The three pieces
this week seem to be connected through a few themes; first of
globalization and whether or not modernity is in fact globalized
through the telephone; the second of the mobility through space and
time; and socioeconomic splitting of society around mobile
phones/language used.
In the article
“Sex, Cannibals, and the Language of Cool: Indonesian Tales of the
Phone and Modernity,” Bart Barendregt talks about how modernity may
be introduced through mobile phones in Indonesia, but it is not
necessarily the same modernity we have experienced in the United
States or other countries and parts of the world. There may be a
globalization of the cell phone, but this does not mean the
globalization of a common modern society or community.
Indonesia’s
modernity “has become equivalent to mobility” (160) in many
senses of the word; physically, as you can take your phone with you
almost wherever you go; socially, as you can talk to people from a
distance, saving you a long travel; and socially through the easily
spread, mobile media in the form of pictures, gossip, etc. Mobile
technologies are geared toward the middle class, which only makes up
about 9% of the country, because they can actually afford these
relatively pricey phones. But this does not mean the lower class
cannot get their hands on the latest technology. The middle class
serves as “role models for Indonesians,” so many aspire to
experience the middle class luxuries and lifestyles, including the
mobile phone. The aspirations are what allow the black market to
remake old phones and sell them illegally for less. These sold phones
may have been stolen, or they may be reconditioned phones, made up of
“cannibalized” parts of old or broken phones. Bart notes that
even one vendor he spoke with referred to this cannibalism as
literally “one phone eating the other more inferior one” (165).
The concept of the
“New Muslim” came about in respect to Islamization and mobile
consumer boom in the mid 1990’s and the “growth of the ‘Islamic
chic’” (161). This term suggests that while the phone is new and
the people of Indonesia are modernized through the mobile phone, this
does not mean there is a new meaning to Islam or the Muslim himself,
but rather it “relates Islam to a modern lifestyle,” claiming
tradition and modernity do not necessarily need to be kept so
separate, and “challenging the notion that the only way to be
modern is through a Western model” (161). There are many examples
of modernity and religion intertwined in Indonesia; the streaming
voice message service Al Qaran Seluler, where divine verses of
the Qaran are mediated through text and voic-message; the kiblah
indicator which tells the “devout Muslim” which way to turn in
order to face toward Mecca, complete with a “digital Qaran“
(162); and the religious “Hallmark” poem texts called pantun
(166).
Barendregt also
reviews the history of the mobile phone in Indonesia, which notes
that even when the newer CDMA cell phones came out, the GSM phone was
still much more popular because of its flashier outward appearance.
“One is what one phones with” (163). Mobile phones are also
particularly popular among students since the phone allows them keep
up culturally with what’s “hot” and also with family and
friends back home. The use of the cell phone seems to be dependent on
age as well, which allows one to see a woman or man’s persona
through their telephone use.
The major
similarities between this article and Janet McIntosh’s “Mobile
phones and Mipoho’s prophecy: The powers and dangers of flying
language,” revolve around the use of language surrounding texts and
voice-calls. In the Yogyakarta Region of Indonesia, Barendregt notes
that the regional language of Javanese is the spoken language at
home, but not what people use to text others. Slightly less formals
or even slang forms like gaul are used instead. This informal
language and somewhat romantic pantun has lead to openness
about sex over the mobile phone as well, embraced by many youth
sometimes to the point where they have created a sexual identity
through the phone, and rejected by many elderly sometimes to the
point where many have claimed phones to be haunted or bewitched
(163). The phone is modern in and of itself, but it also circulates
modernity differently in different places (168). McIntosh sees many
similarities in language and sexuality in Kenya as well, specifically
in the Giriama of Malindi. There are three central languages used;
Kigiriama, Kiswahili, and English. Kigiriama is the “default
language of ordinary conversation” between Giriama, and only used
in text messaging in times of emergency, in regards to face-to-face
social encounters, or to show respect for the person receiving the
text (340, 346). Kiswahili is the first language of the Swahili
people and the national language of Kenya, and is used for writing,
in school, and more professional/formal situations. Lastly, English
still seems to be language of “higher education.” Still, most
text messaging seems to be a medley of all the languages, and even
abbreviation and manipulation of the English language. This text
language, “Sheng,” is used to distinguish oneself as hip and
culturally up to date. Despite the adaptation of English into their
mobile culture, the code-switching between languages and the
shortening of English words is seen as a “means of ‘showing off’
that one is ‘modern,’ ‘developed,’ ‘fashionable,’
‘Western,’” etc., and also means of “dominating the mobile
phone” (342-343).
