Week 1 Discussion: John McWhorter’s TED Talk
- Initial post due Wednesday by 11:59pm.
- Response to TWO classmates due Friday by 11:59pm.
This week will be watching and discussing the TED Talk by linguist John McWhorter on the subject of texting and how it fits into language today.
Watch the TED Talk “Texting is Killing Language…JK!!!” by John McWhorter. After you have watched the TED Talk, answer the following questions in reply.
Here is a transcript of the TED Talk if you need to follow along or use it when you are working on your answers to the discussion questions: Transcript of McWhorter.
Questions:
- What is the speaker’s main argument? Or what is his thesis?
- Name at least 3 specific examples/pieces of evidence he uses to support his argument?
- What was the biggest takeaway that you had from this video? What interested you the most?
*Really cool side note, McWhorter at the end of his talk brings up that he’d love to see a log of texts by 16 year old girls in the future to see how language has changed. Recent research into the subject shows us that the words that Shakespeare gave us/first wrote down (these words he wrote in his plays were the first time they were ever seen in print) were words he in fact overhead from 16 year old girls of his time period and stole the slang from them. So, in short, the evolution of language at least for English is all thanks to teenage girls.
