"Are instant messaging and text messaging killing language? To hear what the popular media say, a handful of OMGs (oh my god) and smiley faces, along with a paucity of capital letters and punctuation marks, might be bringing English to its knees." (Lenhart, Smith, and Macgill 2008)
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I think that digital media is definitely changing our language, but it is in a good way. A big part of communicating is how the message is perceived by the listener. In person it is easy to take the message the way it was intended because you can hear the person's tone and use their body language to help you too. In a text message or email it is sometimes hard to know if a person is happy, mad, upset, joking, or being sarcastic. Using "text lingo" helps solve this problem. People are able to add a :) or many other types of faces. Although "LOL" means laughing out loud it can be added to the beginning or end of a text message to let the receiver know that this message wasn't meant to be very serious or demanding. The easier it is for people to communicate quickly and effectively the better it is for our language.
Picture of some "text lingo" written out
References: Baron, Naomi. (2009, March). are digital media changing language.Retrieved from http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/mar09/vol66/num06/Are-Digital-Media-Changing-Language%C2%A2.aspx
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