Technology

Chapter 7 explores the profound and reciprocal relationship between technology and the English language. It argues that new communication tools, from the printing press through to the smartphone, actively reshape language through their affordances and constraints, influencing everything from spelling (txtspk) to new vocabulary (e.g., ‘selfie;). The chapter highlights how digital mediation has blurred the lines between spoken and written English, creating hybrid forms like ‘Screenlish’. It discusses how global technologies, particularly artificial intelligence, are having a standardizing effect on language while also reinforcing the dominance of English due to its vast digital corpus. Ultimately, technology is shown to be an ecological force, fundamentally altering how we communicate with each other, and thus how we relate to each other.