的)开会;学期;讲习会;
That's kind of like what we're at. [08:27]
Slash is used in a very different way in texting among young people today. [08:29]
It's used to change the scene. [08:35]
So for example, this Sally person says, "So I need to find people to chill with" [08:37]
Sally:n.突围;[军]出击;(感情等)迸发;俏皮话;远足;v.突围;出发;动身,外出; chill:n.寒冷; adj.寒冷的; v.冷冻,冷藏;
and Jake says, "Haha" -- you could write a dissertation about "Haha" too, but we don't have time for that — "Haha so you're going by yourself? Why?" [08:42]
Sally: "For this summer program at NYU." [08:49]
Jake: "Haha. Slash I'm watching this video with suns players trying to shoot with one eye." [08:51]
The slash is interesting. [08:56]
I don't really even know what Jake is talking about after that, but you notice that he's changing the topic. [08:57]
Now that seems kind of mundane , but think about how in real life, if we're having a conversation and we want to change the topic, there are ways of doing it gracefully . [09:05]
mundane:adj.世俗的,平凡的;世界的,宇宙的; gracefully:adv.优雅地;温文地;
You don't just zip right into it. [09:13]
You'll pat your thighs and look wistfully off into the distance, or you'll say something like, "Hmm, makes you think --" [09:14]
thighs:n.大腿;股;食用的鸡(等的)大腿;(thigh的复数) wistfully:adv.渴望地;希望地;不满足地;
when it really didn't, but what you're really -- [09:23]
(Laughter) — what you're really trying to do is change the topic. [09:25]
You can't do that while you're texting, and so ways are developing of doing it within this medium . [09:30]
medium:n.(传播信息的)媒介;手段;工具;方法;adj.中等的;中号的;
All spoken languages have what a linguist calls a new information marker -- or two, or three. [09:36]
Texting has developed one from this slash. [09:41]
So we have a whole battery of new constructions that are developing, and yet it's easy to think, well, something is still wrong. [09:46]
battery:n.[电]电池,蓄电池;n.[法]殴打;n.[军]炮台,炮位; constructions:n.[建]建设(construction的复数);[建]建筑物;构造学;
There's a lack of structure of some sort. [09:54]
It's not as sophisticated as the language of The Wall Street Journal . [09:57]
sophisticated:adj.复杂的;老练的;见多识广的;水平高的; Wall Street:n.华尔街(美国纽约金融中心和证券交易所所在地); Journal:n.杂志;日记;日志;(用于报纸名)…报;
Well, the fact of the matter is, look at this person in 1956, and this is when texting doesn't exist, "I Love Lucy" is still on the air . [10:01]
on the air:在广播,广播中;
'"Many do not know the alphabet or multiplication table , cannot write grammatically -- " [10:10]
multiplication table:n.乘法表; grammatically:adv.从语法上讲;
We've heard that sort of thing before, not just in 1956. 1917, Connecticut schoolteacher . [10:15]
schoolteacher:n.教师;
1917. This is the time when we all assume that everything somehow in terms of writing was perfect because the people on "Downton Abbey " are articulate , or something like that. [10:21]
somehow:adv.以某种方法;莫名其妙地; Abbey:n.大修道院,大寺院;修道院中全体修士或修女; articulate:vt.清晰地发(音); vi.发音; adj.发音清晰的;
So, "From every college in the country goes up the cry, 'Our freshmen can't spell, can't punctuate .'" [10:31]
freshmen:n.大学一年级新生;新手(freshman的复数); punctuate:vt.不时打断;强调;加标点于;vi.加标点;
And so on. You can go even further back than this. [10:36]
It's the President of Harvard . It's 1871. [10:39]
Harvard:n.哈佛大学;哈佛大学学生;
There's no electricity . People have three names. [10:42]
electricity:n.电力;电流;强烈的紧张情绪;
'"Bad spelling, incorrectness as well as inelegance of expression in writing." [10:44]
incorrectness:n.错误;不合适;不真实; as well as:也;和…一样;不但…而且; inelegance:n.粗俗;不雅;粗糙(等于inelegancy); expression:n.表现,表示,表达;
And he's talking about people who are otherwise well prepared for college studies. [10:50]
