This document analyzes transcripts of digital communications to explore how they resemble spoken language and people's attitudes towards this. It examines how emotions and facial expressions are conveyed online through emojis, and questions if social media is changing everyday speech. Two transcripts are presented: one between friends shows their language becoming more informal over time, using emojis, acronyms and no punctuation to convey sarcasm and say goodbye casually. The other between a parent and child demonstrates anger through capitalization and exclamation points, and the child's attempt to justify themselves with detail and humor. Both illustrate how language and tone adapt to different contexts online.

1. Analyse some short extracts from transcripts of people communicating using digital media,
Explore the features that show these written communications are close to spoken language
and the attitudes that different people have to the effects of these new hybrid languages.
Is close text language and “social media speak” anything close to everyday spoken
language? To try and work this out I have taken transcripts of me talking to several other
people through both text and social media sites. The reason transcripts from written media
conversations are being used is to show how everyday things such as facial expressions can
be used online in the form of emojis and how emotions like anger can be shown as easily as
adding a full stop to the end of a sentence a thing that in average written communication is
a necessity so that begs the question, is social media ruining everyday talk or pioneering a
new form of communication?
Words and text used in social media language are usually shortened down versions of
already existing words for example “mate” is commonly shortened down to “m8” in digital
communication it is shortened down to this as they sound almost the same and saves
people from typing two more letters. The problem many people have with this is that the
youth will take this as the normal therefore dumbing down everyday language and
effectively making us less intelligent. Using these transcripts however I can give evidence
toward this being not entirely true.
Transcript 1: Between 2 friends F1= friend 1 F2= friend 2
F1: Will you tell our teacher I’m going to be late?
8 hours later
F2: (thumbs up emoji)
F1: its toooooo bloody late now (fed up face emoji)
F2: I went back and told her…
F1: you diddddddddddd???????
F2: nah just getin ur hopes up
F1: Just leave (laughing face emoji)
F2: I cant im trapped
F1: STFU
F2: (crying face emoji)
This transcript shows that how we talk to one another is situational. We can see this as
when F1 needs F2 to take them seriously they write in correct English with correct
punctuation to show the formality of the situation. Then as time passes F2 finally responds

2. with a thumbs up emoji which is clearly a form of sarcasmas he is about 8 hours late to be
able to do as F1 asked. F2 who we saw through his original message is clearly able of
structuring sentences now: has no capital letters; is purposefully adding unnecessary extra
letters; not using any punctuation to finish the sentence and is communicating through
emojis. We also see through this conversation that toward the end the two friends are done
talking to each other there responses to each other become just lazy responses with no
thought put into them for example “STFU” which when leaving out the vulgar part of it is
telling the other person to shut up. This is not meant in a serious way it is basically a more
“banterfull”way to say goodbye we can tell that it is not taken seriously by the other person
as they reply with a crying face which is an odd thing as if this was a real life someone going
into tears would indicate actual sadness but doing it on the internet is basically the
equivalent of a sarcastic “oh boohoo” in real life.
Another transcript I have shown how emotions are shown through text and online speak
Transcript 2: Between a parent and child. P=Parent C=Child
P: You EVER leave your room in that state again and there will be a 6 week internet ban!!!
Fuming!!! I have a life too! Thanks!
C: Look, I didn’t want it to be left like that. Dad ended up coming to pick me up early which if
anything is the opposite of what normally happens (as you know). It’s not like you had to
clean it anyway.
P: ……
This first of all shows the Parents absolute anger we can see this through the entirely
capitalized “EVER”. When something it usually indicates 1 of 3 things it’s either excitement,
shock or anger and from what we can gather from the context of this text I would defiantly
place it on anger. The reason something would be entirely capitalized in this case the
“EVER” would be to show that that word would be either shouted or heavily emphasized.
The next sign of anger is the extra punctuation that is added and how after the message has
been put across the parent just puts her thoughts and feelings down followed by
exclamation points as exclamation points are used to show high feelings or high volume
which for this situation works for both. From this transcript we also see the child who is
scared of the consequences that may come to them. We can see that the child is trying to
prove the sincerity of his situation by putting as much effort into the text as possible and
making it relatable to the parent he is talking to by making a little fun out of the person they
both know well. The Parent is still clearly in a state of anger as we see she completely
ignores what is said and responds with the online version of silence many full stops to show
that nothing has been said back.