TXTSPK (V2)
Textese could be “The Death of English,” according to a Newsweek article posted last year. Gabriel wrote a blog post about Textese being a new variable, a new language of sorts fueled by a new community of people. The fear that language purists have about this new “language” is that it will somehow kill modern day English as we know it, or impair people’s abilities to communicate properly in any language for that matter.
In his book, Txtng: the Gr8 Db8, David Crystal, Britain’s most prolific linguist, challenges the notion that texting kills language. He makes two general points: that the language of texting is hardly as deviant as people think, and that texting actually makes young people better communicators, not worse. Crystal spells out the first point by marshaling real linguistic evidence. He breaks down the distinctive elements of texting language—pictograms; initialisms, or acronyms; contractions, and others—and points out similar examples in linguistic practice from the ancient Egyptians to 20th-century broadcasting.
Shakespeare freely used elisions, novel syntax and several thousand made-up words (his own name was signed in six different ways). Even some common conventions are relatively newfangled: rules for using the oft-abused apostrophe were set only in the middle of the 19th century. The point is that tailored text predates the text message, so we might as well accept that ours is a language of vandals. Who even knows what p.m. stands for? (“Post meridiem,” Latin for “after midday,” first recorded by a lazy delinquent in 1666.)
In a British study conducted last year, results showed that children who texted—and who wielded plenty of abbreviations—scored higher on reading and vocabulary tests. In fact, the more adept they were at abbreviating, the better they did in spelling and writing. “Before you can write abbreviated forms effectively and play with them, you need to have a sense of how the sounds of your language relate to the letters,” says Crystal. The same study also found the children with the highest scores to be the first to have gotten their own cell phones.
Ireland’s Educational Committee disagrees. In their study of 37,000 Irish students aged 15 to 16, results showed that students are becoming poorer spellers and lack punctuation when writing school papers. The report branded today’s teens “unduly reliant on short sentences, simple tenses and a limited vocabulary.” According to a FOX news story, “too many test-takers were choosing to answer sparingly, even minimally, rather than seeing questions as invitations to explore the territory they had studied and to express the breadth and depth of their learning and understanding.” Ireland’s youth generally get their cell phones by the age of 12.
So who is right? Does texting harm ones ability to use a language properly? Or is it a question of culture and habits? Are the Irish lazier than the English? What is the difference between textese and writing shorthand for note taking?
Perhaps teachers need to emphasize to students that both textese and proper language use can exist harmoniously. That one can save time and finger muscles while sending messages on your favorite messaging device while maintaining the ability to write a fully punctuated, eloquent sentence. One variable does not need to kill the other, but can complement the other.
Long live the evolution of communication!
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