A look at "The New Literacy" By Clive Thompson

Throughout time different trends have affected all parts of people’s everyday lives, whether academic or social. In today’s age texting, instant messaging and e-mailing is the new big trend--since technology has taken off. These trends have really become part of almost everything in our lives. We use it to make plans with friends or to simply see how they are doing. Almost all of our conversations are done over some sort of modern day technology, more so then the telephone. People have very varied opinions on how this is affecting kids in the modern day, especially professors and teachers.

In “The New Literacy”, Clyde Thompson writes about the different views that Professors have on how this new trend, and use of text language, has affected students and their writing in the modern day. Thompson opens the article with a paragraph on John Sutherlands (College of London, English Professor) opinion on how he has seen technology affect the way his younger students write. Sutherland’s opinion is pretty simple; he moans that technology--specifically texting--has dehydrated the language into “bleak, bald, sad shorthand.” Sutherland’s opinion makes one think that we are coming to an age of illiteracy! Thompson then however goes into Andrea Lunsford’s (Professor of Stanford University) opinion and studies on the debated subject. Lunsford not only has formed a very bold opinion on the subject but she also did a lot of research to form her strong opinion. Lunsford began collecting student writing samples in 2001 and continued until collecting 14,672 in 2006. Not only specific types of writing but from varied assignments, blogs, e-mails and journal entries. From doing all of her research she has come to the conclusion that the new age’s technology is NOT hurting the writing skills of young adults today. They found that her student samples showed that the students had an excellent use of “kairos.” Kairos, is the name for when one assesses and adapts their voice for their audience. Lunsford goes so far as to say “I think we’re in the midst of a literacy revolution the likes of which we haven’t seen since Greek civilization,” this is a big statement to make but, anything is possible.

My whole life my elders have been telling me that the computer, cell phone and television are going to rot my brain (The television I agree with to a certain extent) but I have never felt this to be true. After reading this article it made me realize that maybe our modern technology and ways of communicating might not be so bad after all. Thinking about kairos made me realize that when it comes to writing to different people, I know how to change my tone completely. This may just be through texting or e-mailing, but I think that if I really can find a topic worth writing about for academic purposes I could channel my “kairo skills” into a paper as well. I know that personally I don’t use any “text language” even in my text messages, so for me I know that form of writing would not come through in a school paper. So with the thought that I am sure Sutherland has reasons for his opinion of the language becoming so bleak, I must form my opinion with Lunsford’s studies, I may not go so far as to say there is such a great revolution of literacy happening. Yet I don’t think that technology has lessened our skills as writers and that it is evident that we know how to put a lot of voice into our pieces.