評(píng)論
打印
Books & arts
文藝板塊
Johnson
約翰遜專(zhuān)欄
The memory hole
忘懷洞
Tweets feel like conversation but are judged—and punished—like writing
推文感覺(jué)像是口語(yǔ)對(duì)話，但卻要像書(shū)面用語(yǔ)一樣接受評(píng)判和懲罰
Things were looking rosy for Alexi McCammond. Black, female and 27, she was named editor-in-chief of Teen Vogue after a successful stint as a political correspondent for Axios, a Washington-insider news outfit. Teen Vogue had become an unlikely voice of resistance in the Donald Trump era, combining makeup tips with arguments for universal child care. Ms McCammond was to lead the magazine into the Biden years.
亞歷克西·麥卡蒙德的情況看起來(lái)很美好?，F(xiàn)年27歲的她是一名黑人女性，曾成功擔(dān)任由華盛頓內(nèi)部人士運(yùn)營(yíng)的新聞機(jī)構(gòu)Axios的政治記者，后被任命為《美國(guó)青少年時(shí)尚》的主編。在唐納德·特朗普時(shí)代，《美國(guó)青少年時(shí)尚》是出人意料的抵制聲音。它巧妙地結(jié)合了化妝技巧與普及兒童保育的主張。麥卡蒙德女士隨后將帶領(lǐng)這本雜志進(jìn)入拜登時(shí)代。
But a newsroom rebellion ended her tenure before it began. A group of employees wrote a letter protesting against her appointment because of several tweets she had written ten years earlier, when she was herself a teen. In them Ms McCammond reported Googling how to avoid waking up with “swollen, Asian eyes”. She complained about the lack of an explanation for a poor mark in chemistry: “thanks a lot stupid Asian T.A. (teaching assistant)”. She had apologised for these comments in the past, but a killing in Georgia on March 16th, in which six of the eight victims were Asian women, made them look even worse. Two days later Ms McCammond took to Twitter again—to say that she had agreed to renounce the Teen Vogue job.
但一場(chǎng)新聞編輯部的叛亂讓她的任期還未開(kāi)始就已經(jīng)結(jié)束了。一群?jiǎn)T工寫(xiě)了一封聯(lián)名信以抗議她的任命，究其原因是她十年前寫(xiě)的幾篇推文，當(dāng)時(shí)她還只是個(gè)十幾歲的孩子。在那些推文中，麥卡蒙德描述了自己谷歌搜索如何避免醒來(lái)時(shí)出現(xiàn)“亞洲人典型的腫眼泡”。她抱怨沒(méi)人解釋為何她的化學(xué)成績(jī)不佳：“非常感謝愚蠢的亞洲助教”。她曾為自己過(guò)去的言論道歉，但3月16日佐治亞州發(fā)生了一起謀殺案，8名受害者中有6名是亞裔女性，這讓她的推文更加不堪入目。兩天后，麥卡蒙德發(fā)表推文，表示自己同意放棄《美國(guó)青少年時(shí)尚》的工作。
Hers is hardly the first career to be capsized by old tweets. Neera Tanden was supposed to become Joe Biden’s head of the Office of Management and Budget. But as boss of a centre-left think-tank she had written tweets calling Republican senators “the worst”, a “fraud”, “Voldemort” and suchlike. She too was denied her new position. James Gunn, director of the “Guardians of the Galaxy” superhero films, was fired (then rehired) for tasteless jokes he had made—also a decade and more ago—about paedophilia and the 9/11 attacks. This is to say nothing of the less prominent folk shamed in their communities for offensive tweets.
很難說(shuō)麥卡蒙德是第一個(gè)因?yàn)樽约涸?jīng)的推文而斷送了職業(yè)生涯的人。尼拉·坦登本應(yīng)成為喬·拜登的行政管理和預(yù)算局局長(zhǎng)。但作為一家中左翼智庫(kù)的老板，她曾在推特上表示共和黨參議員是“最糟糕的”、稱(chēng)呼他們是“騙子”、“伏地魔”等。她也因此被剝奪了新的崗位。超級(jí)英雄電影《銀河護(hù)衛(wèi)隊(duì)》的導(dǎo)演詹姆斯·岡恩也遭到了解雇（隨后又被重新雇用），原因是他在十多年前曾就戀童癖和9/11恐怖襲擊開(kāi)過(guò)低俗的玩笑。更遑論那些在自己的圈子里因發(fā)表攻擊性的推特而感到羞恥的籍籍無(wú)名的人了。
Why do tweets keep undoing people? The answer may lie in their hybrid nature. In form, the language of social media is written—but in style, it is far more like speech. Twitter’s character limit encourages short bursts that resemble talking, and are then threaded together in quasi-conversations. People write them as they speak, using sentence fragments, slang, non-standard spellings (to reflect pronunciation) and so on. Dialectologists use Twitter to study shifts in vocabulary, grammar and usage; research shows that the language of tweets closely mimics oral chatter. Finally, Twitter rewards the same qualities that are prized in speech: spontaneity, personality and wit.
為什么推文總是給人惹麻煩？答案可能在于它們的混合特性。在形式上，社交媒體采用書(shū)面語(yǔ)言，但在風(fēng)格上，它更像是口語(yǔ)對(duì)話。推特的字符限制鼓勵(lì)大家發(fā)布類(lèi)似說(shuō)話的簡(jiǎn)短語(yǔ)句，然后串聯(lián)在一起形成準(zhǔn)交流。人們用說(shuō)話的方式寫(xiě)推文，使用不完整的句子、俚語(yǔ)、非標(biāo)準(zhǔn)拼寫(xiě)（反映發(fā)音）等等。方言學(xué)家利用推特來(lái)研究詞匯、語(yǔ)法和用法的變化；研究表明，推文用語(yǔ)與口頭交談高度相似。最后，推特偏愛(ài)那些在對(duì)話中同樣受歡迎的特質(zhì)：率性、個(gè)性鮮明和機(jī)智幽默。
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