Mediated Modes of Communication and Its Impact to Society

As we bask into the Information Age, human utter is ongoing and transforming to ca call more interactive and accessible. As we all know, communicating is dynamic, ongoing, ever-changing, and continuous. Simple chat entails the message being direct and the receiver perceives and accepts the message. Communication models find their origins in Greek antiquity. Aristotle recognized the speaker, speech, and audience as communication components. tailfin hundred years before Christ, the Greek philosopher Heraclitus, observed that a man (or woman) understructure never tonus into the river twice. The man (or woman) is different and so is the river (Gortner et al. 1997, p. 36). Change and continuity ar intertwinedas men or women tone of instance into the riverin a process of actions which flow through the ages. Communication is a process and flows like a stream through time.It is indubitable that technology has brought about gargantuan impacts to the past modes of communication, be i t formal and informal. In an era of faxes, computers, and photocopying machines, communication challenges will emerge that atomic number 18 even more complex, demanding, and technical. Moreover, cell phones, e-mail, and telephone reply machines contribute to the narrowing of the gulf between formal and informal communication distinctions.Anthropologists already have researched on the relationship of conventional forms of verbal interaction and those mediated by immature technologies such as the lucre, air transmissions, and cell phones. Crystal (2001) had revealed that the mesh constituted a spic-and-span frontier in human friendly interaction on par with the inventions of the telephone and telegraph, and even print and broadcast technologies.Scholars of lyric poem use, language change, and ideologies of language must surely explore and interrogate the effects of these technologies on traditional modes of communication, the impact of our new potentiality to communicate ins tantly anywhere in the world, and the meaning of language communicate as it is taking situate in cyberspace. Most of these technologies, nonwithstanding constant new advances in computer-mediated graphics, ar text or voice ground. Thus, if the Internet is a revolution, therefore, it is likely to be a linguistic revolution (Crystal 2001, p. viii).Many observers allege that the Internet is changing federation. Perhaps non surprisingly, given the newty of the new digital media, there is little accord about what those changes are. It is believed that it is important for sociologists to address these issues for three reasons. First, the mediums rapid growth offers a once-in-a-lifetime prospect for scholars to test theories of technology diffusion and media effects during the early stages of a new mediums diffusion and institutionalization.Second, the Internet is laughable because it integrates both different modalities of communication (reciprocal interaction, broadcasting, in dividual reference-searching, group discussion, person/machine interaction) and different kinds of content (text, video, opthalmic images, audio) in a single medium. This versatility renders plausible claims that the technology w ill be implicated in many kinds of social change, perhaps more deeply than television or radio. Finally, choices are being gather establishments developed, money invested, laws passed, regulations promulgatedthat will shape the systems technical and normative structure for decades to come. Many of these choices are based on behavioral assumptions about how mess and the Internet interact (Dimaggio, Hargittai, Neuman & Robinson, 2001, p. 307).As these technological innovations are revolutionizing reading and entertainment delivery, these technology-mediated modes of communication have affected the transformation of peoples social lives and behaviors, even policy-making institutions and the role of citizens within them.As people argue that the new technol ogy of short messaging system (SMS), email, online discussions, on-demand education, and web-powered information diffusion and interest aggregation will lead to a more informed, engaged, and influential mess hall public. With this, will we live in a better informed and connected, more engaged and participatory guildor in a rescript of lonely ex-couch potatoes glued to computer screens, whose human contacts are more often than not impersonal and whose political beliefs are easily manipulated, relying on the icons of a wired or wireless society? Fact is that, Erbring and Lutz (2005) have indicated that when people spend more time exploitation the Internet, the more they lose contact with their social environment.They cited a study that this effect is noticeable even with people using just 2-5 Internet hours per week and it rises substantially for those spending more than 10 hours per week, of whom up to 15 percent report a decrease in social activities. Even more striking is the fact that Internet users spend untold less time pour forthing on the phone to friends and family the percentage reporting a decrease exceeds 25 percentalthough it is unclear to what extent this represents a shift to email even in communicating with friends and family