OMG, text messaging! It’s destroying the English language, corrupting young minds, turning us into illiterates. It’s probably shrinking the ozone layer, too. Or is it? In his new book, Txting: The Gr8 Db8, David Crystal offers a different perspective, one which linguists have shared for years: Far from obliterating literacy, texting may actually improve it. So put that in your message header and send it! This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Texting Improves Literacy”
You’re listening to A Way with Words. I’m Grant Barrett.
And I’m Martha Barnette.
When it comes to the English language, few things get people as worked up these days as the whole phenomenon of text messaging.
All those abbreviations, all those misspelled words, it’s destroying the language and turning us into a nation of illiterates.
No, no!
I gather that you beg to differ, Grant.
And so does author David Kristol. He’s a professor of linguistics in Britain, and he’s written a surprising new book on this topic.
His book is called Texting the Great Debate, right?
Right.
I have a copy of this book, and I have to tell you, it’s my new Bible.
The main thing he has to say is that all this talk about texting destroying language is bunk.
Yeah.
It’s not a big deal.
For one thing, this kind of playing with language isn’t new, all right?
It’s just another form of playing with language that English speakers have always done.
Always.
Another thing, it’s not just young people.
Isn’t it funny how these big cries about language being destroyed always seem to blame the teenagers?
But you know what?
The first generation to use the Internet in a real meaningful way, they’re in their 30s.
And they have kids of their own.
It’s not just young people doing this.
Everyone.
Who’s using all those BlackBerrys in the big corporations?
Everyone, right?
Good point.
Another thing that he’s got to say here, which I think is incredibly interesting, is that when people use texting, they use relatively few abbreviations.
For example, the most common abbreviation, do you know what it is?
No.
X, meaning kiss.
How hard is that to understand?
If I said, you know, see ya, XXX, you know exactly what I’m talking about, right?
And that’s really old.
That’s not new at all.
That’s right.
And that’s another thing he’s got to say.
You’ll find that the acronym BFF for Best Friends Forever is brought up again and again and again in news stories that talk about the destruction of language by texting, right?
But BFF dates to the 1950s.
It does? I didn’t know that.
It does. It does indeed.
But the main thing to understand about what’s happening with texting is that people want to be understood.
That’s their main goal here.
And the only time that they’re going to do something that’s really wacky and really hard to understand is when they’re in a hurry or showing off or they’re feeling silly or whimsical.
And that’s a very small percentage of the time.
Well, I tell you what, this book is a real eye-opener, and we’re going to talk about it a little bit more later in the show.
It’s called Texting the Great Debate.
And we’ll put more information about that on our website.
That’s at waywordradio.org.
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