Tag Archives: linguistics

In search for universal language

Umberto Eco, a cultural critic, semiotician, and a writer said that we live in an age where the “diminutive, the brief and the simple are highly prized in communication” (Thurlow & Brown). New communication technologies can empower young people to explore and develop imaginative ways of making the technology work best for them. If we put Twitter in…

Txtng news in 140 characters

It is no news to us that text messaging is morphing our modern culture. In 2008, the British scholar David Crystal has observed how text messages in mobile phones and IMs can influence our live technologically, sociologically, psychologically, commercially, and linguistically. In his book Txtng: The Gr8 Db8, Crystal points out that texting has become pervasive in…

The Multilingual Internet, or Where the Green Ants Dream

In one of the last scenes of Werner Herzog’s Where the Green Ants Dream (1984) an Aborigine stands up in a court room to speak up against some mineral excavations happening in a sacred tribal ground. The judge asks for a translation, but nobody can provide it. The man is called “the Mute”, being the last living…