The elderly’s,
and even some youth’s, perspective on the mobile phone is
emphasized more in McIntosh’s article. The tale of Mipoho is a
widely told cultural narrative in which the prophetess Mipoho
prophesized that “a people as white as butterflies” would bring
machines that slew through the sky and rolled across the land, and
then the youth would abandon their elderly as well as their Giriama
ways, “resulting in a disintegration of the moral and social
integrity of the ethnic group” (339). It is with this story that
the elderly proclaim the use of mobile phones dangerous and a “breed
of witchery.” To the elderly, mobile phones have lead the youth to
engage in sexual behavior beyond the elders control, and their
code-switching texts indicate that they have “lost their way”
(349).
The last article, “The Wire Devils:
Pulp Thrillers, the Telephone, and the Action at a Distance in the
Wiring of a Nation” by Robert MacDougall, was about the start of
the telephone and people’s initial reactions. Macdougall explains
how wires and “technologies of action at a distance” like
railroads, the telegraph, and the telephone, have all seemed to scare
us for the same reason; fear of a new power (716). In “wire
thrillers” the wires seemed to take over humanity with their
advanced technology, managing who can speak with who, etc. and this
scared people. The telephone allows for a “reordering of space”
where “island communities” are “absorbed” into one big
national network (718). The local and near were challenged by the
national and distant (718). There was only an “imagined community”
existing among the nation without any phones or networking of the
like (720). AT&T, one of the first national telephone networks,
claimed that the transformation of this imagined community into a
national network, was nothing to fear, despite all of the scary
octopi and spider metaphorical illustrations of what a wired network
really was (730). Instead of downplaying the magnitude of the wirey
network, though, AT&T celebrated this new technology. They made
the consumers look like the octopus; they were the ones “annihilating
space” (732). Individual identity of section, region, race etc.
were being intertwined by the networking of the telephone, which many
people feared, especially with prejudices still alive, but this made
individual identities “no less meaningful or evident on their own”
(737). People would come around and see the good in the telephone, as
it integrated the national economy. “The telephone changes the
structure of the brain” a man once said. People began to imagine
themselves within the national economy, and electronic media became
the “cultural air we breath” (738). Macdougall puts it nicely at
the end of his article: “Their fears are foreign to us today, not
because they did not come true, but because they did” (738).
How do the fears of the elderly in
Kenya or Indonesia compare to those of the people in the early ‘90’s
Macdougall describes? What do you think about the fact that English
is a part of the Giriama’s language, and that the use of it there
is even considered more educational and learned? Is the mix up and
manipulation of the language in text messages enough to make it their
own? How does the use of language on our own text messages and phone
calls compare to that of the Giriama or the Indonesians? What are the
different American perspectives of the mobile phone, and how are they
organized? By age? Wealth? Education?
