Have you ever read a text message you don’t understand because the language looks strange, almost foreign? That’s because text messaging has encouraged us to develop a new form of communication, a new way of talking to each other. Which is why Dr Caroline Tagg spent three-and-a-half years studying SMS text messaging in order to gain a PhD.

Communication and the language used is forever evolving. Reading text from the Victorian era shows this trend up very well. Although only very recent history the words used and the way they are used has changed completely. The further back in history you go, the more alien the language looks even though it is essentially the same one we use today.

But the last few decades have brought new technologies that has exacerbated this change.

Text messaging on our cellphones is something most of us do on a daily basis. This method of communication has been popular in Europe for years but has only fairly recently taken off in a big way in the United States. The words, phrases, and abbreviations used are very specific to texting, being different even from those used in email, the forerunner to short, snappy messages that can be sent in a hurry.

As reported by The Telegraph, Dr Caroline Tagg has spent the last few years of her life studying the art of text messages and the language people use in them. The 33-year-old recruited her family and friends, stored all the texts they sent and received, and analyzed their content.

Tagg read 11,000 texts sent by 235 people for a total of 190,000 words. Tagg concluded the average text contains 17.5 words and more importantly that the scaremongering about how texts are harming our language is largely unfounded. Her 80,000-word thesis on the subject instead concluded that people use playful language in texts, and often mimic real-life conversations with expressive words and phrases.

I kind of agree with her that texts aren’t harmful, they are merely the next evolutionary step in the way we use language. However, she may find different results in her next quest, which is to study the text messages sent and received by teenagers. This is one area where an outsider (anything over the age of 21) can struggle to understand what the hell is being said.

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Entry was posted on Monday, August 10th, 2009 at 1:30 am under Cell phones, Opinion, Technology.

Read more entries by Dave Parrack.
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