2018_11_08_ICS_backus

The differences between writing and speech were clear in some respects. Before, speech was immediate, dialogic and informal, while writing was generally formal and there was a distance in time between messages. But what has happened now with online writing?

"These characteristics are changing today," explains Ad Backus, a professor at Tilburg University, who attended an internationalcongress on transitional texts organized by the Institute for Culture and Society (ICS) of the University of Navarra. "When you write messages or even emailsnow they are quite informal."

"Writing on Whatsapp, Facebook and Instagram is more oral than written. When messages are sent, correctness and spelling are not usually takeninto account," he adds. And to emulate body language and intonation , emoticons are used, the professor points out. So although technically it is language that is written and read, it is informal like a conversation on many occasions.

Another big difference he perceives between the past and today is the need to wait for a written response. With letters you had to wait, but with instant digital messaging you can have conversations. Backus explains that "when you talk to a friend, the format is: I say something, he answers me, I answer him and so on, reaching 20 or 30 messages, for example".

This often gives rise to a "moral panic", it is believed that people write worse now than before. Backus disagrees with this statement at agreement . "As a teacher, I see my students writing essays and essays in a formal way," he explains, "and I don't see big qualitative differences between now and 20 years ago.

Emails as a letter or as whatsapp

" Emails are the typical transitional text, they are in the middle of the road". For some people, they have replaced letters, while others use email as an informal text message. "It usually depends on the audience receiving the email," he says.

One of the challenges he sees is for the sender and receiver of the email to understand each other and have the same attitude without judging each other. "It could be that you send an informal email and the one who receives it sees it as normal and responds the same way, or they have a different idea of how it should be." The solution he proposes is to go on living by paying attention to how the matter evolves.

"Regulating the communicative attitude is very difficult because people don't want to be told how to write a message." He believes that as time goes by, a new way of doing it will emerge . rule gradually emerge that will take hold and be seen as the right way to do it.

The congress in which Ad Backus intervened was part of the project ORFORCREA 'Between formulas: creativity in oral and transitional poetic texts', developed by Sarali Gintsburg at 'Public discourseof the ICS. It is funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020 program research and Innovation, with a scholarship Marie Sklodowska-Curie.