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 andconvenient function makes it fashionable, because it can help youcontact anyone directly in without being seen.SMS fits young people’s fast-food life, and is going to change thecomputer’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 toaffect 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 presentsSMS’ssocialimpactand discussesitseffecton English usage. This study relies on the analysis of data collectedfrom student and teacher surveys at WesternOregonUniversity in the U.S.A. Itwill try to find out the reasonsof why more and more people prefer to use text messaging, their attitudes towards using text messagingand how text messaging, especially its abbreviations, affectsthe 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 capturedmany 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 entertaininglife. 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 liketo use text-messaging, but they also indicate that female usersare 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 thatEnglish 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 amwondering 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) expressedhis 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) thinktext-messaging is not a bad thing, thoughit makes our communicative language changed a little bit. It actually is a code language, whichgives young people another space beyond real life to develop their creativity (cited in Thurlow, 2006).Crystal (2001)made a statement thatNetspeakcountsas 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 canbe 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 informalshorthand 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 effecton 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 WesternOregonUniversity, 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 questionnairewill 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 canidentify 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

Angel,Y & Avin M.(2007) Text-messaging Cultures of College Girls in Hong Kong: SMS as Resources for Achieving Intimacy and Gift-exchange with Multiple Functions. Continuum:

Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, 21(2), pp 303-315.

Allison, R. (2001) ‘Phone text chat “harm literacy”’, Guardian, Jan., 22, p.7.

Crystal D. (2008) Text message: Texting.ELT Journal,62(1), January 2008; doi: 10,1093/elt/ccm080

Green, J. (2007) Language: Intrtxtlty. Critical Quarterly, 49(3)

Goggin,. “mobile text” M/C: A journal of Media and Culture

Harley, D., Winn, S. Pemberton, S. & Wilcox, P. (2007) Using texting to support students’ transition to university. Innovations in Education and Teaching International, 44(3), August 2007, pp. 229-241.

Reid, D & Reid, F. (2004) Insights into the social and psychological effects of SMS text messaging.Available online at (accessed 10 March 2005).

Thurlow, C. (2003) Generation Txt? The sociolinguistics of young people’s text messaging, Discourse Analysis online, 1(1). Available online at: extra.shu.ac.uk/daol/articles/y1/n1/a3/thurlow2002003-paper.html (accessed 12 January 2006).