or a technical bottleneck due to a single phone line being pre-empted by Internet use.Because of the accessibility of the new modes of communication, people have utilize these as tools to avoid confrontation that is express in face-to-face communication. In fact, in UAE and in Malaysia, cell phones have been used to end marriages by SMS-ing Talaq, Talaq, Talaq (Divorce, Divorce, Divorce). But then, this is not the first time technology has been used in officially terminating a relationship. Earlier, it was telephonic, postal and telegram divorces now there are divorce via e-mail and SMS.Technology has changed the way people are courting, getting married and yes, also the way they are separating. If people are meeti ng and geological dating on the Internet, why not divorces? says Anuradha Pratap, principal of Al-Ameen Management College in Bangalore, India. If weddings can take place using technology, why not divorce? asked Ayesha Banu, a Bangalore resident. There were telephone weddings nearly two decades ago. Its exclusively the technology that has changed, everything else has remained the same (Kiran, 2 June 2003).On the separate hand, Halliday (1990) noted that when new demands are made on language and when we are making language work for us in ways it never had to do before, it will have to become a different language in order to cope (p. 82). It is problematic that technology-based media present new demands which have the potential of promoting variations in language use Perhaps, the demands are not novel in itself, but it is rather the blurring, the amalgamation, of previous demands which may result in linguistic variations.Take, for instance, computer communication systems which h ave placed demands, often associated with spoken language, on the production of compose language. This reassignment is most observable in synchronous computer-mediated communication such as MOOs (MUD Object Oriented), MUDs (Multi-User Domain), and Chat. While the language takes on a written form, it is constrained by temporal limitations which require immediate responses.Conversely, this type of synchronous communication, which can be considered an basically oral language (Collot & Belmore, 1996), is also constrained by norms including spelling and grammar norms most often associated with written language. For ensample in SMS, people usually shorten their message to hasten the process. Like sending the message ar you going to the party tonight? would be shortened to R U GOING 2 THE fellowship TONYT? Indeed, grammar and spelling would be gravely affected, just to facilitate the convenience of a faster communication process.However, from a perspective of language change multimo dal forms of communication, such as emails, text messages and chat rooms, are essentially new forms of communication. As used here the term multimodal refers to the way that texts use devices from a range of different communication systems at the same time. So, for example, you can send an email message to six of your friends simultaneously previously you could scarce do this through speaking to them as a group. In other words writing takes on a characteristic which once belonged to speech only (Beard, 2004, p. 44).Emails are usually message exchanges between a pair of named individuals communicating on a single issue, chat-groups usually involve several people they can be anonymous or use a pseudonym their communication can be of an suspicious length and they can cover a wide range of topics. Crystal (2001) uses the term asynchronous to describe groups where postings are placed on boards and synchronous to describe groups who chat in real time. The terms email and text message bo th suggest a written form, but the terms chat-room/ chat-group suggest a form of talk a form of talk chat that is traditionally seen as social rather than serious in its content.Although the terminology that labels new communication genres draws upon the traditional binary opposites of speaking/writing (mail/ chat), it is not very helpful to see such texts as products of these opposites. Instead each of the genres has its own unique methods of communication, and then each of the texts produced within the genre has its own particularized context. So, for example, the idea of turn-taking, which is crucial to many kinds of vocalized talk, is achieved in very different ways in chat-groups.The acts of reading, thinking, replying and sending the reply, which is not necessarily received instantly, is being undertaken by each of the participants at the same time. This inevitably leads to a gap of the exchange in a way that does not happen with emails and text messages. Yet, participants within the process are well able to manage this complicated exercise in pragmatics.Another aspect of pragmatics involves the fact that whereas in face-to-face group conversation your presence is still registered, even if you are silent, this is more problematic in chat-groups. As Crystal (2001) notes in chatgroups silence is ambiguous it may reflect a deliberate withholding, a temporary inattention, or a physical absence (without signing off).Indeed, technology is crucial in the knowledge of the information highway that would link every home to a fiber-optic network over which voice, data, television, and other services would be transmitted. The net profits architecture is determined by an informal group of U.S.