An excerpt from th3 3v0lutn of Texting

An excerpt from an autoethnographic essay on changing perceptions of orthographic and punctuational differences in SMS text messages, written May 2015

I was never part of the culture of young teenagers who thought it was cool to gossip about people in 160 characters or less until two in the morning or text in class because I was “bored.”  The texting that I observed early on and the phrases that I texted five years later were vastly different.  Even when I first started texting, half of my sent messages generally read something along the lines of, “Where are you?” (or, more commonly, “Have you started our calc problems yet?”)  instead of “where r u.” Miraculously, I managed to bypass the tweenage aversion to prescriptivist grammar and punctuation (unlike my 14-year-old sister, who deems it necessary to use nothing except excessive exclamation points to end every sentence and never capitalizes her i’s).  I felt stupid using just one character where previously there had always been three, or not using apostrophes in contractions, but I was always self-conscious of my standard orthography.  Was I rebelling or conforming to what texting “should” be?  Did using “proper” grammar make me seem more or less competent in the eyes of my peers?

In retrospect, my proper grammar probably had several influences, not all of which were related to a specific texting lexicon and orthography.  Logistically, I never had to deal with the archaic T9 format where four keystrokes were necessary to produce an “s,” and it was much less work to hit 8 twice to produce a “u” than 999-666-88.  Whereas many of my classmates had grown used to the troubles of T9 texting, the beginning of my texting career was so late that I started with a smart phone and full keyboard; I only had to slide my finger through the letters and full words would appear.  Texting had become infinitely easier in the years between seventh grade and my junior year of high school.  My phone was programmed to capitalize I’s, the beginnings of sentences, and had wickedly accurate autocorrecting capabilities.  Technology has certainly advanced, and with it, our grammar has become more standardized over texts.  Phone companies have made it infinitely easier to converse in standard written English (and even Spanish and French) by creating devices with full keyboards, autocorrect options, word prediction, and custom dictionaries.  (Yes, I have taught my device to recognize the words “catcard” [usually right after the words “lost my”], “Chipotle,” and “Holla!”  It even puts the exclamation mark in there for me.)

Yet today, I still have a friend who rarely uses any variation of Standard Written English in his texts.  Instead, he goes out of his way to remove the autocorrect options pre-programmed in the phone and chooses instead to go the opposite route to use “133t.”  A shortened version of “elite,” 133t makes use of numbers and symbols more heavily than Latin characters; it is a common hacker and/or computer programmer usage on the internet.  Often symbols will stand for a character that looks similar (@ for “a” or $ for “s”).  These replacement symbols are called logograms or logographs (Crystal 37).  Such behavior is characteristic of creating new language varieties to include and exclude, only this time, it’s not spoken but written in almost code-like language, with the intent to obscure meaning.  When my friend texts me in l33t, I understand the content but I don’t process it nearly as quickly as I recognize standard written English.  His texting etiquette is based on interactions with his techie friends and his desire to initiate me into that group. 

Crystal identifies the desire to belong to a group as a major reason for the differences in texting.  “Among young people, in particular, texting quickly emerged as an index of belonging.  Shared text behavior shows you belong to the same ‘gang.’ … I would expect members of a group to develop their own dialect of distinctive features, in much the same way as chatrooms do” (Crystal 93).  It makes sense, therefore, that my classmates were using texting as a way to create a social in-group, while our teacher was using texting as a way to communicate with us as a group without the individual nature or time-sensitivity of a phone call.  Our seventh-grade stereotypes of punctuation and orthography in text messages weren’t necessarily wrong; they were merely our way of separating ourselves from the older generations who had started to use text messaging as a way to communicate.  Several psychological studies, such as one done by Rich Ling, have found much the same thing; in his study the age differences were also noted.  “Texting is a way for teens to keep in touch and to cultivate different types of age-bound expression without disturbing other copresent individuals such as teachers and parents” (Ling 14).  Our seventh-grade purpose was different from our teacher’s in many ways.  We did not seek to communicate to anyone except on a need-to-know basis; those who were supposed to understand would.  if i were 2 type this essay lyke this it mite b hard 2 read @ 1st but im sure ud get used 2 it lol J I also probably wouldn’t get as good of a grade, but in terms of communicating in seventh grade, I’d get an A among my friends for my in-group usage.  The selective context-specific orthography of our text messages set us apart from adults; it was our way of taking power for ourselves.  We were the “3133t” technologically advanced youth, and we were going to use language to prove it.   

Now, I text differently, but so do the people who respond to my messages.  It is not merely content but style that influences our decisions when texting.  My friends know me as the English major, and consequently that influences the way I want my texts to be perceived; if I were to start texting using more acronyms and less punctuation, a few things would likely happen, such as several texts asking about my well-being, but most importantly the intent behind my messages would have to be re-evaluated.  By now, the friends whom I text most frequently know my tone and can identify whether I’m being sarcastic or serious.  I can also code-switch to text my grandparents or my aunts (but not my own parents, because they don’t even have cell phones) and remember not to use sarcasm because they won’t pick up on it.

Technology has made it easier for us to communicate in the same ways that we write and read, and texting has become a widely accessible form of social literature to be analyzed and interpreted among “texting natives,” as psychologist Deborah Forgays refer to the Millennial generation in her study of cell phone etiquette and use.  We have grown up with texting, she claims, and it is a part of our linguistic skill set that differentiates us from previous generations.  It is widely acknowledged that “university-aged individuals” (ages 18-22, more accurately) text more frequently than other generations of adults because we grew up with cell phones as a part of our childhood and therefore can manipulate and use them to our advantage. 

What is not often discussed is how we have created a culture of pseudo-literature, a new kind of writing that can range from the super-casual (and potentially just plain lazy) to the formal.  Texting can be literary; already several award-winning poems have been written in l33t.  It has started influencing the way younger generations view standard orthography, and even some adults are starting to pick up on acronyms and abbreviations (though the Millennials are always one step ahead; we’re the pioneers and the hipsters that way, always knowing what’s cool before it’s kewl).  In my generation’s intent to create exclusive in-group communities, instead of relying so heavily on fashion and music like the teenagers of the 1950s, we’ve turned to technology and our secret, coded language.  The multiple turns that texting has seen since its inception and subsequent rise in popularity have created an entirely new group of written language varieties.  As we’ve seen, it takes an investment in time and analysis to accurately interpret messages from different people based on context, and texting different individuals requires attention to code-switching in order to send the appropriate message.  The nuances of texting are many, and punctuation, emojis, logograms, and orthography all play a role in the interpretation thereof.  The linguistic choices we make in our texts continue to develop our internalization of the influences that language has in our daily lives. 

Bibliography

Crystal, David. Txtng : The Gr8 Db8. Oxford, GBR: Oxford University Press, 2008. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 2 May 2015.

Forgays, Deborah Kirby.  “Texting everywhere for everything; Gender and age differences in cell phone etiquette and use.”  Computers in Human Behavior 31.5 (2014): 314-321.  Web.  3 May 2015.

Le Blanc, Tracy Rene.  “‘Is there a translator in teh house?’: Cultural and Discourse Analysis of a Virtual Speech Community on an Internet Message Board.”  Diss.  Louisiana State University, 2005.  Web.  1 May 2015.

Ling, Rich, Troels Fibaek Bertel, and Pål Roe Sundsøy.  “The socio-demographics of texting: An analysis of traffic data.”  New Media and Society.  (2011): 1-18.  Web.  2 May 2015.