Thursday, April 19, 2007

1984

There was a commercial on TV last night that cracked me up. There was a mom and a girl (maybe 10-ish) who were arguing about the cell phone bill. The mom was using English and the girl spoke in texting code with subtitles. She managed to have a pretty long conversation without using many whole words besides "is."

I was thinking about that commercial this morning while I did a load of laundry. (Why? I dunno.) And it made me think of the book "1984" by George Orwell. In it the people who are really into the government's culture speak in some sort of gaggling language. I can't think of what it is called, something-speak, but he describes it as kind of a gibberish that shorted words and was supposed to save time.

It is interesting to me how much of that book is happening. We shorten words. Slur them together. Replace them with letters. Guilty.

How about big brother? Can anyone say "cookie?" And I'm not even against cookies. I try to make sure I don't go where I care that anyone sees my cookies. (oh, gross, that wasn't intended, but I'm going to leave it anyway).

I think I need to re-read that book and see what else is going on today.

3 comments:

Julie Carobini said...

Funny! One of my kids speaks "gibberish" (her word) with friends and they also 'text' so it's a lot of work to spy on them--heehee. Keeping up with them keeps me young, though. lol

Anonymous said...

Hate to tell ya, but that commercial drives me crazy! It's not so much the texting, it's the girl's completely snotty attitude. I am baffled that it's a commercial FOR giving the little diva MORE opportunities for texting! Are you kidding? The girl would have to buy her own phone and pay her own bill if she lived in my house!

Yes, I'm mean.

Chaos-Jamie said...

That's the way parents are today. I wouldn't tolerate that attitude here either, but it did catch me off guard enough that I found it funny. Half the commercial was over before I figured out what was going on. I thought she was practicing Swahili or something.