Digitally Assisted Conversation—Google and Changes in Literacy Practices

Abstract

The use of search engines such as Google is an activity that produces a transformation of communication practices related to the use of digital devices (especially smartphones) and has a significant impact on Internet users’ linguistic practices. One of these practices is conversation-not Internet chat, but “ordinary” face-to-face dialogue. People often search the web during conversations. This practice transforms a simple conversation into a digitally assisted one. A digitally assisted conversation is a dynamic combination of speaking, typing and reading on the screen. In this paper, I present some consequences of this change, such as the way searching during conversations “forces” interlocutors to take a different look at their statements and why reaching for a smartphone and using a search engine can be perceived, regardless of the results displayed on the screen, as a significant rhetorical gesture of negation (usually considered rude). Proficiency in searching and using a smartphone with broadband Internet is considered socially attractive today, just as erudition and literacy once were. This is currently considered an extension of erudition.

Keywords

• new media
• literacy practices
• conversation
• smartphones
• search engines