David Crystal, a historian of language at the University of Wales in the United Kingdom advises that blogs are “already providing evidence of a new genre of diary writing, which a few years ago was though to be dying out as a literary domain” Knight Ridder Newspapers reports.
The story, which focuses on the rise of “Netspeak” and the alleged diminution of the proficiency and quality of written English, Crystal compares critics of blogging and IM to other critics who criticised printing when it was first introduced in the 15th century, the telephone in the 19th century and broadcasting in the 20th.
He claims that due to the internet and blogging, “resources for the expression of informality in writing have hugely increased, something which hasn’t been seen in English since the Middle Ages, and which was largely lost when standard English came to be established in the 18th century.”
That’s right, blogging is part of a revival of language development last seen in the Middle Ages.
And people say blogging is new, a fad, or not mainstream!
