There comes a time in person's life when their inner ear ceases to detect the pitch of crankery. When "music today is just noise" sounds like a true statement and not an admission of age, and when "I'll take the purple Crocs" does not terrify the speaker with its strong undertone of coming sexual obsolescence. Reading Louis Menand's
New Yorker analysis of text messaging, it would seem Menand, an often gorgeous author and critic, has reached that phase of crankery. Consider:
The texting function of the cell phone ought to have been the special province of the kind of people who figure out how to use the television remote to turn on the toaster: it’s a huge amount of trouble relative to the results. In some respects, texting is a giant leap backward in the science of communication. It’s more efficient than semaphore, maybe, but how much more efficient is it than Morse code? With Morse code, to make an “s” you needed only three key presses.
This is rather like saying the car is too much trouble as compared to the train because you have to drive it yourself. If we all had Morse code receivers in our pockets, maybe we'd find the language of more use. But the innovation of text messaging is tied up in the portability of cell phones, not the existence of T9. Everyone recognizes the inadequacy of the numerical keypad -- it's why phones are evolving towards keyboards.
This is the new decorum in communication: you can be sloppy and you can be blunt, but you have to be fast. To delay is to disrespect. In fact, delay is the only disrespect...There is no socially accepted excuse for being without your cell phone. “I didn’t have my phone”: that just does not sound believable. Either you are lying or you are depressed or you have something to hide. If you receive a text, therefore, you are obliged instantaneously to reply to it, if only to confirm that you are not one of those people who can be without a phone. The most common text message must be “k.” It means “I have nothing to say, but God forbid that you should think that I am ignoring your message.”
This, too, is weird. It reads like Menand overheard a teenager venting on the subway and elevated her anger over a boyfriend's tardy reply into a Rule. When he says "the most common text message must be 'k,'" the telltale "must" gives away a fairly glaring lack of evidence. Not only doesn't he know if the most common text message is "k," but the next sentence is obviously wrong: "K" is short for "ok," and it's a statement of agreement, like "yes." If I text a friend to have dinner at 7, no return text means I won't show up. "K" means he'll be there, and so will I. My friend is actually saying something quite concrete -- he will attend, at the time and place indicated -- and doing it with a single consonant. Menand is saying something that's quite light, a cranky mental gesture disguised as a point, and needs 20 words to do it. Score one for texting.Menand makes some fair points, too. The ways in which international texters are adopting English will certainly have some fascinating linguistic impacts. It's true that some folks like texting because they loathe talking. But what Menand text messages are supplementary communication. They facilitate actual meetings and allow for the transmission of trivia and observations and notes that wouldn't be worth an actual conversation with all its formalities and disruptions. Plus, the kids like texting. Menand should talk to a few of them, and calm down about what they're doing on their cell phones. He's too good and important a critic to waste his time and talent simply being a grump.
Image used under a Creative Commons license from Veronica Belmont. 
