New Technology Texts

This section looks at three examples: websites, e-mail and texts messages.


Websites





- The way material is organised and presented is influenced by the dimensions of the screen. Text that runs along the top or bottom of the screen, or down the margins, is common.


- Much of the text is non-linear. Traditional linear text is read progressively from the top of the page to the bottom, but on websites separate sections of thext occupy different parts of the screen, and we do not read them in a fixed sequence (there is some similarity here with a page in a newsapaper).


- Information i broken down into manageable segments.

- Graphological features are important, with the use of colour, animation and visual images.


- Websites are much more interactive than traditional written texts.


E-mail



The informality of the e-mail, together with the interactive relationship between senders and ecievers, makes it a for of written communication that is in many ways close to spoken language.

- Lexis is often a conversational, with the frequent use of colloquialisms and contractions. There is more tolerance of spelling errors than in and contractions.

- Greetings and farewells illustratethe informality of the medium. Hi has become a standard way of the opening messages.


- Gramatical features include loosely constructed sentences, and in order to type messages more quickly, some punctuation marks may be omitted, and lower case letters used where standardgrammar would usually require capitals.


- Various methods are used to suggest the prosodic features of speech, scuh as stress and tone of voice.


- A large number of abbreviations are used in e-mails, internet chatrooms and mobile phone text messages. Examples iclude BBL ("be back later"), MYOB ("mind your own business") and JK ("just kidding").


- Emoticons (also known as smileys) are graphical aymbols used to represnt facial expressions and bodey language:


:-) Smile


:-( anger, displeasure


{} a hug


Text Messages


 In addition to abbreviations and emoticons (see aove), linguistic features found in text messages include:


- Words are shortened, as in TXT (for "text") and TLK (for "talk")


- Phonetic spelling, as in LUV (for "love") and NE (for "any")


- Letter homophones, as in C (for "see") and U (for "you")


- Number homophones, as in 2 (for "two") and 4 (for "for")


- Grammatical compression, determiners, auxiliary verbs, etc. are often omitted from sentences, and punctuation marks may also be missing.

Friendly Fire from a UAV kills two men in Afghanistan

Military forces are investigating what appears to be the first case of friendly fire caused by a Predator Drone in Afghanistan.
Several U.S. Drones are used to hunt the enemy, so that marines forces are able to see their enemies on the radar, but some other UAV are armed with high technology rockets, which are able to be controled by a computer, what makes them one of the most used technology on the world.

Predator Drone (similar to the one involved in the accident)

The two U.S. troops were a navy medic and a marine. Both were sent there to fight enemy troops, as the south of Afghanistan is a territory in were there's still war. "The only thing whe can imagine is that both soldiers were cofused with enemy troops", two officials from the U.S. army had spoken in anonymity, as they are still investigating this case.
Maybe friendly fire in a battlefield may happen, but this is a special case, as both soldiers weren't on a fight. The U.S. army should b more carefull at the moment of firing those rockets, because they are able to kill ten men in just seconds, in fact, one of those rockets is capable to kill a tank. The U.S. army is commiting a great mistake at the moment of allowing their Drones fire at enemy that hasn't been spoted yet, because accidents like this one may occur. The U.S. shouldn't have this technology ifthe don't know how to use it properly, if accidents like this one are going to continue happening, it woul be better that they stop using them.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/04/12/sources-predator-drone-killed-troops/