15 comments:
The fears of the elderly in Kenya and Indonesia with respect to mobile phones, are different than Americans’ fears concerning the introduction of telephone, telegraph, and railroad networks, in that they are explicitly generational. While the youth of Indonesia and Kenya have embraced and even “dominated” the modern, mobile technology, using it in innovative and liberating ways, the elderly have hung back from participating in mobile phone usage and with it, the advent of “modern” discourses on sexuality and cosmopolitanism. The mobile phone technology clearly represents a disruption of the traditional age hierarchy of these cultures and plays into their strong beliefs in witchery. Elders, especially those of the Giriama, believe and fear that the mobile phones will cause social disintegration and that the “mixed up” languages employed by the younger generations in texting conversations are examples of “the white people here to get our powers and then use them in their own ways to benefit,” as one elderly man said. The fears that mobile phone usage has promoted sexual promiscuity and a “selfish” and “destructive” utilization of “mixed” languages among the elders in Kenya are distinct from Americans’ fears at the advent of telephone technology as expressed in the “wire thrillers” of the 1890s and 1900s. While the fears expressed in these novels and through popular political cartoons were explicitly concerning the integration of a wider society and nation, the creation of an “imagined community” across sectors, those expressed by the Giriama elders were exactly the opposite; fears of a widening generation gap, a loss of respect for tradition and a “disintegration” of values and society.
It is interesting to note however, how McIntosh translates these modern mobile phone usages, not as a loss of ethnic identity among younger Giriama generations but rather as a new way of deploying such an identity, a way of saying “ ‘we may be using mobile phones, but we are not indifferent to the social requirements of our heritage.’” Thus they are blending “cosmopolitan citizenship” and “Giriamaness.” Similarly, the AT&T network reworked the image of telephone networks, whereby human beings were not overcome by integrating “monster” forces i.e. the octopus and spider imagery, but were rather the spiders and octopi themselves, in control of and managing the distances that drew them to others, thus controlling this new technology and attributing it to already held beliefs and social values in much the same way the young Giriama have done with mobile phone usage in Kenya.
--Sarah Schulman
Barendregt's article examined the roles of cell phones across different social classes and how their roles have varied across cultures. One point that struck me particularly (due to its pertinence to my own research) was when "a national [Indonesian] politician got involved in a sex
scandal when a cell-phone-produced movie of him and his
secret lover" (168) was published. For my project, I am investigating how the Italian Prime Minister's control of the mass media has influenced his perception and image in Italy and America. I chose to focus on press media and television, but it had never occurred to me that the cellular phone was at the basis of many of the scandals that surround his life. Much like the aforementioned Indonesian politician, Berlusconi has been involved in numerous sex scandals and pictures were first published of him via a mobile phone.
The concept raised in this article as well of the cell phone as an iconic harbinger of modernism, as the lead post questioned, seems largely foreign to me as a Western citizen. The cell phone here appears to be an amenity without which many could not survive. Our society is structured fundamentally around the use of mobile devices to communicate, and does not bear the pseudo-elitist role that drives the Javanese elderly in McIntosh’s article to view it as a haunted device. For example, our entire emergency medical response system is contingent upon the presence of a phone to dial the number '911'. Furthermore, the fact Americans know the number '911' is associated with a telephone and emergencies is further evidence that a fundamental correlation exists between our societies and mobile telephony.
MacDougall's article underscores this integration whilst examining the initial stages of AT&T and how, according to them, "there was no way to resist those technologies and no point in debating the kinds of social and political accommodations they required"(731). Their change of the public perception of telephony also appears to have changed the way our societies fundamentally function and the way we function ourselves (our brains, according to the article). Continuing the analogy of the medical emergency, our instinct when we see a medical emergency is to dial '911', which emphasizes that the phone is not just a device to connect any longer (as AT&T advertised in 1920) but an integral part of our subconscious reasoning and reactions.
On Saturday, I went to a concert and observed the fact that the people directly surrounding me (filming the show) were not actually watching the show itself but were watching through the screen of their mobile device. Has the cellular phone blurred our lines of reality like medicine and television have? How can you distinguish what is the 'real' concert and what is the 'filmed' concert if the people there are watching it through cellular screens?
