Twitter and Facebook: making language a dying art? (a report from Varsity)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

29 January

This story is carried by Varsity, but, since I do not go near Arsebook, I must post my comment here:

When, more than thirty years ago, there was a Cambridge Collegiate Examination (CCE), the only applicants who did not have to take an 'essay paper' were those studying English : I have no idea when the CCE was abolished, but, before then, colleges could bear writing ability in mind prior to interview.

Are these the days that Dr Abulafia harks back to ?


Actually, what is bizarre is that, first with text-messages, then with the Tweet, we so readily acceded to the reintroduction of the telegram (for the character-limit tends to relate to some sort of cost).

What Dr Abulafia, to be an historian of such matters, would really need to show is that use of telegrams by the classes that could afford them made them as dull as he makes out the so-called social - nearly said 'facial' ! - media have made recent undergraduates*...


End-notes

* I like the alleged exchange between Cary Grant and a reporter (in which you will have to imagine the question-mark, because I do not recall how it was styled in a telegram) :


HOW OLD CARY GRANT

OLD CARY GRANT VERY WELL STOP HOW YOU



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