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by George Grace--a commentary on the "social grooming" theory of language evolution

In this essay, D.E. Whittkower, in the Dept. of Philosophy at Old Dominion University, attempts to establish that social media communications constitute a secondary literacy, which shares many of the features of spoken language ("orality"). Whittkower's discussion of Facebook, in particular, is thought-provoking; he suggests that the site is a "remarkably well-suited site for the activity of friendship," providing opportunities for relationships and interests to grow and intensify and for participants to engage in linguistic and post-linguistic social grooming.