Essay On Text Literacy

In today’s culture, one of the fastest ways to communicate with others is through text messages. Text messages are a form of electronic messages sent from one cell phone to another minimizing the wait time for it to be sent and received. Through time text messages have transformed into its own writing system. From the use of spelling, grammar to the unregulated space in the orthographic regime, text messages have created a distinctive linguistic identity. This texting speech also known as “SMS Langauge” has gotten linguists eager at observing what they are considering “the biggest ever language revolution” (Kumar, "A Linguistic Study Of Abbreviations In SMS"). Text messages have a lot of underlying meaning composed in its language from being its own written form to being an expression of text users. Because of the rapid popularity and addictions texting has caused, linguists are researching whether texting language affects student’s literacy when it comes to language skills.

Text messages have a bit of a history before it became one of the fastest ways of communication through a written form. When a message to someone needed to be sent in the early ages, the only way that was done was through a hand written letter sent through a carrier pigeon. As generations past, these hand-written letters sealed with a stamp in an envelope were still sent but sent through the Post Office. It was not until 1969 when the first Internet was created that a quicker method to send a message was created (Bellis, “The History of Communication”). When the Internet was created, electronic mail was invented and this is when you can send letters through the Internet and would arrive to the recipient’s computer almost instantly. There was no need for paper...

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... to have a conversation with friends, family and even acquaintances. Text messages seem to be considered informal so many users take advantage of this mindset and use it as a way of expressing themselves. For example, someone can naturally text using a lot of emoticons showing that they like to be animated of have an animated personality. For example, this person enjoys using emoticons to emphasize her emotion and excitement.

Using pictures, the five characteristics of abbreviations and insertion of letters into words is a way to express and exaggerate emotions in a written form. It is a method to show more that you are invested in the conversation you are having with someone with emotion and personality in the text messages. Especially in today’s texting culture, people expect abbreviations and emoticons in text messages because it is a part of the texting lingo.