Does Texting Have a Negative Influence on Written Language?

952 Words2 Pages

Text messages are a multi-model- it is a written language that includes basics of spoken language. Texting is a quick and easy way of communicating with friends and families all over the world. During the 1900 there was only a few messages sent through the SMS, since then the use of text messaging has been increasing rapidly. Text messages have urbanized into a whole new language where there is several ways to express thoughts and feelings, this new form of communication has become so illustrious that some educators are concerned that this may be affecting the use of spoken and written English. In this essay I will be talking about the different varieties of texting used and how this affects the person’s attitude towards their English language. In addition to exploring attitudes, I will be focusing on different techniques used in text messages.
While investigating the different types of text messages there were a lot of different features that have become clear. For instance, different gender and age groups tend to text differently. Text 1 is a conversation between two teenagers. From text 1, you can see that these two teenagers are using slang and that they are shortening their words when texting this may be because it is a quicker and easier way of communicating and it also saves time and money. As you can see in text 1, compressed language is being used; this is where you shorten words by replacing single letters to represent the actual word for example r which stands for are , and c which stands for see. Or using letter and number homophones like “c u l8r” which stands for see you later cu (see you) represent a letter homophone and “18r/later indicates a number homophone. Furthermore, in text 1, the conversation starts with a...

... middle of paper ...

...’s also negatively portraying an individual’s intelligence, therefore it should be stopped.

Over all, people argue that texting has a positive effect on English language, while others think that it has a negative outcome on written English. However, I think that texting is neither destroying nor attributing to the development of English language .On the one hand texting is a faster and simpler way of communicating, with one another. While, on the other hand the inconvenience of text messaging is thought to be causing a lack of misspelling and malformed English. This new technology is being used all over the world; people of different ages and genders are using it for different reasons. For instance teenagers use texting for fun and to excite them whereas adults would use it for different reasons e.g. work, texting their children to pass on an important message.

Open Document