密歇根新闻广播 再发“LOL”你就暴露年龄了

If there's a teen or 20-something in your life, chances are that you've seen plenty of "LOL" and "BFF" in your texting conversations.

It seems like text abbreviations are becoming an increasingly prevalent part of written correspondence. Are they making communication more efficient, or are they just making it harder to do so clearly?

University of Michigan English professor Anne Curzan tells us that, to some extent, texting abbreviations are creating a sort of generation gap.

"Young people text at a rate that I have to say I don't," she says. Polling her students, she typically finds they each send between 40 and 150 texts per day.

"And they look at me and they say, 'how many texts do you send a day?' And I say, 'I don't know, four?' So right there you see a generation gap," Curzan says.

Curzan tells us that at the rate young people are texting, it isn't surprising that they'd use some abbreviations, but the phenomenon isn't exactly new.

"Young people will always have language that older people don't have. We call it slang," she says. "It's a way to signal that you're young, to be a little irreverent, to have language that distinguishes you."

But despite the fact that new abbreviations are born into existence every day, Curzan tells us research is suggesting that texting slang might not be used as commonly as one would believe.

"One study said somewhere between 6% and 20% of texts have abbreviations, which means a whole lot of them don't," she says.

She's backed up by her experience as a teacher. Her students tell her that "Yeah, some (abbreviations) we use, but using a whole lot of them isn't necessarily that cool," she says. Some point out that their parents tend to use a lot more abbreviations than they do.

Curzan tells us that in the relatively¹ short lifespan many of these abbreviations have enjoyed, some have shifted meaning. While "LOL" has made its way into the Oxford² English Dictionary, some of her students have suggested that the definition there is no longer accurate "if you are interested in how young people use it," she says.

Rather than the original "laughing out loud," Curzan says "LOL" is more commonly used now as a way to express tone and acknowledgement.

For example, she says "LOL" is often used in a similar context as "JK," or "just kidding," expressing that you're not speaking in a serious tone.

She adds that it also functions as what linguists³ call a backchannel. "When we're in conversation and we're listening to someone, we make those little noises, like 'uh-huh, yeah,' and we need to do that on texting," she says.

It can be confusing and kind of hard to keep up with, but according to Curzan the ever-changing nature of text-speak is baked into the language just like more traditional slang. It's not surprising, she says, that young people make up and use terms that older generations don't know "because they want us not to know."

"It makes me so grateful that I hang out with 18- to 24-year-olds on such a regular basis because they keep me informed about what's happening in this kind of written language," Curzan says.

Anne Curzan is an English professor at the University of Michigan and co-host of Michigan Radio's That's What They Say.

1 relatively   

adv.比较...地，相对地

参考例句：

• The rabbit is a relatively recent introduction in Australia.兔子是相对较新引入澳大利亚的物种。
• The operation was relatively painless.手术相对来说不痛。

2 Oxford   

n.牛津（英国城市）

参考例句：

• At present he has become a Professor of Chemistry at Oxford.他现在已是牛津大学的化学教授了。
• This is where the road to Oxford joins the road to London.这是去牛津的路与去伦敦的路的汇合处。

3 linguists   

n.通晓数国语言的人( linguist的名词复数 )；语言学家

参考例句：

• The linguists went to study tribal languages in the field. 语言学家们去实地研究部落语言了。 来自辞典例句
• The linguists' main interest has been to analyze and describe languages. 语言学家的主要兴趣一直在于分析并描述语言。 来自辞典例句