I agree with Sarah that “The fears of the elderly in Kenya and Indonesia with respect to mobile phones, are different than Americans’ fears concerning the introduction of telephone, telegraph, and railroad networks, in that they are explicitly generational” in the context of McIntosh’s work and in context of technologies introduced for the very first time. However, I believe in broader context, this idea of fear of technology in general by older generations can be seen throughout all cultures, including ours. I recall it took me several years to convince my father to switch from dial up to cable modem internet, as well as several years to convince him I needed a cell phone for practical purposes. Essentially we have all had these struggles with the elderly generations to pressure them to conform to technological change. McIntosh points out the vital similarities in cell phone culture across western cultures; “in the Western world, for instance, the orthographic manipulations of text messaging have been widely considered by educators and members of older generations to be a kind of moral scourge that threatens “literacy,” standard grammar, and intellectual life itself.” Though there is often fear associated with technology understood, it seems to have evolved from MacDougall’s examination of the “wire thrillers,” I believe this fear has evolved more into a specific fear of cultural and social change that can be seen in the Giriama communities in McIntosh’s work. I believe perhaps new technologies like cell phones often differ in acceptance between older and younger generations because of this freedom and new ways of expression that the technology allows that the elderly are resistant towards. As Barendregt says regarding how mobile phones are by many Indonesians associated with the new freedoms; “A new era seemed to dawn, albeit very fragmentary in character, with many Indonesians clearly struggling between the certainty traditional structures have to provide, and the lure of new and the modern. Not surprisingly, late modernity in an Indonesian context increasingly has become deļ¬ned in terms of technological innovation.” These differences in generations in relation to use of new technologies seem constant despite culture and I believe are often seen by elfer genrations as a deterioration of culture, while the younger generations see these technology changes as an evolution to their culture.
I think the question of generational attitudes towards new technologies is always an interesting one. In the case of mobile phones, though the elderly in Kenya and Indonesia have certain fears that may be unique to their culture (e.g. witchcraft, etc.), I agree with Kyle that there seems to be a world-wide fear of the new network of communication that telephones, and especially mobile phones, provide. In the context of technology, I think progress is often met with opposition. For example, with the introduction of the television into the American home, many were afraid that this "boob tube" would rot the minds of the youth, who have since become our parents. During their childhoods, the television opened up a new world of possibilities, while our grandparents may have preferred that their children spent their free time reading, as they did. As generations continue, the young, innovative generation inevitably becomes an older, more conservative generation. Though this has always been the case, it seems that changes now are moving in hyper-speed.
I think another interesting dynamic brought up in McIntosh's article is the transformation of language as a result of these new technologies. As mentioned by Sarah, English is seen as the language of the educated, but it is also the main language used in texts messages to be playful and free. While Kiswahili and Kigiriama are used sometimes, they serve different specific functions in the oral life of the Giriaman people, while " English is the locus of this virtual escape" (343). It is interesting as an American to imagine the subtlties of a Kenyan's choice of not only words, but language used in text messages. The ability to convey different moods and messages is, in some way, more vast than with English alone. With this, and the condensation of the English used in text messages, we see an expected backlash, as Kyle described, from educators who believe the language is being lost or tarnished. Though this is certainly a situation in Kenya, I believe this fast transformation in language is being seen worldwide as a result of mobile phones and text messaging. Rather than choosing words carefully and thoughtfully, we opt for the most succinct and easy way to convey our message. I often think about letters written between soldiers and their families during the 20th century. Communication was limited, and each word of each letter was going to be read by their eagerly awaiting families. This fact gave each word more weight. These letters were a single chance to express one's emotions, and were physically sent across the world, but by today's standards, these letters often seem dramatic and the language seems excessive.
When I studied abroad, despite there being an ocean between me and my friends and family, the ability to text or email them enabled me to continue my communication with loved ones in a casual manner. I never sat down to write thoughtful letters to my parents describing my past months in Europe, because I had talked to them several days before. Other than the time difference, I might as well have been 20 miles away from them. Though our newfound ability to connect (via cell phones, Skype, etc.) is amazing and something I personally use daily, there are times I think the depth of our language is being lost in our constant blabbing back and forth.
