Just out of curiosity, when did speech cease to be an acceptable means of communication between one human being and another? I’ve lost count of the times that one or other of my children – aged from 14-24 – has moaned at me that their boyfriend won’t answer a Facebook message, or their landlord hasn’t replied to a text, or that they don’t know when they’ve got to hand in their History homework.
I, being a million years old, naturally reply, ‘Well why don’t you call and find out if he still loves you/if the broadband’s going to be fixed/if anyone else in the class knows what’s happening?’
They look at me as if I’m mad. What? TALK to someone? Who does anything as old-fashioned as that any more?
No one, apparently. According to the latest research, we all now text one another more often than we speak, either by phone or face-to-face. That’s before you add all the various forms of instant messaging, tweets, facebook posts and so on, of course.
To make matters worse, a considerable proportion of the few remaining conversations that do take place are conducted as if the people involved were texting, rather than talking. Anther survey has found that young women in particular now use textspeaK as their main conversational slang (as if those of us who live with them hadn’t noticed). Their vocabulary has been tragically reduced to a few inane abbreviations: totes … obvs … whatevs … reem … hilair … maybs … laters and so on. Granted, that’s still a step up from the wordless grunts and howls with which teenage boys attempt to make their feelings known, but then teenage boys have always been slightly below gibbons on the evolutionary tree (I know, I was one) and in the past many grew up to be witty, articulate, charming paragons of civilized manhood.
More from David Thomas... On the 20th anniversary of the first mobile phone text message... How texting made history but ruined our language- and plenty of marriages! 02/12/12 Why I’m going into battle with Google to find out if it stole my family’s secrets 13/06/12 Why I hate the snobbery and elitism of the 'anti-elitist' BBC 07/06/12 Say what you like about the French, but they have the world's finest political crumpet 24/05/12 A memo to the sweaty, Lycra-clad bike brigade: The rules of the road apply to you, too 15/05/12 The anti-fat campaign is just fat-headed 10/05/12 Dwain Chambers is no dope: Why reformed drug cheats have the right to be Olympians 30/04/12 With apologies to St George - patron saint of a country that seems to be dying of shame 23/04/12 VIEW FULL ARCHIVEBut, alas, no more. The art of conversation is dying and that’s a pity because here are just three of the things you can do when talking to another humanoid that you can’t when texting them.
Laugh … trust me, kids, it’s not the same as sticking LOL or a smiley at the end of a sentence.Detect a tone of voice … I’ve noticed a lot lately that my kids are frequently offended when texting an actual adult because they find them rude and abrupt. That’s because mature grown-ups, particularly men don’t litter texts with the kisses, exclamation signs, little stage directions with asterisks on either side like *blush* and so forth that tell one kid what the other kid is feeling. That’s because these ancient bats and geezers are used to conveying their feelings simply by the manner in which they speak. Yes, that’s right. By mere vocal tone alone they can convey happiness, anger, boredom, surprise (pleasant or unwelcome), irony and withering parental sarcasm. And then you know what they really feel, without having to stare dumbly at a smartphone screen feeling paranoid about what you think they mean.Interact … here’s how it works. One person says something and then the other one replies. Sometimes they reply while the first person is still speaking and although that can be rude it’s usually fine because in actual conversation you don’ have to wait for your message to get through and then twiddle your thumbs while the other person thinks of an answer or tries to find an appropriate You Tube link. You just talk. That way you find out what the other person thinks much, much faster. Amazing!Personally, I’m a big fan of talking. I’ve been doing it all my life. In fact, you can hardly get me to stop. It’s just very sad to think that there soon won’t be anyone else who actually wants to talk back.