听力文本

1917. This is the time when we all assume
1917年，这是我们都认为的
that everything somehow in terms of writing was perfect because the people on Downton Abbey are articulate,or something like that.
写文章没的说的时代，因为唐顿庄园里的人物各个都伶牙俐齿的。
So, From every college in the country goes up the cry,
然而，整个国家里的每一所学院都应感到羞愧，
'Our freshmen can't spell, can't punctuate.
我们的新生不会拼写，也不会点标点。
And so on. You can go even further back than this.
诸如此类的言论。我们还可以再往前看。
It's the President of Harvard. It's 1871.
这是1871年的哈佛大学校长。
There's no electricity. People have three names.
那个时代还没有电力。人们还都有三个名字。
Bad spelling,incorrectness as well as inelegance of expression in writing.
糟糕的拼写，不正确以及毫不优美的书面表达。
And he's talking about people who are otherwise well prepared for college studies.
他可是在说那些为了上大学作了充分准备的人。
You can go even further back.
我们再往前看。
1841, some long-lost superintendent of schools is upset because of what he has for a long time noted with regret the almost entire neglect of the original blah blah blah blah blah.
1841年，一个久违的督学官非常失望，因为他早已经注意到人们对文字本源的完全忽视等等等等。
Or you can go all the way back to 63 A.D.and there's this poor man who doesn't like the way people are speaking Latin.
或者大家可以直接跳转回公元63年。有个可怜人不喜欢人们说拉丁语的方式。
As it happens, he was writing about what had become French.
实际上，他正在控诉的是日后形成的法语。
And so, there are always there are always people worrying about these things and the planet somehow seems to keep spinning.
所以，总有－总会有人为这些事情担心,但是地球似乎并没有因此停止旋转。
And so, the way I'm thinking of texting these days is that what we're seeing is a whole new way of writing that young people are developing,
所以，我对当今的短信的看法是我们正在经历一种由年轻人发展出的新的书写方式，
which they're using alongside their ordinary writing skills,
同时他们也在使用他们正常的书面表达写作技巧，
and that means that they're able to do two things.
这意味着他们可以两者兼修。

Increasing evidence is that being bilingual is cognitively beneficial.
补充证据就是拥有双语能力对认知的发展是有利的。
That's also true of being bidialectal.
这在精通两种方言上同样适用。
That's certainly true of being bidialectal in terms of your writing.
如果你会用两种方言写作的话，这也是千真万确的。
And so texting actually is evidence of a balancing act that young people are using today, not consciously, of course,
所以短信实际上是一个平衡之举的佐证。当然，年轻人们是在无意识的这样使用短信的，
but it's an expansion of their linguistic repertoire.
但这是他们语言能力的一种扩展。
It's very simple.
非常简单。

演讲介绍

短信的出现意味着良好书写技能的丧失吗？约翰麦克沃特提出短信在语言学上和文化上的影响都比表面看上去的更大，而且可喜的是这些都是好消息。