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Technolingualism: The Mind and the Machine
Since the earliest days of our species, technology and language have evolved in parallel. This book examines the processes and products of this age-old a phenomenon we're calling technolingualism -- the mutually influential relationship between language and technology.
One the one hand, as humans advance technology to master, control, and change the world around us, our language adapts. More sophisticated social-cultural practices give rise to new patterns of linguistic communication. Language changes in its vocabulary, structures, social conventions, and ideologies. Conversely-and this side of the story has been widely overlooked-the unique features of human language can influence a technology's physical forms and technical processes.
Technolingualism explores the fascinating ways, past and present, by which language and technology have informed each other's development. The book reveals important corollaries about the universal nature of language and, most importantly, what it means to be human. From our first babbling noises to the ends of our lives, we are innately attuned to the technologies around us, and our language reflects this. We are, all of us, technolinguals.
One the one hand, as humans advance technology to master, control, and change the world around us, our language adapts. More sophisticated social-cultural practices give rise to new patterns of linguistic communication. Language changes in its vocabulary, structures, social conventions, and ideologies. Conversely-and this side of the story has been widely overlooked-the unique features of human language can influence a technology's physical forms and technical processes.
Technolingualism explores the fascinating ways, past and present, by which language and technology have informed each other's development. The book reveals important corollaries about the universal nature of language and, most importantly, what it means to be human. From our first babbling noises to the ends of our lives, we are innately attuned to the technologies around us, and our language reflects this. We are, all of us, technolinguals.
304 pages, Paperback
Published January 25, 2018
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August 24, 2019
I read this to keep my hand in (my degrees are in Linguistics but my life has moved away from that now). I want to stress though that this book is written for a wide audience and it's done very well - so no technical background knowledge is needed.
The subject matter is fascinating. It looks at the development of eight technologies - writing systems (alphabets, syllabaries, logograms), the printing press, the typewriter, the telegraph, the computer, the mobile phone and the cochlear implant. In each case, the author investigates how linguistic research was able to help the development of each technology, how the technology has influenced language and how the technology has shaped people's attitudes to language.
Each chapter is written strictly to this structure and it becomes very formulaic - which would be a good thing if the author didn't explain how he was going to structure the text in every single chapter. It was somewhat repetitive.
I learned some very interesting things, such as that the Korean writing system represents how the sounds are made in the mouth. I really enjoyed reading about the history of the typewriter, telegraph, telephone, speech recognition software and the cochlear implant. I also was pleased to see a genuine effort to make the book reflect a global outlook, rather than an English-centric one.
I found the organisation of the book somewhat limiting. The author has divided these technologies into neat epochs - the 'textualization of language' chapter looks are how cultures first started to document their language. The 'mechanization of language' chapter looks at the printing press and the typewriter. These work well, but the later chapters on computers and mobile phones try to create a narrative of a unitary effect on language for technologies that are too versatile and changeable to fit.
The book is better when focusing on older, single-purpose, outdated technologies. Although this is understandable, it made me think more about the developments happening with modern, web-connected devices. Sadly much of the mobile phone chapter focuses on txtspk which (as the author admits) is less of a feature now than it was in the era of the Nokia 7210. Speech recognition should have it's own chapter I think - it's placement within the mobile phone chapter is uneasy and (with the spread of Alexa etc.) outdated.
The book made quite grandiose claims about the "framework" of Technolingualism, which seemed to me to be less of an approach to finding out about the world and more simply a way to organise a chapter of this book. I'm not sure it's a phrase that is going to take off.
There are helpful illustrations throughout (although there are one or two superfluous ones. Are readers really unable to imagine putting icing between the layers of a cake after 2 paragraphs explaining it, without a diagram of a layered cake with and without icing?).
These quibbles aside, this was a delightful and easy read that presents a well written tour through some important inventions and provides some food for thought.
The subject matter is fascinating. It looks at the development of eight technologies - writing systems (alphabets, syllabaries, logograms), the printing press, the typewriter, the telegraph, the computer, the mobile phone and the cochlear implant. In each case, the author investigates how linguistic research was able to help the development of each technology, how the technology has influenced language and how the technology has shaped people's attitudes to language.
Each chapter is written strictly to this structure and it becomes very formulaic - which would be a good thing if the author didn't explain how he was going to structure the text in every single chapter. It was somewhat repetitive.
I learned some very interesting things, such as that the Korean writing system represents how the sounds are made in the mouth. I really enjoyed reading about the history of the typewriter, telegraph, telephone, speech recognition software and the cochlear implant. I also was pleased to see a genuine effort to make the book reflect a global outlook, rather than an English-centric one.
I found the organisation of the book somewhat limiting. The author has divided these technologies into neat epochs - the 'textualization of language' chapter looks are how cultures first started to document their language. The 'mechanization of language' chapter looks at the printing press and the typewriter. These work well, but the later chapters on computers and mobile phones try to create a narrative of a unitary effect on language for technologies that are too versatile and changeable to fit.
The book is better when focusing on older, single-purpose, outdated technologies. Although this is understandable, it made me think more about the developments happening with modern, web-connected devices. Sadly much of the mobile phone chapter focuses on txtspk which (as the author admits) is less of a feature now than it was in the era of the Nokia 7210. Speech recognition should have it's own chapter I think - it's placement within the mobile phone chapter is uneasy and (with the spread of Alexa etc.) outdated.
The book made quite grandiose claims about the "framework" of Technolingualism, which seemed to me to be less of an approach to finding out about the world and more simply a way to organise a chapter of this book. I'm not sure it's a phrase that is going to take off.
There are helpful illustrations throughout (although there are one or two superfluous ones. Are readers really unable to imagine putting icing between the layers of a cake after 2 paragraphs explaining it, without a diagram of a layered cake with and without icing?).
These quibbles aside, this was a delightful and easy read that presents a well written tour through some important inventions and provides some food for thought.
Displaying 1 of 1 review