You can go even further back. [10:54]
1841, some long-lost superintendent of schools is upset because of what he has for a long time "noted with regret the almost entire neglect of the original " blah blah blah blah blah. [10:56]
long-lost:adj.遗失了很长时间的; superintendent:n.监督人;负责人;主管;指挥者; upset:adj.沮丧; v.打乱; n.苦恼; (意外的)混乱; neglect:v.忽视;忽略;疏忽;疏于照顾;n.忽视;忽略;未被重视; original:n.原件;原作;原物;原型;adj.原始的;最初的;独创的;新颖的; blah:n.废话;空话;瞎说;int.废话;
Or you can go all the way back to 63 A.D. -- (Laughter) -- and there's this poor man who doesn't like the way people are speaking Latin . [11:07]
Latin:adj.拉丁语的;用拉丁语写成的;n.拉丁语;
As it happens, he was writing about what had become French. [11:15]
And so, there are always — (Laughter) (Applause) — there are always people worrying about these things and the planet somehow seems to keep spinning . [11:19]
spinning:n.纺纱(手艺):纺线v.(使)旋转:纺线:纺纱;(spin的现在分词)
And so, the way I'm thinking of texting these days is that what we're seeing is a whole new way of writing that young people are developing, which they're using alongside their ordinary writing skills, and that means that they're able to do two things. [11:30]
Increasing evidence is that being bilingual is cognitively beneficial . [11:47]
evidence:n.证据,证明;迹象;明显;v.证明; bilingual:adj.双语的;n.通两种语言的人; cognitively:adv.认知地; beneficial:adj.有益的,有利的;可享利益的;
That's also true of being bidialectal. [11:52]
That's certainly true of being bidialectal in terms of your writing. [11:54]
And so texting actually is evidence of a balancing act that young people are using today, not consciously , of course, but it's an expansion of their linguistic repertoire . [11:58]
balancing act:平衡做法;协调; consciously:adv.自觉地;有意识地; expansion:n.扩张;膨胀;扩展;扩大; linguistic:adj.语言的;语言学的; repertoire:n.全部节目;计算机指令系统;(美)某人或机器的全部技能;
It's very simple. [12:09]
If somebody from 1973 looked at what was on a dormitory message board in 1993, the slang would have changed a little bit since the era of "Love Story," [12:11]
dormitory:n.宿舍,学生宿舍;adj.住宅区的; message board:n.(网站)留言板; slang:n.俚语;行话;adj.俚语的;vi.用粗话骂;vt.用俚语说;
but they would understand what was on that message board. [12:22]
Take that person from 1993 -- not that long ago, this is "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure " -- those people. [12:25]
Adventure:n.冒险;奇遇;经历;冒险游戏;v.探险;以…冒险;大胆进行;闯;
Take those people and they read a very typical text written by a 20-year-old today. [12:31]
typical:adj.典型的;特有的;象征性的;
Often they would have no idea what half of it meant because a whole new language has developed among our young people doing something as mundane as what it looks like to us when they're batting around on their little devices . [12:37]
devices:n.[机][计]设备;[机]装置;[电子]器件(device的复数);
So in closing, if I could go into the future, if I could go into 2033, the first thing I would ask is whether David Simon had done a sequel to "The Wire." I would want to know. [12:50]
sequel:n.续集;结局;继续;后果;
And — I really would ask that — and then I'd want to know actually what was going on on "Downton Abbey." [13:05]
That'd be the second thing. [13:11]
And then the third thing would be, please show me a sheaf of texts written by 16-year-old girls, because I would want to know where this language had developed since our times, [13:12]
sheaf:n.捆;束;扎;vt.捆;束;扎;
and ideally I would then send them back to you and me now so we could examine this linguistic miracle happening right under our noses. [13:24]
ideally:adv.理想地;观念上地; miracle:n.奇迹,奇迹般的人或物;惊人的事例;
Thank you very much. [13:33]
(Applause) [13:34]
Thank you. (Applause) [13:39]