Texting

Texting

Texting: successfully sending a text message to someone. The first text message was sent in 1992 from Neil Papworth, a former developer at Sema Group Telecoms. Mobile phones didn't have keyboards at the time, so Papworth had to type the message on a PC. Papworth's text "Merry Christmas", was successfully sent to Richard Jarvis at Vodafone. At what long way texting has come from that first text. This blog will discuss the word ‘texting’ basing it off the opinions of two world renowned linguists; David Crystal, and John Mcwhorter.

             Linguist John starts off his speech by stating the point that “texting is not writing at all”. What I interpreted he meant by this is that texting is not so much writing as it is speech. He states that it is speech because when people do talk casually they tend to shorten sentences so that it is averaged between 7-10 words, however writing is formal. This is similar to the when David Crystal mentions in his commentary the word ‘Textspeak’, because he is addressing how texting is more related to speech than writing. People say that texting has no structure and it’s murdering language, and they feel that something has just gone wrong somewhere. However to these two linguists they both mention how texting has rules and structure for people who actually do text. Such as: how John Mcwhorter mentions the abbreviation ‘lol’, it is supposed to mean laughing out loud, however people these days who do text know that that is not all it is used as.  In addition they both mention briefly how texting has evolved and keeps evolving (such as the abbreviation lol). However David focuses more on how the words are written, for example: David makes reference to the word love and how it has evolved in some cases to ‘luv’. Unlike John who bases his point on what the words actually mean (such as: like mentioned the contraction ‘lol’). What I find interesting is how both these linguists never said that this is the end of how far texting can go, as in it can’t possibly evolve or be involved in the world any further. David actually mentions that texting might be creeping into other forms of writing such as school essays etc. As well as that John states that throughout all of language there have been people saying that there is no structure and this is the same sort of thing that is happening with texting now. When he said that, it reminded me of how people used to say the same things about forms of dancing and that people used to discriminate against some of the most popular ones of today at that time. For example: People used to say that tango and salsa are a lot less sophisticated than what dancing should be, and now they are widely celebrated all over the world. We can relate this to the new and upcoming form of dance that is being discriminated against; twerking. Which people are saying is very vulgar and not a form of dance whatsoever, sort of what people say about texting. So history repeats itself once again…