Kelly Wilson
Response one



In the article Clive Thompson on The New Literacy, Thompson says that John Sutherland’s statement “ face book, video and PowerPoint have replaced carefully crafted essay’s and texting has dehydrated language into bleak, bald, sad shorthand” is incorrect. Throughout his article Thompson uses research conducted by Andrea Lundsford of Stanford University. He also makes several references to the Greek tradition of public argument. He compares today’s bloggers to people such as Plato, who would speak openly in Greek cities about anything and everything. During these discussions anyway was free to walk up and join the conversation. Now these Greek conversations are similar in some ways to today’s bloggers or chat room frequenters. However it is my belief that Thompson’s article is unconvincing and actually supports Sutherlands view. In his article Thompson states that in past generations unless a person got a job that required writing they virtually never wrote again. The invention of blogging and texting has changed this. Now people are writing more than ever and actually enjoy writing because they have an audience. However this doesn’t mean their writing is good or correct for that matter. To me this means that when people leave school they are leaving grammar and punctuation behind but will continue to write in only text talk. This goes to show that even though we are in a new age of literacy, with open public discussions online. Our language is still being butchered and will continue to be as long as people blog and text. Thompson also states that out of all the students she surveyed none of them ever used text talk in there essays for school. It is my opinion that this point is moot, no college or even high school student would ever use smiley faces or LOL in an essay. This point also says nothing of weather those same college students use text talk in there blogs. I feel that over this entire article was well written but lack any real evidence to prove either the author or professor Lunsford’s point.


It is my belief that public speaking is a good thing. Yet it is also my belief that if something is worth doing its worth doing well. I sincerely doubt that Plato or any other Greek public speakers ever used improper or crude grammar. Rather than try to make excuses for this misuse of language we should try to correct it. This may turn out to be easier said than done. There’s really no possible way to enforce grammar upon the masses. Perhaps if we changed the way English was taught from a young age. Placing more emphasize on the importance of writing in everyday life. Not just for teachers who will be they only audience. People who blog seem to have a good understanding of how to captivate an audience. If this could be incorporated more into the learning process, possibly having students read reports or essays in front of an audience.