Text messaging bastardizing language?

Bastardizing language. This is what teachers have to say about text messaging.

With the Philippines being tagged as the "texting capital of the world," many wonder how the proliferation of mobile phones has affected the Filipinos’ facility for languages.

Reading students’ essays with words like "4u or 2gthr yrs 18r" and looking at the signpost that reads "Ped Xing" (meaning pedestrian crossing), one can tell that cellular text messaging or Short Messaging Service (SMS) has revolutionized the way Filipinos talk, write and read. But doesn’t text messaging further thwart or impede the facility for languages?

Assistant professor Mildred Rojo-Laurilla, of De La Salle University-Manila’s Department of English and Applied Linguistics (DEAL), attempts to provide answers in her research titled A Preliminary Investigation on the Linguistic Aspects of Text Messaging.

Using the Dell Hymes theory of "Ethnography of Speaking" that studies how culture, language and society interact, Laurilla is able to capture the existing and even underlying relationships between and among variables examined.

Laurilla administered a questionnaire to 433 first-year English students from the De La Salle University (297) and from the University of the Philippines-Los Baños in Laguna(136).

Laurilla’s study establishes several facts. In the Philippines, the cellular phone industry widely caters to the younger market. The study shows that most of the respondents aged 16 to 21, majority of them 17- to 18-year-olds, have cellular phones (95 percent, DLSU; 71 percent, UPLB). Most of them are prepaid phone users, with an average spending profile of P400 to P500.

Texting is part of the youth’s cellular phone use, but students are generally low frequency texters (54 percent, DLSU; 71 percent, UPLB). Early to late evenings are the most preferred time for texting, owing perhaps to the fact that they are already out of school and use their time on leisurely activities, including texting.

Students admit to abbreviating (89 percent, DLSU; 100 percent, UPLB), citing convenience as the number one reason for doing so. Other reasons given: it is the "in" thing or fad, or that they do not know the spelling of the words.

In terms of language use, the 150 respondents who participated in the "actual texting," prefer to use "texted English" or the abbreviated form of English if they send messages or reply to messages that take the form of "pure" or straight English and the texted or abbreviated English.

Fifty percent of the respondents did not respond to text sent to them via "pure" Filipino and Filipino/English pure or texted code-switched forms. The rest of the respondents had mixed preferences for the language to be used whether in pure Filipino, pure English or pure Filipino/English code-switched forms or their texted forms when responding to text sent to them via pure Filipino and English/Filipino pure or abbreviated code-switched forms.

There seems to be ambivalence on the effects of texting on their language competencies. Both DLSU and UPLB students believe that texting has no negative effects at all on their language competencies, such as grammar and spelling. Majority of both DLSU and UPLB respondents have a positive attitude toward texting (82 percent, DLSU; 79 percent, UPLB).

Statistical tests show that there are no significant differences in the grammar and spelling scores of both cellular phone owners and non-owners. It can be implied that the students’ performance in terms of their language skills or competencies is independent or not related at all to the fact that they own cellular phones.

Among cellular phone owners, their frequency of texting has no effect on their grammar and spelling scores. Similarly, it can also be implied that language skills or competencies are independent of the extent they use the technology.

Despite the respondents’ overexposure to the cellular phone technology, it does not, in any way, cause them to do poorly in class, especially in grammar and spelling.

Laurilla suggested that "real" or more recognizable effects of texting on students’ grammar and spelling competencies may be seen if the respondents were the more vulnerable ones like high school or elementary students who are just beginning to develop language and communication skills.

Laurilla partly dispelled the popular observation that cellular phones may bring more harm than good to students. Results of her study indicate that college students are able to discern the formal language – the kind that is used in the classroom – from the non-conventional texted English.

Indirectly, the technology serves as an "image maker" for the youth, who are impressionable and are finding their own identities. The college students are mature enough to know their personal academic capabilities and what the technology means to them.

(Laurilla finished M.A. Communication Studies at the University of North Iowa in the United States. Aside from language and technology, she also specializes on gender studies, popular culture, mass communications, mediated discourse and sociolinguistics. She is currently completing her Ph.D. in Applied Linguistics at DLSU-Manila.

The paper will be presented at the 52nd Annual International Communication Association (ICA) Conference on July 15-19 in Seoul, Korea.)

Source: Breakthrough, DLSU