I recently read Naomi Baron’s Always On: Language in an Online and Mobile World (Oxford, 2008). What Masters and Johnson did for sex, this book does for Internet language — parsing, categorizing and quantifying the languages of e-mail, AIM, texting, Twittering, Flickring and even plain old word processing. That any given language is always in flux is a given, but most of us think of this as occurring over decades, if not centuries. Today, changes in language are occurring much more rapidly — within decades, or even a span of a couple of years or a year. Even for Baron (who’s a professor of linguistics) it’s difficult to get a handle on the implications of the changes in how we communicate with one another, especially in writing (or texting, as the case is for most young people most of the time).
My students, for example, now commonly approach me with a casual or even cavalier attitude — even about serious matters having to do with coursework. I’ve always worked to maintain a formal distance from my students (I like them, but I don’t want them to be my friends), modified by a dose of friendly informality (I don’t want them to fear me as if I’m the Wicked Witch of the East). Increasingly, however, many students are picking up only on my friendly side, ignoring all my clearly sent out signals that every aspect of my courses constitutes serious business.
I now get e-mails from students using a very relaxed and inappropriate tone, no matter how serious the problem it is that they’re addressing. The salutation is often something like, “Hey Professor” or “Hi Professor.” I’ve even had, “Hey Prof.” Following the friendly greeting comes a string of words explaining recent absences “were caused by” dead grandmothers, flat tires, visiting relatives, or strep throat. This is followed by the words, “Thanks for your understanding,” or better, “Please let me know if I missed anything important,” or best, “Tell me what I need to do if I missed something important.”
I’ve spent a lot of time pulling out my hair over poor student writing, but I’m now pulling out newly discovered strands over poor student writing manners. Students write things in e-mails that they would never dare to say to me in person or even over the phone. It seems there’s something about e-mail that leads them to think they’ve solved a problem simply by clicking “send.”
Recently someone involved in freshmen orientation at my university told me that students will soon be getting lessons in e-mail etiquette. Yesterday is none too soon.