McIntosh describes Giriama text messaging in her article, “Mobile phones and Mipoho’s prophecy: The powers and dangers of flying language” as poetic. She explains that the use of “rapid code-switching and a global medialect of condensed, abbreviated English as an iconic index of a modern, mobile, self-fashioning, sexy, and irreverent persona, whereas their use of the local vernacular tends to reroot them in the gravitas of social obligations and respect relationships” (McIntosh 337). For McIntosh, poetic probably refers to the definition of poetic as, “having an imaginative or sensitively emotional style of expression”, rather than the other common definition: “of, relating to, or used in poetry”. McIntosh’s use of the word “poetic” really interested me. While I follow her argument that text messaging in Malindi, Kenya is increasingly poetic (def: specifically expressed), I would argue that Western communication is decreasingly poetic (def: related to poetry).
Launching from Rachel’s post, Giriama text messaging is able to convey different moods, emotions, and messages. This is fundamentally “poetic” – a precise, emotional style of expression. At the same time, Rachel explains former telegraphs and communication between soldiers and their families, for example. She explains, “communication was limited, and each word of each letter was going to be read by their eagerly awaiting families. This fact gave each word more weight. These letters were a single chance to express one’s emotions.” This is precisely what I think of when I consider the creation of poetry: each word is so crucial to the poem’s overall meaning, that not one word could afford to be misused or the entire meaning would be compromised. Now, we rely on text messaging – and communication technology more generally – to communicate with our friends and families. These messages could be one word or an entire paragraph, a combination of abbreviations and emoticons, a single message or three in a row. Words are no longer selected carefully as in the days of telegraphs. Each word’s weight is decreasing to the point where describing our text messages as “poetic” would be comical.
Relating this back to the overarching theme of this section, “Social and Virtual Worlds”, it is amazing that the cultures in this week’s readings by MacDougall, Barendregt, and McIntosh all differ so strongly in their utilization of telephone communication. While our worlds are connected virtually, our social worlds are seemingly incongruent. Sure, there are cross-cultural parallels in that the elderly are often the last to accept new technologies, but telephone technology has had myriad implications for the various cultures of the world. Each culture has incorporated communication advancement in a different way. I find this the beauty of telephone communication: while telephones unify people, they hardly make them uniform.
The fears of the elderly of the Kenyans and Indonesians i think are similar to that of the people of the early 90s that Macdougall describes. it seems as though the fears came from the same place. It was all new and did not go along with the customary ways of the past. I think the people of the early 90's were scared because of the technology ability to let people communicate with each other so easily. This was not normal for them and it scared them to think people could talk to each other from anywhere. I think they only looked at the negatives because they were simply not used to it. The elderly people of Kenya and Indonesia had greater fears due to prophecies they had heard but essentially it was a fear brought about by change. I think it is interesting that English is apart of the Giriama’s language. Its funny that they consider English to be part of higher education while their own language is considered lesser. I do feel that the mix up of the three different languages can create their own new identity over texting and that we sorta do have that today but not so extreme. I think we have created our own lingo in our texting world but only using one language most of the time i dont think it would be as extensive as the Giriama’s. I think there is defiantly different perspectives on the mobile phone in America with the different ages and classes. I think the people from older generations view them as strange and unnatural while the younger generations would feel it would unnatural not to have them.
Jillian’s discussion of Giriama text messaging with regards to its poetic qualities was especially interesting to me. Poetic in the sense that it is able to convey different moods and emotions, text messaging offers a certain freedom of expression to the sender allowing for an explicit message to be delivered with a precise style. Mcintosh argues “that young people use a medialect
of condensed English and rapid code-switching to perform a fantasy in which they embody the first term in each
of these binaries, enacting a persona of infinite choice and freedom, an appealingly “light” being who is not weighed down by the stigma or social obligations considered an essential part of “Giriamaness” and felt to be encapsulated in and invoked by the Giriama language” (338). The linguistic choices made in the text message release the sender from obligatory social rules or accepted behavior. Viewed in this way, a strong comparison can be made to the function of text messaging in American society. Freed from face to face interaction and the acknowledgement of certain social obligations, text messaging becomes a freeing mechanism. Many things one would not dare to say in person may be easily churned out in a text message where the same rules do not apply. However, far from rendering the feeling behind the statement more precise, American text messaging seems to obscure the sentiment of the message, making the emotional, and qualitative aspects of the communication elusive.
