1.) Familiarize Yourself With Your Topic
My topic is fairly new, but at the same time it isn't SO new that there is absolutely nothing out there. A few of my favorite articles in recent years center around what the internet could potentially be doing to our mind. A very interesting article for The Atlantic titled "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" by Nicholas Carr addresses a lot of what I hope to delve into. Specifically, he discusses the changes in the way we communicate (with others, as well as the way we communicate with ourselves) and how it could be dangerous. One of my favorite points in this article is that Google, and the way it is structured, is rewiring our brains. Our brains are extremely adaptable, and they are able to adapt and change when they find that something isn't working anymore. For example, if we try to go into a building and find the door is locked, we may try one, possibly two, more times to get the door open before finding a new solution. In this same train of thought, our minds are becoming very used to scanning quick blurbs for important key phrases (as with Google) and it is losing the ability to focus its attention on longer works. Mr. Carr writes that many of his colleagues (writers, professors, etc) had expressed frustration in not being able to sit down with a long book. He surmises that it has a lot to do with how we are training our minds to read on the internet.
While this isn't what I'm researching, per se, the sentiments addressed will come into play. The advent of social media has brought with it a change in the way we communicate with language. Mainly, what I plan on focusing on is the actual use of language and how it is being modified to fit in our current day, but I also find it interesting to see how it is changing our physical, real-world interactions. Many have been the days that I spend with friends, in total silence, as they stare at their Iphones reading god-knows-what. We may be communicating more than ever with language, but it is putting a strain on our social interactions. This is not my area of study for this project, but it will come into play in my discussion of the issues surrounding my topic.
2.) Identify a Research Question
I don't necessarily feel comfortable with this yet. I am still not positive with what question I want my research project to focus on. I know that I want to do interviews (oral history reports) with people of all different ages in order to get a feel for the opinions that surround my topic. I feel that older generations will generally feel that there is a huge shift in the way we live due to the internet and other advancements in technology, but I am not sure what their take on it will be. I know a lot of older individuals (some as young as their mid-thirties) who can't handle technology and choose to avoid it, not because they don't care for it but they don't want to be bothered with it. I also know people of all ages (from teenagers to folks in their early 70s) who absolutely love technology and all that it brings with it. I am curious to interview people and see what they feel language is becoming with all the different ways of utilizing it, and I want to know if they think the changes in language are "good" or "bad." I put these in quotes because I hate breaking things down into convenient black and white categories, but it will help me focus as I explain my goals.
3.) Mapping It Out
I can't find anything, specifically, about my topic. There are a lot of articles (like Carr's that I mentioned above) centering around the rapid advancements in technology and how they may be changing us (for better or worse), but nothing that I have come across focuses on the evolution of language. I have done a considerable amount of reading on the origins of language over the years and I feel I will reference these books and articles throughout my research in order to help formulate my thoughts. I plan on not getting too one-sided with this, I agree with people who see a problem with the way language and communication are changing but I also feel that it may not be as big of a problem as people make it out to be.
In his wonderful and clever essay "The Phenomenology of Error," famed linguist and writer Joseph M Williams makes some points that I want to address. Namely, he discusses how people tend to overreact to errors in grammar when, in fact, they don't notice them all the time. Without rehashing the article, he discusses that certain rules of grammar are useless and only in place because the administration enforces them. He finds it to be silly, writing to only please the academics who perpetuate the rules. I agree with this and, as I've said in previous posts, I believe that if we are communicating things clearly, we should allow that to be enough. I won't be getting into the areas that Williams does (I highly doubt split infinitives are something that most people will want to discuss when questioned about social media) I do plan on using the same mentality.
For now, I am still developing my plan. It is starting to come into the light, but it isn't all the way there yet.
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