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    2b or not 2b

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    blendinjo
    2b or not 2b

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    2b or not 2b

    Uploaded by

    blendinjo
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    2b or not 2b

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    2b or not 2b

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    7 views2 pages

    2b or not 2b

    Uploaded by

    blendinjo
    2b or not 2b

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
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    John Humphrys- texters are vandals who are raping our vocabulary, and therefore they must be

    stopped.

    When printing arrived people were saying that new technology will have disastrous consenquences for
    the language.

    SMS weren't so popular in the begining, the reason being because companies hadn't figured out a
    reliable way of charging for the new service. Once this problem was solved texting sky rocketed.

    There is evidence that texting helps rather than hinders(do something bad in this case) literacy.

    Texting has added a new dimension to language use. Texters might enjoy breaking linguistic rules, but
    the know they need to be understood.

    Some distinctive features of texting can be found in pre-computer informal writing, dating back a
    hundred years or more.

    The most noticeable feature is the use of single letters, numerals, and symbols to represent words or
    parts of words, as with b “be” and 2 “to”. Those

    features are called rebuses.

    Similarly, the use of initial letters for whole words is not new. People have been initialising common
    phrases for ages.

    English has had abbreviated words ever since it began to be written down. Words such as exam, vet,
    fridge, cox and bus are so familiar that they have

    effectively become new words.

    Texters use deviant spellings—and they know they are deviant. But they are by no means the first to use
    such nonstandard forms as cos “because,”

    wot “what,” or gissa “give us a.” Several of these are so much part of English literary tradition that they
    have been given entries in the Oxford

    English Dictionary. “Cos” is there from 1828 and “wot” from 1829.
    Its creative potential has been virtually ignored. Five years of research has proved that texting does not
    erode children’s ability to read and write.

    The latest studies have found strong positive links between the use of text language and the skills
    underlying success in standard English in pre-teenage children. The more abbreviations in

    their messages, the higher they scored on tests of reading and vocabulary. The children who were better
    at spelling and writing used the most textisms.

    And the younger they received their first phone, the higher their scores. Children could not be good at
    texting if they had not already developed

    considerable literacy awareness. Before you can write and play with abbreviated forms, you need to
    have a sense of how the sounds of your language

    relate to the letters. You need to know that there are such things as alternaive spellings.

    Some people dislike texting. Some are bemused by it. But it is merely the latest manifestation of the
    human ability to be linguistically creative and to

    adapt language to suit the demands of diverse settings. There is no disaster pending. We will not see a
    new generation of adults growing up unable to

    write proper English. The language as a whole will not decline. In texting what we are seeing, in a small
    way, is language in evolution.

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