Essay Sample on Texting Language

📌Category: Communication, Sociology
📌Words: 938
📌Pages: 4
📌Published: 19 April 2022

Do you text at least once every day? So do most other people. Texting has taken the top spot in the way people communicate. The texting language is vastly different from standard spoken English. The texting language was developed on a basis of social influencing. The current texting vocabulary consists of abbreviations, emojis, and improper spelling and grammar, thus creating confusion. The words and phrases used in the text are now making more appearances in kids’ schoolwork than ever before. 

When the age of texting first came about in 1992, People struggled to get used to it because it removed all emotion from the words, and people were even limited to how many characters were in a text. Because people had to limit the number of characters, to avoid extra charges, messages usually did not get the whole point across. The parts of the message they could fit were heavily abbreviated and shortened which left many people feeling confused. The abbreviations that were created during that generation such as “ 2“ and “ U “ have migrated into the current generation with a few additions. The abbreviations that are now used today consist of “wyd” instead of what are you doing and “wbu” instead of what about you. My sister’s favorite abbreviation is “smh.” This is a prime example of an abbreviation most people do not know and are confused by. Believe it not, this abbreviation means” shake my head.” These shortened versions of words often come from laziness to type the entire phrase or from social influences to fit in. 

Social influences have shaped the way people text because everyone wants to fit in and appear cool. If it is uncool to type out the whole word a new abbreviation is then created. Texting has such a heavy social influence that it is changing every day. One day there could be an abbreviation for a word the next, that abbreviation is gone. The way people text also depends on age and location. The way an older person would type is astronomically different than the way a teenager would type. Text language also depends on location because people that live in rural areas tend to use less grammar and punctuation skills than someone who lives in the middle of a city.  

In the earlier days of texting, there was no way to put emotion into the text. People, never quite knew the tone of which something was said. This created numerous barriers to communication because messages were often taken the wrong way. As technology advanced, emojis were added to the variety of available characters to type. While emojis added clarification, they also added much more room for misinterpretation. Emojis gave people the opportunity to add faces with emotion to help convey the tone of the message. The misinterpretation begins with adding a face that does not quite match with the message at all. People will type something that would usually be hurtful or mean, but then add a laughing face to indicate the joking manner. While talking face to face, you can see the body language and facial expressions of the person talking to help get the idea of how to take it. Over text, however, all a person has to go on is the word choice and usually, the emoji provided. When the text and the emoji don’t indicate the same thing it becomes a toss-up on how to take it. 

Another challenge texting has created for those unfamiliar with the language is how many words mean one thing in person and something completely different over text. One example is when girls usually type ”k” it more times than not means they are mad or upset. This creates the ultimate barrier of communication between the older generations and the newer generations. The older generation would simply see and read that as ok and think nothing of it, while the new generations would read that and know the person was upset. The only way to grasp the concept of this is through exposure to the texting world. It can be very tough to learn all the in and outs of the practical sub-part of English that is the texting language. 

The spelling and grammatical errors are other major problems within the texting language. Texts are meant to be short and relatively quick to type. Oftentimes, people leave out unnecessary letters, punctuation, and articles to shorten the text. In texts between friends, the words often include,” talkin, nothin, huh, etc.” Because these words have become common practice, most people begin to talk like this in face-to-face conversations. In turn, kids are beginning to write like this for school work regardless of if they were originally taught not to. They write in text language more than standard grammatically correct English. My sister, for example, wrote an essay consisting of only text language and could not understand why she had to fix it. This has become a problem for students across the county. They are having to face the new challenge of learning when it is ok to write in text language and when they have to write in grammatically correct English. Most students are now more proficient in the writing used in texting than the normal version of English taught in schools. This is not from a lack of being taught properly but from the repetitive use of the current texting language.  Many teachers and parents alike agree that texting is both a blessing and a curse. Kids struggle to find the line between when to write properly and when to use text words.  

Since the creation of texting in 1992, texting has had many positive impacts in the technological world.  It has also, however, had many negative ones. Texting has separated the emotion, one would typically get from face-to-face conversations, from the words on the screen. The evolution of texting has become progressively better but has still created the ultimate communication barrier between generations. Texting has revolutionized the way people communicate and it is vital to understand the language to ensure accurate communication.

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