Text Talk Review

Texting has been a huge part of human communication since not long after the SMS was invented however it gets a lot of stick (mostly form the older generation’ about its apparent ‘killing’ of the English language; being described as “snot-talk” & “Unimaginative, bleak, bald, sad shorthand drab shrinktalk” according to John Sutherland. It has also been mentioned that it is “doing to our language as Genghis Khan did to his neighbours 800 years ago” by John Humphrys.

This is not the only criticism of text talk however, as most text talk is blamed on teenagers, being called “SMS vandals” by John Humphrys. However, text talk is not disliked by all; in fact it is very popular. The connotations between teenagers and text talk is untrue however, as certain abbreviations were added to the Oxford English Dictionary almost 200 years ago. ‘Cos’ the abbreviation of ‘because’ was added in 1828 and ‘wot’ from 1829. David Crystal mentions that “Many [abbreviations] can be found in literary dialect representations, such as by Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, Walter Scott, DH Lawrence, or Alan Bleasdale ("Gissa job!")”. To me, this shows that if literary legends could use a primitive sort of ‘text talk’ in their writing then it is definitely not ‘killing’ the English language. Personally I can argue against the accusation of teenager ruining the English language as I personally, at 16 years old, text with barely any text talk apart from the odd missed capital or punctuation.

David Crystals’ “2B or not 2B?” from July 2008 presents the idea of text talk from a neutral perspective which sheds the true light of how text talk has been going on for years and it is not just an aggressive assault on the standard English language created by those troublesome teens. It shows that even when messages were sent via telegraph people ‘double-decked’ words such as MumDad or ComeQuick as the writers of messages were charged per word. It even points out that Anglo-Saxon scribes used quicker ways to write (although not quite text talk) such as '&' instead of 'and'.

Personally I think the accusations that text talk devised by teenagers is killing the English language and I argue that the English language is infinitely changing and adaptable, the world (including the Oxford English Dictionary) is just keeping up with the times. You should too.