Is the English Language being killed by Text Messages?

How many times have you thought about what you were really trying to say when sending that text message? All of the time, and do you know why? That is because writing, but in this case texting, is deliberate. When you send a specific message you calculate what you’re meant to be saying, you’ll make sure that it is interpreted in a certain way. However, this is completely different with speaking. Speaking is largely subconscious and rapid.

Because of how easy it is to get something across to another person, texting has surged in the past few years, and has especially grown up younger people. A study which took place in 2014 showed that younger people are more increasingly prone to texting and shy away from taking and making phone calls. This can be seen as an issue because phone calls are way more direct than texting. However in the eyes of those who were tested, they argued that phone calls are less permanent than texting.

Everyone has developed their own kind of grammar for texting. For example take “OMG”, when you break it down OMG is actually an abbreviation for “oh my God”. This isn’t used literally anymore, and has progressed into a more enlightened abbreviation.  OMG is often used now to express emotion. For example someone could say “why did Jason do that to me? OMG” this clearly is expressing the writer’s emotion of what Jason had done.

Recently, there has been an alarming spike of claims from many primary and secondary education teachers who have claimed that they have concerns for children who cannot properly read or write or they have seen an increasing drop of literacy levels. Many of this is blamed because of the increase technology and how accustom these children are to these, most of the time relying on “spell check”.

However, a recent survey taken place in 2008 on abbreviations argues against this. This survey, which may seem outdated by now, actually showed that the older that a teenager becomes the more unlikely they are to use “lol”, but actually lead into a more mature “haha”. Therefore, this is a counter argument used by many linguistics that the usage of abbreviations in texting is not actually ruining the English Language, but it is actually innovating and enriching the language instead.

Furthermore, Tagliamonte found that in instant messages there is “an infinitesimally small use of short forms, abbreviations, and emotional language.” Therefore, this completely rules out the idea of the English Language being killed, or ruined by the use of shortened language.  His data accounted that 3% of all language found was stereotypical teen language.

http://blog.dictionary.com/shortening-english/

http://ideas.time.com/2013/04/25/is-texting-killing-the-english-language/

By Harry Hepworth