Lilspeak vs. age-appropriate language
Jun. 29th, 2005 11:05 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
shandra.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
multiplicity_archivesThis is probably beating a dead horse a little but I don't really like to see people feel their kids are being negated by a discussion about Lilspeak.
So I just wanted to distinguish a bit between bad spelling/grammar and Lilspeak, apart from the rant. And say why we decided to discourage our kids from learning or using it.
Children acquire language in a fairly specific pattern. This article from the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders shows some of them. People who have worked in special ed (I did, although not at a very high level) know that quite often it's possible to identify a physical or neurological learning difficulty simply by looking at kids' written mistakes. Mistakes that transpose (flip) letters are one kind, mistakes that get the wrong sounds are another kind, etc. Not all spelling mistakes have a reason - that's why you get *really weird* spellings sometimes, that aren't phonetic - but that in itself demonstrates a clear stage that the child is at.
Why Lilspeak is controversial is that often the way it is written on the 'net doesn't follow the rules of language acquisition. It's not just a case of delayed development - someone in a multiple system writing like they're 5 when they're 7 - it's that the errors common in Lilspeak are not commonly made child grammatical errors. Also, as people have noted, quite often the errors are superficial - phonetic spelling, for example - while the underlying verb/tense/clause construction is fine (and quite advanced).
Now the reasons for this could be a zillion - overlapping adult consciousnesses, absorbing social/grammar/spelling rules on the net (kids are good at this - in fact that's how they absorb language), whatever. In a way Lilspeak is more like a pidgin language - a strange hybrid between how children "sound" inside and the adults hearing it. Functionally kids who use it have learned a new language.
But why it can be controversial is that anyone that is aware of how kids acquire language will not perceive Lilspeak as a child language. It may make them more suspicious and less accepting of system kids. It may in rare cases open a system child who /is/ trying to communicate to ridicule or skepticism that isn't necessary. And as a group concern (which I don't worry about too much, but it is there) it can make the typing look "faked" and "not really a kid" to anyone who's trying to prove that for whatever reason.
You could say to your average person Lilspeak probably looks the same as actual poor spelling, but I myself think anyone sensitive to language patterns will pick up on the bad-spelling-but-complex-sentences dissonance, on some level. And we have generally found that if people feel something is 'off' they get closed-minded pretty fast.
As long as one's system kids only talk to other multiple systems' kids, it won't be an issue if that's the dialect they choose to acquire and learn - so no harm, no foul in that sense. But if one's looking at a broader audience for system kids to communicate with, it may cause problems.
I don't think being aware of this is elite or snobby. I don't even think it means "down with Lilspeak!" Neither does it mean "down with bad spelling!"
I'm just saying, sometimes the Lilspeak hides the realness of the child rather than communicating that reality. And hopefully that information can be useful to people in making their own decisions about it.
So I just wanted to distinguish a bit between bad spelling/grammar and Lilspeak, apart from the rant. And say why we decided to discourage our kids from learning or using it.
Children acquire language in a fairly specific pattern. This article from the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders shows some of them. People who have worked in special ed (I did, although not at a very high level) know that quite often it's possible to identify a physical or neurological learning difficulty simply by looking at kids' written mistakes. Mistakes that transpose (flip) letters are one kind, mistakes that get the wrong sounds are another kind, etc. Not all spelling mistakes have a reason - that's why you get *really weird* spellings sometimes, that aren't phonetic - but that in itself demonstrates a clear stage that the child is at.
Why Lilspeak is controversial is that often the way it is written on the 'net doesn't follow the rules of language acquisition. It's not just a case of delayed development - someone in a multiple system writing like they're 5 when they're 7 - it's that the errors common in Lilspeak are not commonly made child grammatical errors. Also, as people have noted, quite often the errors are superficial - phonetic spelling, for example - while the underlying verb/tense/clause construction is fine (and quite advanced).