I think the comparison made by Mark about the elderly Kenyans and Indonesians and Americans in the early 90s is a good comparison. Fear of technology is not just in America, it is worldwide. Americans has access to so much more technology than other parts of the world so even though it may seem different, the overall fear remains the same. I remember a few years back my mom could not understand why my sisters and I wanted to text, and she would barely use her phone and always use the land line. Once she got herself the iPhone 4, she texts all the time and is always on her phone. I believe some of the manners of old society have been lost with the increase in technology of telepohones. Because there was only a land line in most houses, people would not spend very much time on the phone. Now that you can pretty much have all the information you want in the palm of your hand, some people spend their entire day on their phones. Things like sitting at a dinner table with friends or family and having a face to face conversation are now cluttered with the usage of phones that I feel the manners of American society have been lost in some regard.
Modern technology has shaped today's society: our culture is based on what we see in TV, movies, and the latest technology (take the commercials by AT&T versus Verizon, for example; each says their network is better: AT&T, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PoAuhptVF-g, versus Verizon, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZPjJI0K7Bk). In Bart Barendregt's essay “Sex, Cannibals, and the Language of Cool: Indonesian Tales of the Phone and Modernity," this culture isn't transferred to lesser developed countries than ours as we know it but those countries do experience a technologically aware society. Though Indonesia and the US have different traditional cultures, they both have experienced an effect of technology on the modern culture. Even if we are worlds apart, we experience the same things and in a way, that brings us closer together.
In regards to Schulman's post about the difference between the US versus Kenya and Indonesia, yes the elderly are more hesitant of mobile devices while the youth have embraced it, but it is reflected in the US as well. Although elderly in the US don't find mobile phones to (in an exaggerated sense) destroy the world, some ARE hesitant to use said devices because they might be too technical.
In Schwarzchild's post, she discussed the "examples of modernity and religion intertwined in Indonesia." The use of cell phones to communicate religious texts made me think of Benjamin's auras. Does this widespread communication allow receivers to be more pious, or do these sacred religious texts lose their intended aura when they are released into the world of cell phones?
--Geena St. Andrew
Both Rachel and Jillian brought up great points about the transformation of language after the introduction of telephones. I, too, personally found this to be the most interesting part of the reading this week. It was curious to me how much telephone has altered and melted particular cultures, language both being a form by which this occurs and a characteristic of culture.
Giriaman text messaging is a very specific example, as it pertains to one area and one use of the telephone, but it demonstrates well how the telephone is used as a tool not only to communicate and connect with others but also to find and express identities, as Sarah noted. Giriaman’s “code-switch” texts associate one language with a particular tone and style. Here, we can note the interaction between culture and technology: the telephone and use of language forces us to question languages and how our use of them creates or emphasizes different meanings. Technology, such as the telephone, are created on the basis of pre-existing culture -to serve people, to better connect them, and to make the world feel like a smaller place. Simultaneously, technology constantly challenges and re-defines culture. For example, in “Sex, Cannibals, and the Language of Cool,” Barendregt noted the “domestication” (161) of telephones, in the Idul Fitr text messages, which distracted from the importance of an Islamic holiday. I find this to be particularly relevant today too, as we now associate telephones with the functions of a computer. For many, we expect our phones to be able to call, text, email, Facebook, etc.
