Text Messaging
The common shortening of ‘mobile phone’ to simply ‘mobile’ is not purely for ease of pronunciation. It also has semantic significance: the ever more compact communication devices that are flooding the market (especially since their arrival within mainstream purchasing power with packages like ‘pay as you go’) do far more than act as a conventional ‘phone with mobility’.
SMS (short message service) was introduced by phone companies initially as an afterthought; another gimmick to help beat the competition. Its resulting popularity with some 8 billion messages sent worldwide in August 2000 is however clear recognition of its social and technical capacity to stand in both where communication would have existed previously (e.g. making arrangements) and also to encourage interaction where it never used to exist at all:
e.g.
pre-F2F conversation primers like 'cu in a da common room.. cant wait to hear bout.....'
post-F2F conversation interactions like 'that was lovely 2 c u... spk soon'
Now email and even web browsing are possible on the move.
But why has it become so popular, especially among younger people?.. (the biggest market is currently 10-11 year-olds). Is it:
Cost?- between 5 + 10p /msg (sometimes free), txting works out cheaper than using the conventional voice-phone
Privacy? - communication can be carried out discreetly: the virtual paper-aeroplane message is far harder for teachers to track than the real thing. People can also avoid disturbing others when in public places such as the bus.
Ease? - txting has the advantage over phoning that although interaction between participants is fast, it is not in real-time. It is uncommitted: there is time in between communication turns to constuct a considered response, doing away with 'slips of the tongue'. It can also be done anytime, any place.
Disinhibition? - As well as this, users are also disinhibited from potentially negative non-verbal communications present in F2F (face to face) interaction. As people value the visual privacy granted by the conventional phone (hence the flop of the video-phone), they also value the verbal privacy granted by SMS. Voice pitch/tone is no longer an issue, making txting a favoured option especially among the tired and emotional. Despite this, it is still so socially accepted as a means of 'chatting' that there is even a phrase for it in popular use ('txt sesh').
Language play? - As with IRC (Internet Relay Chat), identity and image are entirely reliant on word and language use. Communication is made interesting or even entertaining simply by the considered, innovative use of the available160 characters. Humour has never been easier, or more constrained.
These communicative developments are clearly going to have a profound effect on the 'patterns of language' they mediate.
If you're a college or university student, you probably belong to the age group that is helping to develop these new patterns of text-based messaging.
If you aren't already an expert in email, chat or 'txting', you are certainly among experts.
You are therefore ideally positioned to research into how texting is used.... And develop your understanding beyond the claims found in newspaper reports and popular accounts such as the Christmas bestseller WAN2TLK?: ltle bk of txt msgs.
So how do you move from everyday casual observations to a real evidence base?
Before you even start you need to be clear about the ethics and confidentiality of using materials of this kind. Make sure you get permision from the participants whose messages you'll be using.
Transcribe text messages to form a corpus of minimum 100 msgs using a word processor. Remember that, in the interest of validity you must reproduce the messages letter for letter including when each line ends.
Note the context, mode and situational factors under which each message was produced, as these may play a crucial part in influencing the way the language is used (male/female, age, time, place, situation...)
Remember that SMS text messages always exist as one side of a dialogue. It is very helpful therefore to have in your corpus both initiating and responding sides to the dialogue easily marked out. Otherwise, it'd be like trying to analyse a phone conversation without knowing what the other person is saying...
Once you have your data in a machine-readable form (word-processed), you will be able to see the patterns more clearly (look at the corpus sample). You will also be able to use computer-assisted analysis. re: average word / paragraph length, frequency of specific word use.
Once you have all this, you are in a strong position to carry out some critical analysis backed up by secondary reading. Due to the newness of the medium however, very little direct analysis currently exists. This will mean you will have to compare it to its sister communication mediums: email; IRC; newsgroups; BBSs; telegrams etc. into which there is a body of research. See refs and links