Introduction and Literature Review and Method

Fangqin Li

Professional Project Proposal

Introduction and literature review and method

05/06/08

Introduction

Text messaging, also known as SMS (Short Message Service), is becoming more and more popular with young people in society, and is going to become a main method of keeping in touch instantly amongst people. Its personal, private, instant and convenient function makes it fashionable, because it can help you contact anyone directly in without being seen. SMS fits young people’s fast-food life, and is going to change the computer’s social role: it is no longer the only high-tech communicative tool today. And the most important thing is its text- based language seems to affect the social language in our daily life. However, not all people believe so.

This paper will introduce the historical background of text-messaging from some previous related research, based on which I will present its function, social effect, and language effect. Thus, it presents SMS’s social impact and discusses its effect on English usage. This study relies on the analysis of data collected from student and teacher surveys at Western Oregon University in the U.S.A. It will try to find out the reasons of why more and more people prefer to use text messaging, their attitudes towards using text messaging and how text messaging, especially its abbreviations, affects the standard English function in

English-speaking countries.

Literature review

The new high-tech IT product, text messaging, is becoming very popular with people in the world. Since it is one famous function of a mobile phone, more and more young people treat it as their main entertainment, which was captured many social researchers’ curiosity and attention. They are concerned about its effects on our society. Thurlow (2006) cited, “The Mobile Data Association shows that 1.7 billion text-messages were exchanged in Britain in May 2003 – a cumulative annual total of some 8 billion messages”. These huge numbers of frequency tells us that it has become a part of people’s entertaining life.

According to a report from findings that were released by The Nielsen Co., it shows that 35% of teens (age 8-12) own a mobile phone, 20% of teens have used text messaging. Another group of data from Cyberatlas (2001) showed that half of all 7-16-year-olds have their own mobile phone, 52% of which is girls and

44% of which is boys, and also 77% of 14-16-year-olds have mobile phones

(Thurlow, 2006, p2). Those numbers not only mean that more and more young people like to use text-messaging, but they also indicate that female users are more likely to be the heaviest users (Thurlow, 2006), which certainly is enough for making us worry about young people’s future in language.

Eight years ago, John Humphrevs (2000) made a comment, indicating a

British radio journalist, worried that English will be threatened to ‘death’ by the effect of the new communication technology, (cited in Thurlow, 2006). As a texting user, I am in this text-messaging culture and am seeing its development.

Seeing people texting every day, I am wondering if it will really affect our language, even though it brings us a joyful way of entertaining and communicating. By worrying about the language, Thurlow (2001) expressed his opinion, by describing how he said net-based or web-based teen-talk has no positive effects on our standard, normal or “traditional” ways of expressing. And also he considered those young people who use mobile phones and text messaging in the same way, worrying that they are ruining the English language if they continue to use the language of text messaging.

Nonetheless, unlike those researchers I just mentioned above, some other researchers hold different yet positive perspectives. Kasesniemi and Rautiainen

(2002) think text-messaging is not a bad thing, though it makes our communicative language changed a little bit. It actually is a code language, which gives young people another space beyond real life to develop their creativity

(cited in Thurlow, 2006). Crystal (2001) made a statement that Netspeak counts as a part of the history of language development. Obviously, it is not going to make over our whole traditional language; but it represents the development of language and the culture on its own. It won’t replace our language, just like technologies won’t replace each other. Text messaging is everywhere; it is in email, online chat, instant messaging, newsgroups, bulletin boards, WebPages, and “virtual worlds”. I am still concerned about it; therefore, I wonder if it is accepted by our school. And if it can be accepted in our school, then how will it go. According to an academic journal from New Zealand in 2007, students are now allowed to use the language of text messaging to answer their national examinations, which tells us that the language of text-messaging is considered as a kind of informal shorthand for today’s generation. Those interesting effects of the language of text messaging make me think. Thus, my research questions are: 1) What are the linguistic characteristics of text messaging in English speaking counties? 2) Will text-messaging affect Standard English?

Methodology

This is a study about text-messaging and its effect on language. In order to gain an understanding of text messaging and see if it affects our language, especially young people’s language, I am going to collect text messaging abbreviations as examples by using two different questionnaires, one is for students (see

Appendix A), and another one is for professors (see Appendix B), which can help me focus on analyzing the effect of text abbreviations.

The participants will be the students and the faculty of Western Oregon

University, with no major, race, or status limits. I will email all of them through the

WOU email system, using the all-students and all-faculty email lists at the beginning of this term (Spring 2008) and attach a link with the questionnaires’ website with two types of questions. This online questionnaire was designed on SurveyMonkey.com and contains two pages of student survey and one page of professor survey, including multiple-choice, open-field, and one-choice questions. This questionnaire will take about two weeks, including collecting, analyzing and concluding, and its goal is to gather information from texting. Through categorizing and analyzing the data, I can identify the patterns of text abbreviations, and then come to a conclusion on whether the text-based language will affect our language or not. Questionnaire items include some basic questions as well as some developed questions.

During the period of survey, students will be encouraged to answer 19 questions in the students’ only questionnaire:

Appendix A Thank you for participating this survey, which will provide information for the professional project for my master's program.

1. What do you think of Text Messaging?

2. How often do you use it?

Never Seldom Occasionally Frequently All the time

3. Who are you texting to?

Family Friends Professors Others

4. Do you use Abbreviations? If yes, what are they?

5. Are there any special words you use only when texting? If yes, what are they?

6. For what purposes do you use text messaging instead of communicating another way?

7. What kinds of topics do you talk about?

8. Do you use text abbreviations in class assignments?

Yes No

9. Do you use text abbreviations in your class notes?

Yes No

10. Do you use text abbreviations when you talk to your friends online (MySpace, Facebook, etc.)?

Yes No 11. Do you use text abbreviations when you write emails?

Yes No

12. Have you ever emailed the professor and used abbreviations?

Yes No

13. Have you ever been corrected by professors because of using text abbreviations?

Yes No

14. Do you feel your spelling has gotten worse because you text a lot?

Yes No

15. Do you use Text Messaging during class?

Yes No

16. Have your professors used any abbreviations during the class? If yes, what are they?

17. What is your gender?

Female Male

18. What is your age?

18-22 22-26 26-32 32-36 36-40 Above 40

19. What is your native language?

English Chinese Japanese Arabic Spanish Other (please specify)

During the period of the survey, professors will be encouraged to answer

12 questions in the professors’ only questionnaire:

Appendix B

1. What do you think of SMS(Short Message Service) or text- messaging?

2. How often do your students use Text Messaging in class?

Never Seldom Occasionally Frequently All the time

3. Do you have rules banning cellphone in class? If yes, what rules? 4. Have you had students turn in papers with text abbreviations? If yes, what are they?

5. Have you used text abbreviations to comment on papers? If yes, what are they?

6. Have you received any emails from students with text abbreviations? If yes, what were they?

7. If you answered yes to the question above, did you correct this student's spelling or grammar?

Yes No

8. Do you think your students' spelling has gotten worse due to increases in text messaging?

Yes No

9. Do you see changes in your students' written skills in the last five years? If yes, please explain?

10. Do you worry that the English language will deteriorate as a result of text messaging?

Yes No All information obtained from participants will remain confidential. It will be used to identify patterns common to many text messaging abbreviations, and also to develop verbal pictures of text messaging users.

Reference

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10,1093/elt/ccm080

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extra.shu.ac.uk/daol/articles/y1/n1/a3/thurlow2002003-paper.html

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