A Study On Text Messaging Affects Teen Literacy And Language

Abstract:

In a contemporary way of life phones become a central piece of the day by day use. Individuals are relying upon mobile phones for every day happenings identified with capable and specific purposes. We can’t consider remaining away with it for hardly any hours. Individuals include with their telephones either sending or getting messages at exceptionally quick speed. Much the same as, in associations, shopping centers, avenues, we ordinarily consider them to be head down and fingers stuck to telephones screens, it is possible that they are sending or getting it.

When sending messages to their loved ones, we regularly utilize exceptional sort of register known as textese. Likewise this register incorporates exclusion of words, utilization of textism and non-standard sort of language. The utilization of textism is commonly reported in the youths. This sort of messaging shows it has negative impact on the education abilities of the young people. Fundamentally, our goal is to direct this examination is that we can discover the negative and positive impacts of content informing on adolescents and whether it has negative impact on proficiency.

Keywords: SMS, Text Messaging, Teenagers, Literacy, Language.

“Text messaging is just the most recent focus of people anxiety, what people are really worried about is a new generation gaining control of what they see as their language”.

“DAVID CRYSTAL”

“A good head and good heart are always formidable combination but when you add to that a literate tongue or pen, when you have something very special”.

“NELSON MENDELA”

Introduction:

In today’s era almost everyone in our surroundings has cell phones and they are indulging it regularly. Most of them who use cell phones also use the SMS text messaging which is one of the best features of the mobile phones. If we look around in the public and private places we see people holding phones in their hand and busy while sending or receiving text messaging. Text messaging or textism is basically the act of typing and sending a brief, electronic message between two or more cell phones.

SMS that is referred to short messaging service which is now has grown and messages include sending pictures, videos and audios known as MMS messages. As we all know we are living in a modern society, along with the benefits of the rapidly growing world of phone technology it also has negative impact on people’s life. Because it seems everywhere that people glued to their phone screens and the majority is teenagers.

A survey was conducted to the students and it found that a big amount of people usually use text messaging for communication with their kinsfolks moreover 70% of them alleged that texting had harmful effects on students language and teen literacy. However, through literature review it was found that texting is actually beneficial, while 54% of teenager’s text others on a daily basis and only 33% of them talk to face to face.

An average of 621.2 million SMS was exchanged each day during the year of 2009. That survey declared that millions of people exchange texts per day in Pakistan and this is how the shortcut and contracted language of text messages affect teenager’s language and literacy.

In a modern, digital world as people are so advance and hurried to get everything identical as that they desire to make conversation more quick and easy. Instead of using long terms and messages teenagers use short words, slangs and misspellings. Also decode their emotions by single symbol and emoji. The other thing is long phrases convert into the short words such as “lol” for laugh out loud, “ttyl” for talk to you later, “idk” for I don’t know, “ykwim” for you know what I mean and many others. Misspellings like “ni8” for night, “4u” for you etc. are the most common contractions in the communication. By using this kind of textism may arise the suspicion that standard language may lose its existence which arise the main issues of literacy and people are unable to use the language properly.

Literature Review:

This study reviews verifiable studies in the last decade on the effect of text messaging on teen literacy to determine whether they positively or negatively affect literacy. Although the majority of studies found a negative correlation, while still others report conflicting findings or no significant correlation at all. The study recalls that literacy marks may correlate differently with frequency of texting, use of textism and knowledge of textism; that there may be different correlation for reading, writing and spelling and that the correlations may differ for formal and informal writing. Texting may seem like nothing more than another distraction for our fast-paced youth, it turns out this rapid means of communication may be more than just a nonsense.

According to Crystal (2008), the introduction of printing, telegraph, telephone, and broadcasting caused similar threats but the exploration, doubt, scare, uncertainty, opposition, charm, excitement and enthusiasm all at once that texting has evoke in such a short span of time is exceed by no linguistic phenomenon. He contends that numerous distinguishing features give novelty to written texts, but none of them is linguistically novel. Many of them were being used in chat room liaison much before the visit of mobile phones. All communication is context bound and messages are sent between people who know each other’s’ texting abbreviations and versions well. Texting involves immediate turn taking. So texters opt for abbreviated forms and exclude punctuations and ignore capitalization which requires pressing extra keys and consumes more time and effort and costs the recipient extra patience in taking his/her turn and slows down the process of communication.

Baron (2008) contends that the use of SMS language manifests creative use of letters, punctuation and numbers and it increases phonetic awareness in children. It is also observed that different people have their own unique texting styles. Moreover, different messages use different patterns and styles due to their communicative function. Some are relational and some, informational which requires a change in register. Recipients usually recognize the ‘visual signature’ (cf. Jaffe, 2002:509) of incoming messages based on cues such as abbreviations and emoticons or/ and message length, in addition to common discursive style markers like topic and lexicon.

