Wednesday August 27, 2008
Text messaging
A few years back, I saw a cartoon strip about a teenager facing his final English exam.
“Why aren\’t you studying for it?” Mom asks.
“Aw, Mom,” he reassures her, “English is like a second language for me!”
It was, in hindsight, a prophetic cartoon. English – classical English, with well-turned phrases and carefully chosen words – is becoming as foreign to many speakers as Swahili or Urdu.
In Scotland, according to the usually reliable Guardian newspaper, school boards have instructed teachers to accept the abbreviations of text-messaging in essays and exam answers.
Indeed, one enterprising 13-year-old student apparently wrote an entire paper describing her summer holidays in textspeak.
A new vocabulary
We tend to think of technology as a tool of communication. On the surface, at least, the typewriter and telephone simply enhanced speed without altering content.
But cell-phones demonstrate a different phenomenon. The tool is changing the way we communicate, the language we use, the words we understand.
Brevity matters, when you\’re tapping out messages with just your thumb on a cell-phone\’s keypad. Some thumbs get blindingly fast. I read somewhere that a Japanese author has written several best-selling novels on her cell-phone, while riding the Tokyo subway.
“Texting” has become a new verb.
An Internet page invited readers to identify the 50 most common text abbreviations. They included
BTW — By The Way
FWIW — For What It\’s Worth
IMHO — In My Humble Opinion
ISTM – It Seems to Me
LOL — Laughing Out Loud
TIA – Thanks in Advance
TTYL — Talk To You Later
This new vocabulary does not come naturally. You have to learn it. Sometimes you have to sound it out – BCNU becomes “Be Seeing You,” and 2MORO turns into “tomorrow.” Or else you have to guess the familiar phrase that the letters might refer to – PIR apparently means “Parent In Room”; GTG stands for “Got To Go”; and TFL, “Thanks for Listening.”
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We\’ve always used abbreviations. Almost everyone knows ASAP, PS, and NB. Some still remember SNAFU.
And all bureaucracies abound in TLAs (Three Letter Acronyms).
A professor in Coventry suggests text-messaging may actually improve language skills. A speech therapist praises the “ability to code-switch,” in the same way that fluency in multiple languages is known to enhance thinking and communication.
OTOH, texting is not another language.
To go slightly OT (off topic), English is difficult enough to learn – what with irregular verbs, even more irregular spellings, borrowed words, contradictory idioms, and enough rules about commas to induce a coma – without adding the complexity of guessing the words that a bunch of letters might be replacing.
Textspeak is, IMHO, a sub-level of English, a layer as incomprehensible to the outsider as Cockney rhyming slang.
What, for example, would a Chinese speaker, already struggling to learn English idiosyncrasies, make of DILLIGAS?
If you must know, it stands for “Do I Look Like I Give A Shit?”
Instead of encouraging communication, ISTM, textspeak becomes a barrier. It excludes those who don\’t already know the lingo.
Anyway, GTG. BFN & TFL. TTYL.
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Copyright © 2007 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups permitted; all other rights reserved.
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