So today I thought I’d talk about something that’s a little less controversial than it was just a few years ago: texting. More specifically I should say the sorts of modifications to the written language that tend to show up in texting and CMC (Computer Mediated Communication). As it turns out, not only is much of what we see in texting much older than the cell phone itself, but it can also provide some interesting insights into how Language works. Like many advances in communication before it, there was a great outcry initially at texting, the idea being that it heralded the downfall of our once great language. The same thing happened, believe it or not, with the printing press...and the telegraph, the telephone, and broadcasting. And don’t worry, it will most certainly happen again.
The main source I’ll be using for this entry is David Crystal’s Txting: the gr8 db8, along with a healthy dose of personal experience (not super scientific, I know). Despite the fact that Dr. Crystal clearly had way too much fun coming up with that title, the book itself, published in 2008, represents the first attempt to provide a general overview of the linguistic phenomenon that is texting and is a good read. Now since technology and all things related to technology move about a million times faster than the rest of us here on earth, there are times when this four year old book can show its age just a bit. He has a couple pages devoted to the consequences of texters being forced to use a number pad as opposed to a QWERTY keyboard...I imagine for most of us this is no longer a problem. You also don’t see the same prophecies of doom for the English language at the hand of SMS messaging the way you did even four years ago. We’ve all probably heard the story (which Crystal discusses in greater detail) about a student who turns in an essay written as if it were just one long text message, smiley faces and all; but this sort of story, whether it was ever true or not, doesn’t seem as newsworthy anymore with the rise in popularity among users of all ages of services like Twitter and mobile Facebook apps. Hell, the following is an actual text message I received from my 64 year old father just the other day:
At gate n atl waitn 2 bd on time 4 now
He’ll still tell you how he doesn’t understand tattoos, body piercings, or pretty much any music written after the early seventies, but texting it seems, has truly arrived...at least for him. In his short text we already have a lot to talk about. Perhaps most notable is his use of what are called logographs, single characters used to represent words, parts of words or even noises or actions. In this case we have n ‘in’, 2 ‘to’, and 4 ‘for’. Other languages, like Chinese, make regular use of logographs in their writing systems. In the same vein, but missing from my father’s text, are emoticons. These serve primarily to make up for the nonverbal elements of communication that are lost in text messaging (tone, facial expression, etc.), and they developed a little differently in the west than they did in East Asia. Western style emoticons are usually tilted on their sides, while those from East Asia are meant to be viewed head on:
West East
:) ^_^
:*( -_-
:-@ ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ (my personal favorite)
These nonstandard forms today might send our minds instantly to images of texting tweens, but they have been in use much longer. Remember the TV show Concentration? This type of puzzle is called a rebus, which comes from the Latin non verbis sed rebus ‘not with words but with things’. The earliest English reference that Crystal is able to find dates back to 1605, when William Camden wrote that people who “lackt wit to expresse their conceit in speech; did vse to depaint it out (as it were) in pictures, which they call Rebus’. People were hating this stuff when v was still a vowel! But it hasn’t gone anywhere and English is still a healthy, thriving language. Obviously Camden never watched Concentration...I loved that show.
Another striking characteristic of my father’s text message is the nonstandard spelling on several forms like waitn ‘waiting’ and bd ‘board’. Now you could argue that waitn was just phonetic spelling. After all, how many of us in casual speech actually say waiting? bd on the other hand, is quite a stretch, or at least it would be if it weren’t for the context. More importantly though, this, and indeed many such shortenings, show that people are intuitively aware of some basic information theory, namely that consonants convey much more information than vowels. Crystal gives the following example:
ths sntnc hsnt gt ny vwls.
i eee a o a ooa. [= this sentence hasn’t got any consonants].
One of those is incomprehensible, the other is relatively easy to decipher. It may come as no surprise then, that there are languages that simply don’t bother with vowels at all in their alphabets, like Hebrew for example. It’s only jarring for us because we’re used to seeing vowels in there, but often, as is the case with bd in my father’s text, context will fill in the gaps for us. The human brain is really fantastically good at that sort of thing.
That’s probably the least standardized way to leave out letters. I probably don’t have to tell you how common these next few are. Initialisms which includes alphabetisms like BBC, CDC, LSD, PCP, IOU, OD, DOA...sorry where were we? Right, this also includes acronyms, which is often used as a general term, but sometimes also restricted to abbreviations that are pronounced like words such as NATO, AWOL, ASAP and for some speakers lol (sometimes written lawl to reflect this) and ROFL (also seen as roffle, occasionally in the phrase roffle my waffle...I promise I’m not making that up). These sorts of abbreviations have been in use for ages. They save us valuable time by allowing us to quickly communicate a common phrase in a much shorter space. The only problem is that they are completely incomprehensible to the uninitiated. To illustrate this point, I’ve acquired the assistance of a good buddy of mine in the military, who has provided me with a few utterances that he swears make sense. To my knowledge none of the following is top secret, but honestly, who can tell?
(1) We're going to hit the SAM and ADA sites with LGB and JDAM munitions during a 4 minute SEAD window.
(2) Utilizing our FLIR pod, we'll be conducting NTISR along the main supply routes leading up to the FOB with the intent of locating and disabling IEDs.
Crazy huh? But with texting, now that it has definitely hit the mainstream, there’s less mystery to terms like lol, gf, brb, or g2g. While some still find it strange to hear these abbreviations in spoken conversation, we don’t bat an eye at BBC, AWOL, NaBisCo (the National Biscuit Company), flak (from Ger. Fliegerabwehrkanone 'flyer defense cannon') etc. And I think many of us can agree that WTF or FUBAR have less potential to offend than the longer forms.
How we text also says a great deal about us, just like our spoken language. I mentioned my father’s use of waitn earlier, which may tell us something about his pronunciation of the word. Likewise, it is common to see alternate spellings like wif or wiv ‘with’ in texts from speakers of British English. With the rise of Twitter and millions of tweets just begging to be analyzed, it should come as no surprise that there is a good deal of research being done on that particular corpus as well. And what is perhaps most alarming if you actually take the time to look, is how much remains unchanged in texts. My father’s text above contains eleven words, five of which are spelled according to convention. Earlier I mentioned ROFL being transcribed as roffle. Sure this is basically a nonce word, but it shows a firm grasp of English spelling conventions with its geminate consonant to mark the preceding short o and even a silent e at the end.
I’ve really only scratched the surface here with this blog entry. There’s so much more that can be said, and if you’re interested in this sort of thing, even as a non-linguist, I’d highly recommend Crystal’s book. The thing to remember is that generally speaking, texting is casual communication. Casual is almost always synonymous with nonstandard, which isn’t bad, just different. We all speak multiple Englishes; and just like our spoken dialect can tell others a lot about our personal identities, the way we text can do the same thing. So when you get an email at work from someone that looks like one big text message, well...in this day and age it could well have been written on a phone. But even if it wasn’t, don’t worry, they’re not going to destroy the English language. They just have a piss-poor sense of what sort of language is appropriate for work communication. So you have my permission to write a snooty email back. Just be sure you’re harping on them for the right reasons.
There hopefully shouldn’t be such a delay until the next entry. I’m going to start talking more about the sort of stuff I do, specifically language change. To do that we’re going to have to talk a little bit about the differences between letters and sounds and why at least in the case of English, they often don’t seem to line up.
