Why is text speech changing?

It's a known fact that the use of texting is rapidly increasing with the average teenager aged 13-17 sending more than 3,000 texts per month. That's more than six texts per hour. When comparing this to texts sent by 35-54 year olds, just over 800 texts per month, we can see that texting is a more important means of communication than ever. The language used in these texts differ, but both adolescents and adults will use some form of text language in their SMS messages.

Many teens and young adults are assumed to be the main source of 'slang' text speech which include many linguistic structures:

 

Numbers and characters – '?' (I don't understand what you mean)

Letter and number homophones – 'B4' (Before)

Acronyms – 'lol' (Laugh out loud)

Initialism – 'LMFAO' (Laughing my fucking arse off)

Abbreviation – 'Awks' (Awkward)

Phonetic spellings – 'Luv' (Love)

 

To me this seems like a ridiculous way of communicating, and although some may argue that it is a quick and easy way of sending a text, I find it the total opposite. In personal experience it seems to take longer to think of how to use slang in texts, than it does to actually type the correct words. However I would be lying if I said that I have never used slang b4.

 

A book by David Crystal named "Txtng the gr8 db8", states that less than 10% of words are abbreviated in texts and although children and adults both do it; it is more common in adults.

 

When reading texts sent from my mum, I notice that David Crystal is completely right. For example I previously sent her a message saying:

"Mum I feel really ill, can you pick me up from college please? xx"

She replied:

"Y wots wrng wiv u?"

Apart from noticing the lack of x's and sympathy she showed, you can see that I have not used any slang (no matter how ill I felt) and she has.

In all fairness to my mum, I believe the reason that she has sent me this text is simply because she hates to send text messages and wants to get it over as quick as she can, not because she's heartless/down with the kids/blunt.

 

I feel that there are a number of reasons as to why teenagers more commonly write 85% grammar-perfect. One of them being is that nowadays teenagers usually have the latest smart-phones that allow you to turn on predictive texting. This is where one button can represent many letters which if keyed in correctly should automatically guess the word you want to say, spelling it properly. There is also a variation of this for iPhone called Autocorrect. If you are an iPhone user, you may be aware that Autocorrect can get you into many awkward situations if you type the word slightly wrong. And whilst we are on this subject I suggest you have a look at Damn You Autocorrect which allows you to upload your own screenshots of texts gone wrong, just for fun. Apart from that one annoying yet humorous detail, Autocorrect does pretty much the same thing as predictive text; spelling words correctly and including punctuation.

 

My final point as to why many teenagers do not use slang in texts, is because it is just not 'cool'. If you get a text from a friend where they are using slang, after the first couple of words it gets VERY annoying to read. And when I say annoying, I mean wanting to throw a dictionary at their face-annoying. People do not want to be judged, and always want to be in the in-group, so by wanting to fit in and not be judged, many teens just DON'T USE SLANG IN SMS'.

By Megan Bilsby