Further, I think this is relationship between technology and culture is more universally the “fear factor” of new technologies, rather than to associate the fear to an older generation. While older generations are indeed more resistant to the introduction of new technologies, it stems from the fact that their established way of life, or culture, is changing. The older generation, or any member of a group, realizes that the effects of one piece of technology permeate beyond the scope of society’s knowledge. This is what creates the fear that MacDougall wrote about – people are afraid of the octopus tentacles of the telephone taking over all aspects of their life, not just the distance of communication.
I am curious as to how phone technologies will play into "our" future. As mentioned in McIntosh's piece, "In the Western world, for instance, the orthographic manipulations of text messaging have been widely considered by educators and members of older generations to be a kind of moral scourge that threatens 'literacy,' standard grammar, and intellectual life itself." To what extent will this play out, and how will it differ in different parts of the world? What will come of Giriama "young people us[ing] a medialect of condensed English and rapid code-switching" to not be "weighted down by the stigma...considered an essential part of 'Giriamaness'?" Will it be the nightmare imagined by Giriama elders, such that the youth loses moral integrity to never gain it back? Is the increasing integration of informal "ngoko" Javanese into written form a problem for Indonesian society? To me, it doesn't seem as though my current casual lack of capitalization of the letter "i" and deletion of an apostrophe in "don't" will have too great of an effect on American literacy as I get older, but only time will tell whether or not new informal texting languages will have a harmful impact on mobile societies around the globe.
The different opinions when looking at new technologies that are continuously coming into people lives is an intriguing aspect to look at. As kyle described, there seems to be a worldwide fear of the mobile network and phones. While certain fears of these mobile phones can arise, especially within the elderly Kenyans and certain cultures, outlasting the initial time period where the new technology of these phones are produced will allow them to continue to thrive. An example of this which was mentioned by a few people is the television, it has the same initial fears that it would disrupt the youth and peoples lives and television still continues to thrive and be one of the best selling technologies on the market to date.
Going off of a few opinions that I agree with, in the past it was telegraphs that people would use to communicate instead of phones. An example was used that if a soldier was away at war and wanted to communicate with their families, they would need to telegraph letter by letter and word by word and these families would be waiting anxiously. The telegraphs would only happen a limited amount of times and therefore would mean more and be mmore important whenever they were made.
Looking at text messaging, I agree with Sarah in her statement that English is the primary communication method with mobile phones and more specifically, text messaging. Looking at the elderly who may not like the idea of these mobile phones and text messaging seem to actually change their minds once they get one themselves and learn that communicating with family members and keeping in touch is much easier through text messaging, considering that pretty much everyone these days does it.
In response to Stephanie’s post, I would contend that Mcintosh argues not that linguistic choices always free the sender from obligatory social rules or accepted behavior, but that the language modality, or combination thereof, in which the sender delivers his message is determined by the context in which he or she sends the message. Consider the examples in the Mcintosh paper on page 346 regarding sickness and gratitude. As Mcintosh suggests, the fact that these messages are written entirely in Kigiriama is indicative of the respect that the sender feels toward the recipient of the message. In this way, the linguistic choices of the sender does not necessarily free the sender from social rules when texting. Depending on the context of the interaction and the subject of the text message, the sender could actually be quite strictly bound by the social mores of the culture.
On the other hand, it is true that the Girima elders feel that the proliferation of English use in text messaging is a cause of the neglect or decay of traditional values. For example, they accuse young people mixing English and Kigiriama while texting of practicing witchcraft. Mcintosh mentions that the suspicion toward English may be due to the fact that the proliferation of English has coincided with social changes that the older generation has perhaps not acclimated to.
With regard to the connection to American text messaging, I may have a different experience with texting that Stephanie, because I do not share her viewpoint that texting serves to obscure the sentiment of the message. In my experience, texts from friends are incredibly transparent and straightforward, much more so than face-to-face communication where things such as body language and intonation can serve to enrich the interaction. Although this could be interpreted as the communication having elusive emotional and qualitative aspects, I believe that the ‘freeing’ taking place is more related to the ability to bypass social norms to get to the essence of what needs to be said, and ignoring the standard formalities that we all abide by in face-to-face communication.
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