The Language of Texts

It is widely assumed that the younger you are, the more likely you are to text and this has been supported by recent research that suggests teenagers send on average 3,339 texts a month compared to adults aged 45-54 who send an average of only 323. In these texts, both children and adults will use some form of SMS language but who is more likely to use it and why?

There are many linguistic features found in text messages and these can be categorised into:

The shortening of words, ('TXT' for 'TEXT') 

Phonetic spellings of words, ('LUV' for 'LOVE') 

Letter homophones, ('C' for 'SEE') 

Number homophones, ('2' for 'TOO') 

Grammatical compressions in which determiners, auxiliary verbs and punctuation marks are often absent. 

Numerous people are quick to assume that teenagers are mostly responsible for using SMS language, like the examples above, and there are many negative opinions which have been formed based upon this assumption; John Humphries who has argued that texters are "vandals" who are "wrecking our language" and Michael Kwan who believes  it is "effecting teen language abilities". But personally I don't believe that teenagers are responsible for this. For me, when reading through the messages on my phone and I'm pretty sure this is similar to other teenagers, the only texts that use SMS language nowadays are texts received from parents, grandparents and other older people. In David Crystal's book "txting" he claims that only 10% of words are abbreviated in text messages and even though both adults and children use it, adults are more likely to do so. So how can teenagers be responsible for "raping our vocabulary" if this is true? And what is it that makes adults more likely to use it? Do they actually think it's how you're supposed to write a text? Or is It because the small keyboards and screens on phones encourage them to make their messages as short as possible?

Perhaps it is the size of the small screen which only accommodates for 160 characters that influences the texting style of adults. The small keyboard also encourages compression and the shorter the message is, the less time it takes to compose. Many teenagers have now moved on to predictive texting making it quicker and easier for them to send a text. The need to cut down the amount of time spent on a text isn't necessary as it would actually take more time to use SMS language. For most adults, sending a text is difficult enough. Using predictive text, which would decrease the amount of time they would actually need to spend writing the message, would just be another thing to struggle with.

Research carried out by a group of students (in which you can see the results here http://library.thinkquest.org/08aug/00219/research_findings.html) found that the main reasons why people use SMS language is because it is convenient, it saves time and it is faster and easier. As many adults struggle to write a text quickly, maybe this is the main reason why they have resorted to SMS language.

Sophie Wormald.