-based bundle and computer engineers. The internets global scope and electronic commerces growth make its management an international policy issue. Analysts and government believe a hands-off approach is best (Cukier 1998, p. 39-41). community and organizations determine the course of the future, not computers. As a form of communication, the internet can be used by individuals, private corporations, and government agencies for good or bad, but it cannot influence the direction our society chooses to take. The internet only reflects the society that created it. The development and use of the telegraph and telephone provide a definitive contour for how the newest form of networked communication, the internet, will be used in the future (Nye, Fall 1997).The neediness of account king and civility have increased as the anonymity in U.S. society has increased, states newspaper columnist Ellen Goodman. She cites the anonymous zones of talk radio and cyberspace among the fox holes for people who want to say anything and everything with impunity (Goodman, 5 September 1996).Despite the downside of the information highway, internet access has made communication between local government and citizens much easier nationwide. Public records access, force posti ngs, permit applications, and legislative updates are available online in dozens of cities and counties (Bowser January 1998, p. 36).The technology of the internet may pass the masses access to much more information and many more options. So, internet technology is incomplete evil nor good. Thanks to the internet and beam TV, the world is being wired together technologically, but not socially, politically, or culturally, concluded New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman (12 May 2001). We are now comprehend and hearing one another faster and better, but with no corresponding improvement in our ability to learn from, or understand, one another. So integration, at this stage, is producing more anger than anything else.The new modes of communication set up people faster than any previous technology the world has known. However, the internet can just as easily infiltrate the minds of millions with lies, half-truths, and hatreds. Friedman (12 May 2001) deemed that the internet, a t its ugliest, is just an open sewer an electronic conduit for untreated, unfiltered information. The internet and satellite TV may inflame emotions and cultural biases, resulting in less understanding and tolerance. Government programs are strengthened on political consensus. Legislation is enacted for the long term. Compromises are based on education, exchanges, diplomacy, and human interaction.However, due to the lack of face-to-face context and the lack of interactional coherence in e-mail and SMS, people need to be more explicit and concise in order to make their message as well as the purpose transparent to their audience, especially in initiated, not responsive, messages. If the message is not explicit enough, the receiver may not be able to provide an optimal response, or the message may turn into a lengthy sequenced exchange before a desired response is obtained.Thus, language use and structure are greatly affected but the intention remains the same. With the fear of the d eterioration of language through these new technologies, it is only right that people should still be educated appropriately with regards to the correct structure and use language, so that they will not be confused when they utilize the normal modes of communication. Technology should enhance how society behaves and interact and not the other way around.Works CitedBeard, Adrian. Language Change. London Routledge, 2004.Bowser, Brandi. Opening the Window to Online majority rule www.localgovernment. com, American City & County 113.1 (January 1998) 3638.Collot, M. and N. Belmore . Electronic Language A New Variety of English. In S. C. herring (Ed.), Computer-Mediated Communication Linguistic, Social and Cross-Cultural Perspectives (pp. 13-28). Amsterdam John Benjamins, 1996.Crystal, David. Language and the Internet. Cambridge Cambridge Univ. Press, 2001.Cukier, Kenneth. Who Runs the Internet? World Press Review, 45.5 (May 1998) 3941.Dimaggio, Paul, Eszter Hargittai, W. Russell Neuman, a nd John P. Robinson. Social Implications of the Internet. Annual Review of Sociology (2001) 307.Friedman, Thomas L. Global Village Idiocy, The New York Times, (May 12, 2002).Goodman, Ellen. Anonymity Breeds Incivility, capital of Massachusetts Globe, (September 5, 1996)17A.Gortner, Harold F., Julianne Mahler, and Jeanne Bell Nicholson, Organization Theory A Public Perspective, 2nd ed. (Fort Worth, Tex. Harcourt Brace, 1997), pp. 135141.Halliday, M. A. K. Spoken and Written Language. Oxford, UK Oxford University Press, 1990.Kiran, Jyothi. SMS Divorces, Womens Feature Service. (June 2, 2003).Nie, Norman H. and Erbring, Lutz. Internet Use Decreases Social Interaction. The Internet. Ed. James D. Torr. San Diego Greenhaven Press, 2005.Nye, David E. Shaping Communication Networks Telegraph, Telephone, Computer, Social Research, 64.3 (Fall 1997) 10671092.