Spellchecking and the public display of literacy

Until the growth of interest in social media, and with the exception of evangelical Christians, people in Balduíno were not generally interested in reading and did not practice writing. The perception of most in the settlement until the recent past was that (as Ricardo’s case shows) studying was a waste of time. As a local elderly man summarised, explaining his father’s decision in the 1940s not to allow him to go to school: ‘the literate get by, and the illiterate get by just the same’. This low regard for literacy appears, for example, in the local library, which is indefinitely closed, and with the general lack of interest for consuming printed media in Balduíno. The only places that sell newspapers and magazines there are the local pharmacies, as these are businesses where affluent travellers stop by as they enter the settlement, to shop for provisions on their way to other locations.

Social media has changed this disregard for textual communication, particularly among young people, because literacy combined with online communication opens up a social domain that adults in general cannot reach, as explained in Chapters 2 and 4. Since internet cafés began to operate in the late 2000s, reading and writing moved from being something taught and used only in classrooms to becoming a cool skill that expanded one’s possibilities for social interaction and the exchange of content.²⁴ From 2013, when inexpensive smartphones began to flourish among young people, an inversion happened. Before that date they rarely practiced reading or writing, but after it reading and writing became about the only thing that they do continuously: at home, out with friends, at school and, especially, during long bus journeys. The change impacted, for instance, on family relationships, with illiterate parents and other adults suddenly finding themselves socially isolated and alone while children and younger relatives devoted hours to conversations through social media.²⁵

But social media is not just a place for practising literacy skills. Part of the improvement in writing results from locals becoming more aware of their poor literacy, and the public nature of their resulting embarrassment. Now any mistakes they make on the posts they upload to Facebook or on WhatsApp exchanges can be seen by all. As young people began using social media, the more learned used writing to display achievement (similar to wearing brand name clothes) and the least literate became aware that what they posted needed to be correct in order to avoid public ridicule.²⁶ With regard to this second situation, a phrase occasionally seen on Facebook comments among young people was: ‘You think so much of yourself and yet you cannot even write correctly.’

In a nutshell, young people found themselves trapped between having to participate in social media exchanges, while at the same time having to worry about the accuracy of their written language. Their generation could not hide behind the simple practices of sharing or liking, as their parents and older relatives do (see Chapter 3). Because young people are identifying themselves in contrast with previous generations through digital technology, they need to use it more capably and proficiently, including writing correct posts (Fig. 5.2). Teachers in the settlement, themselves in general less knowledgeable about social media than their students, apparently disregard the anxiety that using social media brings to young locals. Yet I found that, based on 15 months living in the settlement, the one common experience all young people in Balduíno had was the fear of writing incorrectly on social media and being subjected to public shaming as a result.

This context – of having the pressure to write correctly to be respected on social media – led locals to embrace all possible technological solutions within reach to improve the standard of their writing. Some have spell-checking apps on their mobiles and computers, and use them thoroughly. Others with less capable phones, or those lacking technical literacy, will ‘google’ the word to see whether the autocomplete feature²⁷ points to an alternate spelling. This Google search functionality is also useful because the person can look for a certain phrase to confirm whether verb tenses and plural forms are correctly applied. But finally, if after using these resources they still do not feel sure about the spelling and cannot find a synonym, most decide not to post, to avoid the possibility of being laughed at by peers online.

As my research happened during the period in which WhatsApp and mobile internet became popular, I followed the change in the quality of texts locals sent during personal exchanges or posted on Facebook. The movement to WhatsApp is important in the sense that previously locals depended on internet cafés or home computers to interact on social media. As they embraced WhatsApp, they also started to use pay-as-you-go plans to access the internet at any time and from anywhere.

When I arrived in the settlement, their writing was similar to speaking:²⁸ people spelled words as they sounded, and many found full stops and commas vague abstractions that they used almost randomly. Also, like their spoken Portuguese, their writing disregarded the often confusing grammar rules concerning verbal tenses and the use of singular and plural. So in the beginning of my field work I could see some serious language mistakes, even among university students. Gradually this changed, however, and as I finish the writing of this book in late 2016, it is impressive to see the evolution of the textual content that young people currently post online. Many of the formerly recurrent misspellings and grammatical errors now appear only rarely on Facebook and WhatsApp exchanges. The common mistakes that remain are the indiscriminate interchanging of words with similar sounds such as ‘mais’ and ‘mas’ or ‘me’ and ‘mim’.

The effect of social media upon teenagers and young people is also having an influence on children, largely as a consequence of their interest in online gaming. The next section gives an idea of how being able to access the internet and play online has become not just a common leisure activity, but also a prestigious practice leading to the acquisition of knowledge that improves literacy.