Now the reasons for this could be a zillion - overlapping adult consciousnesses, absorbing social/grammar/spelling rules on the net (kids are good at this - in fact that's how they absorb language), whatever. In a way Lilspeak is more like a pidgin language - a strange hybrid between how children "sound" inside and the adults hearing it. Functionally kids who use it have learned a new language.
But why it can be controversial is that anyone that is aware of how kids acquire language will not perceive Lilspeak as a child language. It may make them more suspicious and less accepting of system kids. It may in rare cases open a system child who /is/ trying to communicate to ridicule or skepticism that isn't necessary. And as a group concern (which I don't worry about too much, but it is there) it can make the typing look "faked" and "not really a kid" to anyone who's trying to prove that for whatever reason.
You could say to your average person Lilspeak probably looks the same as actual poor spelling, but I myself think anyone sensitive to language patterns will pick up on the bad-spelling-but-complex-sentences dissonance, on some level. And we have generally found that if people feel something is 'off' they get closed-minded pretty fast.
As long as one's system kids only talk to other multiple systems' kids, it won't be an issue if that's the dialect they choose to acquire and learn - so no harm, no foul in that sense. But if one's looking at a broader audience for system kids to communicate with, it may cause problems.
I don't think being aware of this is elite or snobby. I don't even think it means "down with Lilspeak!" Neither does it mean "down with bad spelling!"
I'm just saying, sometimes the Lilspeak hides the realness of the child rather than communicating that reality. And hopefully that information can be useful to people in making their own decisions about it.
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Date: 2005-06-30 03:22 am (UTC)Grr. Stupid people.
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Date: 2005-06-30 04:43 am (UTC)That's a pretty assy thing for someone to do, really, to a little kid or anybody. I mean, what the hell? Yelling at someone over candy? There are probably stupider things to yell at someone over, but I'll bet it's a short list.
Personally speaking, I think avoiding being told that you're not real by adopting certain behaviors is a wasted effort. We're pretty much resigned right now to the fact that anything we do, adaptive or otherwise, is going to be used as evidence against us in a court of public opinion, and it doesn't take too much imagination to believe that's the case for other people too. I mean, if you admit to being a multiple system, you've already got a bunch of singlets who don't know you but will use every minor personal detail to try and prove you're making it all up for attention.
The sad fact is that a lot of multiple systems seem to end up doing that too, and I sure as hell don't know why, as I really don't care enough about Lilspeak to see why it should matter so much whether a kid uses it or not. I think it's dumb and hard to read, yeah, but that's personal opinion, and it doesn't reflect on what I think of the kid using it, even if the grammar does set off certain alarms.
Generally, when I run into really thick Lilspeak, the scenario my brain comes up with is that of an adult member influencing the typing to be more 'cute', not that of a scheming con-artist or something like that. I wonder how much of the Lilspeak came from the kid, and how much came from a well-meaning but old-fashioned 'typist'. It's annoyance over the difficulty of reading the phonetic spelling (Hooked on Phonics DID NOT work for me) and suspicion about the level of alteration and censorship due to the possibility of a editor-middleman.
Plus, and I might get flamed the heck out of me for this one, Asperger's makes understanding the subtext of normal speech hard enough. Lilspeak can sometimes totally blank out what little understanding I have of context-specific "unspoken rules of socialization" because then I have no clue what rules apply. (e.g., "Is this kid joking or being serious? I can't tell! If an adult was saying this, it'd probably be a joke, but this kid isn't tossing any Joke Markers...") This probably sounds idiotic, but that part of the Lilspeak misunderstanding might be improved by liberal use of non-ironic smilies. (Smilies are useful and only dumb when used to muddy up the waters instead of clearing them. That's my take, anyway. I think they ought to be used on all ambiguous statements in colloquial use. But I'm just a freak, anyway.)
So, in conclusion, people who point-blank tell a kid they're not real because they use or don't use Lilspeak are jerks. But Lilspeak does cause communication problems of a fundamental sort with people who aren't fluent in it, and kids should know that too before they choose it as a permanent way of writing online.