Texting

Texting is a startling modern phenomenon, one that ‘has gripped the imagination of the UK in a very short space of time and already has its own language, its own etiquette and its own humour’ (Baker 2002). Text messaging was never originally envisioned as a means of communication between individuals, certainly not one that would rival or replace voice messages. It was originally conceived as having commercial use, or possibly as a service for mobile phones to signal the arrival of a voicemail message. The first text message was sent in December 1992. The message, which seems today strangely unabbreviated, read ‘Merry Christmas’. The service gradually became available commercially during the 1990s. Between then and now its huge surge in popularity has taken everyone by surprise. Recent text use in the UK alone has averaged over 4 billion messages a month with an annual total of around 45 billion messages (source: Mobile Data Association). Textspeak is largely the language of the young—and a lively controversy has sprung up around its use—mainly from the older generation who seek variously to analyse, interpret, or decry its use. John Sutherland, for example, finds the language of texting, ‘thin and unimaginative … mask[ing] dyslexia, poor spelling and mental laziness’, and concludes it is ‘penmanship for illiterates’ (Sutherland 2002) while Crispin Thurlow finds it ‘communicatively adept’ having ‘linguistic creativity’ and a ‘robust sense of play’ (Thurlow 2005).