Twenty years ago Neil Papworth sent a text message to Richard Jarvis that simply read ‘Merry Christmas.’ A seemingly meaning less fact, this was however the moment that the world of texting was born. Since then, texting has become a regular form of everyday communication used by the least and most educated members of our society alike. With time, the language featured in texts has evolved and been adapted from Standard English, to what now appears to be a series of cryptic clues to those unaccustomed to this particular mode of communication. Can this evolution of our language be considered as being ‘creative’ or is it just causing irreparable damage to what is currently known as Standard English?

A controversial issue, texting is often portrayed as being the perfect medium: bullying, harassment and all other forms of malicious activities. A scapegoat for the media texting regularly depicted as being the source of the spreading illiteracy among the youth of today. Peter Searle-Chief Executive of recruitment agency Adecco wrote in the popular web-based tabloid-Mail Online- that the new generation of employee’s lacked basic skills as ‘they only know how to interact with short “text speak”.’ From his perspective, texting is a nuisance as it handicaps people’s ability to communicate in full Standard English.

A survey was conducted among public in order to gauge their views on the subject of texting. 60% of those questioned were teachers while 40% were teenage student. The results have been collated to determine public opinion, and collected for comparison and analysis. Is text messaging evolving into a new language to the detriment of what is currently known as ‘standard-English?’ Is it a creative use of language? And what is it that constitutes the bases of a new language?

Peter Searle stated that the language used when texting was influencing the writing and social skills of future employee’s; When the public were asked if text mannerisms ever made an appearance in their work, over 90% of them claimed to have no problem at all with alternating from the abbreviated world of texting into full Standardized English. Evidently Peter Searle was incorrect in his statement. 60% of those who were questioned had no aversion to the use of abbreviated text; however 40% believed that though it was useful when in a hurry, abbreviations were at times annoying particularly when used excessively and they were unbeneficial to students with spelling difficulties. The questionnaire also revealed that 60% of the public believed texting to have a language of its own because of the inherent desire to replicate speech in writing, while only 40% of the public argued that it was simply abbreviated Standard English.

Standard English is the term referred to when discussing English that is regarded as correct and acceptable by educated native speakers. The language used when texting does not conform to any rules of the English language but rather consists of elements from both written and spoken language as well as featuring characteristics considered to be unique to the world of texting and social networking alone. Standard English though formal and intelligible, requires a certain level of sophistication and education-that many have yet to attain-in order to be fully utilized effectively. The fusion of spoken and written language in text messaging makes it a popular method of communication that does not constrict the writer within the boundaries of spelling, grammar and or punctuation. The emergence of this new language that can not be categorized as a part of any existing language had been named multi-modal talk.

A language is a way of communication-through speech- that is unique to a society or a group of people. Accents are often influenced by a person’s location-as is the language used- as well as their education and background. After analyzing one persons conversation with a number of different people, the same was found to be true for text language.

As can be seen in conversation one and two, teenage females residing in and around central-west Londonregularly use logograms when texting. The most common of which being ‘xoxo’, the symbols can be translated and often are to mean ‘hugs and kisses’. Other logograms used are symbols such as ‘@’ in substitution for the word ‘at’, and the more commonly used symbol ‘&’ as a representation of the connective ‘and’. Among other things, teenage girls were observed to be sending an excessive amount of emoticons:J to represent happiness, L as the pictorial evidence of sadness and <3 inferring to an emotion of love. Other common features of the messages were over exaggerated paralinguistic features (particularly laughter) and acronyms. ‘loooooooool’ and ‘hahahhaha’ appearing with the most frequency. Both are expressions of laughter and their exaggeration infers an uninhibited laughter and informs the texter that the recipient of their message found it extremely humorous. 

Teenage boys on the other hand are in complete contrast to their female counterparts. Conversation three, which was held between me and an old time friend, also residing in the same area as the girls, is very different to the previous conversation. There are no paralinguistic features of any kind through out the entire conversation- aside from the occasional clipping for example ‘lil’ instead of ‘little’ and the slang contraction ‘ain’t’ as a replacement for ‘am I not’ (depending n the context)- the conversation is almost written entirely in Standard English.

Seventy miles away in Bury St Edmunds, the characteristic features of text messages change again. Conversation four is again between two female students; the text contains letter homophones mainly ‘ur’ meaning ‘you are’, discourse markers an example being ‘oh’, excessive logograms and emoticons. It seems that teenage girls are more comfortable expressing emotion, as is often true in conversation they also do this in text messaging through the use of logograms and emoticons. But is this also true for adults?

Conversation five and six were both interactions with parents. Five was between a mother and her daughter and six was between the same person and their father. Conversation five featured: letter homophone, fillers and some paralinguistic features. Whereas conversation six consisted only of the occasional clipping and at times discourse marker, this conversation like the one with the teenage male was again written in what was mostly Standard English.

As is shown by the given example, each person will manipulate the language they use when texting to emulate their persona and ultimately reflect their character. The person’s age, location and gender influence greatly on their text mannerisms; but because text language is so versatile, it can be employed by each and every individual and adapted to be as reflective of their characteristics they wish it to be. The language used when texting varies because people are different and choose to express themselves in differing ways.

Because of how effectively text language can be varied and with the development and globalization of technology with access to texting, this mode of communication will in time only become more popular among the old and young alike. Already a new language that is a combination of spoken and written language alike is beginning to develop and with time, text language will eventually become incorporated into everyday life. Some scholars even believe that texting will be beneficial to our written language. Doctor David Clark Wood a reader in developmental psychology at Coventry Universityclaimed that ‘texting increases phonological awareness.’ Because of course while many people text, they tend to spell through phonetics rather than full words.

As David Crystal when speaking on language change said, ‘new words come in use; old words go out of use.’ The creation of multimodal talk was inevitable, as it is human nature to solve problems in the simplest way and to evolve and change with time. Teenagers want to be different from their parents, be a part of something new and make a change.  Multimodal talk allows teenagers to invent new words and expressions that they can share exclusively to their peers, without the constrictions of spelling or grammar and those of an older generation are able to utilize multimodal talk in order to communicate quickly and simply.

Texting is the cataclysmic compilation of spoken and written language and with the rapidly changing technology; it will only become more obscure and unintelligible to those separate from the world of texting as people strive to find the best, quickest and most effective methods of communication.