The educational perspective of internet linguistics proposed by Crystal (2011) suggests that we need to know how to build on the strengths of SMS language and its creative potentials. Cell phones have a lot of expressive potential apart from the basic communicative functions. The world has seen texting poetry confrontation and text novels as new evolving genres exploring the possibilities of word play with in the 160 character constraint. In addition, the analyses conducted in most of the studies do not command conclusions about causality. All this suggest that there is a need for further research preferably longitudinal studies with experimental intervention, on the relationship between text messaging and literacy.

Objectives:

From the study, we investigated some constructive and destructive aspects of text messaging on language as well as teen literacy.

Constructive:

• It improves learning.
• It is useful for socialization; we get to interact with people, their opinions, and their knowledge.
• “The Journal of development of Psychology conducted a study that discovered texting may have a positive effect on reading. Since teens read texts and write texts so often, it may boost their reading ability since they are repeatedly doing this act often.”

Destructive:

• It affects language of the teenagers, because they write the way they text as it becomes enduringly deposited in their brain.
• It also has bad effect on spelling, they use contractions in SMS.

Research Methodology

Our research report is about text messaging affects teen literacy and language. This study contains guideline for definite decisions and its consequences are useful solely for taking certain decisions regarding the affects in Education University Bank Road Campus Lahore. Hereafter the nature of our research study is qualitative and quantitative research.

Methodology:

The methodology implemented to achieve the purposes of the research with the help of a structure questionnaire. To get the data observations have also been done and interviews were conducted. The survey and questionnaire was done on 35 students of Bs.English in Education University. The cluster sampling techniques was used to select the students furthermore the representation of analysis was given through graphical pie charts.

Data analysis and interpretation

• QUESTION 1- Are you aware about text messaging (SMS)?

Interpretation: From above pie chart we evaluated that 100% of the students aware.

• QUESTION 2- If yes, then is you using it frequently or occasionally?

Interpretation: From above chart we evaluated that 98% students use text messaging frequently and only 2% students use it occasionally.

• QUESTION 3- What do you think does SMS affects people being literate?

Interpretation: From above pie chart we analyzed that 91% students think that SMS affect people being literate, and 9% students disagree.

• QUESTION 4- Does it affect language, or selling?

Interpretation: From above chart we analyzed that 76% students think that SMS affects language or spelling, whereas 24% of the students do not think.

• QUESTION 5- Do you write the whole words or contractions in SMS?

Interpretation: From above pie chart we explored that 65% of the students use complete words in SMS, while 35% of the students use complete words in SMS.

• QUESTION 6- While attempting the examination paper, do you use the short form of the words?

Interpretation: From above pie chart we investigated that only 25%of the students use contractions while attempting papers, whereas 65% of the students do not use short forms in papers besides 10% of the students are not confirmed about it.

• QUESTION 7- What will you use mostly while writing the text?

Interpretation: From above pie chart we studied that 73% of the students use contractions like plzzz in the text whereas 27% of the students use whole words please.

• QUESTION 8- Through SMS, do you think illiterate people are also able to read and write?

Interpretation: From above pie chart we analyzed that 72% of the students think that through SMS illiterate people also able to read and write, while 13% do not think this and 15% of the students are no confirmed about it.

Findings:

1. From the study we found that 100% of the students are aware about text messaging.
2. 98% of the students use it frequently for the purpose of chatting, gossips, assignment works and for other enjoyments. While only 2% of them use it occasionally.
3. 91% of the students think that text messaging affects people being literate, while 9% of them think that SMS do not affect people being literate.
4. 76% of the students think that frequent use of SMS affect language or spelling, rest of the students i.e. 24% do not agree that text messaging affects language.
5. From the analysis it was found that 65% of the teenagers write complete words in SMS while remaining 35% of them use contractions in SMS.
6. It was found that 25% of the students use contractions while attempting the examination while 65% of them use complete words and only 10% students are not confirmed about it.
7. 73% of the students use contractions like plzzzzz and u while writing the text, the remaining 27% use whole words like please and you.
8. Text messaging helps illiterate people to read and write says 72% of the students while 13% do not agree and 15% of them are not confirmed about it.

Conclusion:

We accomplish on the basis of our research that the text messaging affects teen literacy and language on both features i.e. positive and negative as objectives in our research. We found that there are many positive aspects of text messaging as for interacting with other people knowing their ideas and views that enhance our knowledge. Also negative aspects i.e. Most people claim that texting makes teen indolent because it does not force them to use appropriate grammar and spellings. Moreover they use contractions which get stored in their brains and hence become a habit which later on affects in examination writing and communication.

References:

1. http://www.internationalseminar.org/XVI_AIC/TS5C-PDF/17Sima_Singh.pdf
2. https://prezi.com/7lrkrvkmtf-m/how-is-text-messaging-affecting-teen-literacy/
3. https://www.technologyreview.com/s/407022/literacy-and-text-messaging/
4. https://www.studymode.com/essays/The-Effects-Of-Text-Messaging-On-1667712.html
5. https://howtoadult.com/texting-its-positive-impact-teens-6902.html
6. https://sites.google.com/a/ewg.k12.ri.us/computer-project/home/texting-affect-on-society