Linguistics Discussion 2013 and Beyond discussion

I recently did a semi-project where I took samples of language from day to day life and looked at how context affected language. Interestingly a lot of the examples responded to what sociolinguists were already noticing.

It's fascinating how observation of real life language can influence writing. I know I read an article linked here that said you should not pay attention to real world dialogue to write your own but I disagree. The more I become aware of how real world dialogue works the more I can write dialogue that works for characters. The problem is when you try and outright copy the intonation patterns and discourse markers used in real dialogue. Discourse markers are words like totally in the phrase 'I totally love it'.

The topic of conversation for this thread is: how have you noticed language changing according to context? Do you yourself change your language according to written letters, e-language or spoken language? Because e-language is more and more being viewed as a different entity to written or spoken language - a hybrid between the two.

For me and most of the people I know, there is a definite difference between speech and their written words. My speech is casual and informal in structure and tone. My written words vary depending on whether I'm texting, eMailing or writing an essay. Of course, when I'm writing an essay on something, I use most of my word skills and knowledge. When I'm writing a letter, it's informal but with more structure than my spoken words. Since texting demands faster response time, it's the most casual written word, emulating speech. I'm slowly relaxing in the texting and allowing myself to use shorten words like "u" for "you." My 11 year old daughter texts me using abbreviations, so I'm starting to do that. It's still a relief to go to GR to have a verbally more dense dialogue without worrying about sounding like a snob or a boring professor.