Internet Slang

Read the following excerpt from Language and the Internet:

"A Mori/Lycos UK survey published in September 2000 showed that 81% of mobile phone users between the ages of 15 and 24 were using their phone for sending text messages, typically to co-ordinate their social lives, to engage in language play, to flirt, or just to send a 'thinking of you' message. Apparently, 37% of all messagers have used the service to tell someone they love them. At the same time, reports suggest that the service is being used for other purposes, such as sexual harassment, school bullying, political rumour-mongering, and interaction between drug dealers and clients.

The challenge of the small screen size and its limited character space (about 160 characters), as well as the small keypad, has motivated the evolution of an even more abbreviated language than emerged in chatgroups and virtual worlds (...). Some of the same abbreviations appear, either because of their 'obvious' rebus-like potential (e.g. NE1, 2day, B4, C U l8r ['later'], and Z ['said']) or because the generally youthful population of users were familiar with Netspeak shorthand in its other situations (e.g. Msg ['message'], BRB ['be right back']).

Basic smileys (...) are also used. Capital letters can be given syllabic values, as in thN ['then'] and nEd ['need']. But the medium has motivated some new forms (e.g. c%l ['cool']) and its own range of direct-address items, such as F2T ['free to talk?'], Mob ['mobile'], PCM ['please call me'], MMYT ['Mail me your thoughts'], and RUOK ['are you OK?']. Multi-word sentences and sequences of response utterances, especially of a stereotyped kind, can be reduced to a sequence of initial letters: SWDYT ['So what do you think?'], BCBC ['Beggars can't be choosers'], BTDT ['Been there, done that'], YYSSW ['Yeah, yeah, sure, sure, whatever'], HHOJ ['Ha, ha, only joking']. Users seem to be aware of the information value of consonants as opposed to vowels, judging by such vowel-less items as TXT ['text'] and XLNT ['excellent'].

The process saves a great deal of time and energy (given the awkwardness of selecting letters on the small keypad), and in those companies which still charge by the character (as opposed to the whole message), there is an economic value in abbreviation, too. In a creation such as ru2cn mel8r ['Are you two seeing me later?'], less than half the characters of the full form of the sentence are used. Even more ingenious coded abbreviations have been devised, especially among those for whom argot is a desirable safeguard against unwelcome surveillance."

Crystal, David (2001). Language and the Internet. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, England. Pages 229-230.

_________

Task 1: Creative Writing... (post on blog)

Pick one partner. Pretend you are high school students. Develop a short blog entry with any kind of text written in text-messaging slang (employing emoticons, if you wish).

Exchange it with a peer, let him/her translate yours, and try to translate his/hers WITHOUT using the dictionary at first. If you don’t get it all, you can use a guide, for example http://www.webopedia.com/quick_ref/textmessageabbreviations.asp
http://www.lingo2word.com/lists/emoticon_listA.html

Publish the original message along with your translation as one blog comment. (Remember to post both your names.)

Have fun!


Task 2: Critical Statement.... (email to me)

Write a short essay-type comment (max. ~500 words) about how you perceive people's use of text-messaging slang (your students, yourself, your friends, peers, etc....). Do you see it as a problem at all? What do you think about the English language of the future? What is your personal experience? Do you use it yourself? Do you have examples (from student teaching, etc.)? How do you deal with it? If you've never encountered it before - how would you react if your students / team mates, etc. would use this kind of language in official writing (school, newspaper, etc.)?