Texting: the dialect of Tweens

     I’ll admit it. I HATE talking on the phone, especially if I only have a few a simple questions to ask. When you call someone there is the customary hi, how are you to get through followed with discussion of fluff. At the same time I’m slightly concerned about the English language in general, and its preservation. It has happened to me one or twice in my history class where I am copying notes and write down an acronym and think of it’s texting meaning rather than the historical abbreviation. Just for a general clarification TMI in a history class will always mean Three Mile Island, and NOT too much information, historians don’t really believe in that. 

    Personally I don’t really like texting acronyms. I’ll use a few, but I prefer typing out full sentence text messages with periods and sometimes even some commas. Quite frankly I don’t even know them all. A quick scan of the top 50 list of texting acronym’s told me I was probably at the same place as my mom, and that’s just sad. However is texting, and the shortened vernacular that goes with it, a bad thing? Most people tend to say it is bad because it is destroying the language. There is no need to know how to spell; no need to use proper grammar or punctuation. There is virtually no need to expand your vocabulary. Then why is it done? There has to be something beneficial about shortening sentences into letters. The answer, in my opinion, lies with rhetoric.

    The goal of rhetoric is to get a point across as effectively as possible. Isn’t that what texting lingo is doing? Instead of having a five-minute phone call teens can get across a sentence of information in a few letters. And though not everyone can understand it, for those who can it is more effective. Shortening of words is noting new to us. We no longer speak in the fluffy dialect of Shakespeare. What took pages to say back then can be put into a paragraph today and with text lingo maybe even a few lines. I don’t think the English language needs to fear being condensed to abbreviations and acronyms anytime soon, however that does not take away from the fact that it is effective.

            Rgardlss of f ura fan of txt tlk or nt it follows d basic 4rms of rhetoric, it gets ax a msg dats sussed, @ lEst 2 doze hu undRst& it. Translation: If you are a fan of text talk or not it follows the basic forms of rhetoric, it gets across a message that is understood, at least to those who understand it.