Textism use and language ability in

children
Waldron, S. and Wood, C.
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Encyclopedia of Mobile
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Zheng Yan
University at Albany, State University of New York, USA

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770 Category: Effects and Impacts

Textism Use and Language

Ability in Children

Sam Waldron
Coventry University, UK

Clare Wood
Coventry University, UK

INTRODUCTION text messages and found that not only did texting
reflect spoken language but that some also fol-
Textisms, textese and text speak are all differ- lowed differing language conventions. Thurlow
ent ways in which current literature refers to the (2003) created a coding scheme to describe the
phenomenon of writing in shorthand within the differences between textism types, this included:
confines of a text message or SMS (Crystal, 2008;
Plester, Wood and Bell, 2008; Wood, Kemp & • Shortenings, where word ends are omitted
Plester, 2013.) Originally this developed as a way to e.g ‘Mon’ for ‘Monday’,
save space in order to fit more information within • Contractions, where vowels are omitted
an SMS to save on the cost of sending multiple from the middle of words e.g. ‘txt’ for
messages (Mose, 2013). With the popularity of ‘text’,
contract phones increasing (Ofcom, 2013) the • G-clippings, where the ‘g’ is left off word
cost of sending individual texts has decreased, endings e.g. ‘goin’ for ‘going’,
yet textism use is still popular due to the social • Other clippings, where other letters are left
affordances it offers such as social belonging off word endings e.g. ‘hav’ for ‘have’,
(Thurlow, 2003), the ability to express oneself • Initialisms, where sentences are shortened
(Plester, Wood & Joshi, 2009) and fun from ‘play- to the first letter of each word e.g. ‘lol’ for
ing’ with language (Crystal, 2008). The popular- ‘laugh out loud’,
ity of texting has been declining in the UK since • Acronyms, these are similar to initial-
the beginning of 2012 (Ofcom, 2013) however, isms, but are considered acceptable in
textism usage is apparent in other media such as formal English e.g. ‘BBC’ for ‘British
instant messaging, e-mails and social network- broadcasting’,
ing (Ling & Baron, 2007). Due to the increase • Letter/number homophones, these use
in smartphone ownership usage of these media numbers or individual letters to represent
is also increasing (Ofcom, 2013.) Thus, despite sounds in words e.g. ‘2night’ for ‘tonight,’
the receding popularity of texting, it seems that or ‘u’ for ‘you’,
textism usage is here to stay. • Non-conventional spellings, these are
When we look at the way in which texting words with differing orthography to the
shorthand is written we find that it is often lik- formal version of the word, but with intact
ened to spoken casual language (Thurlow, 2003). phonology e.g. ‘nite’ for ‘night’,
Thurlow (2003) examined a corpus of teenager’s

DOI: 10.4018/978-1-4666-8239-9.ch063

Copyright © 2015, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited.
 Category: Effects and Impacts

• Misspellings/‘typos’, are words which ap- developed in their own understanding of language
pear to have been attempted correctly, but in terms of grammar, word structure and phonet- E
do not have either the correct orthography ics. Textism usage has been repeatedly debated in
or phonology e.g. ‘rember’ for ‘remember’, the media (Crystal, 2008) in terms of its effect on
• Accent stylization, this refers to a word reading, spelling and grammatical abilities; this
which is written in the same way as one in turn has prompted several researchers to look
would speak it out loud e.g. ‘gonna’ for at the effects objectively. Much of the research
‘going too’. has been conducted with children and teenagers
as this age group appears to text most frequently
From the above list we can see that accent (Lenhart, Ling, Campbell & Purcell, 2010) and
stylization is the category that most represents they are still acquiring written language compe-
casual spoken language. Initialisms and acronyms tency (Snow & Marian, 1978.)
however, follow conventional English language Being able to use textisms can be likened to
rules which have been popular throughout history learning a second language (Berger & Coch, 2010);
(Baron, 2003; Crystal, 2008). Contractions, short- it has been found that when fluent texters read
enings and clippings all rely on an understanding of textese, similar parts of the brain are activated as
how conventional English works also, for instance when bilinguals read in their second language. This
you must know the whole word correctly before suggests that frequent textism users may be similar
you can begin to take parts out. Letter/number to bilinguals, for example they may be better at
homophones and non-conventional spellings code switching between languages (Heredia &
are some of the most common types of textism Altarriba, 2001). Evidence supporting this comes
children use (Plester, Wood and Joshi, 2009) and from Grace, Kemp, Martin & Parrila (2013) who
they both rely heavily upon phonetic knowledge. found that undergraduates were knowledgeable
These phonetic textisms rely heavily on English of which situations textism use was appropriate
language ability; in order to decode these words, or in, and that they could code switch as needed
create them; you must first have good knowledge dependent upon the message recipient.
of letter-to-sound mappings. Past research has failed to show any consistent
Dr. Crispin Thurlow (2003) and Dr Beverly negative effects of textism usage on children’s
Plester (2008) were pioneering scholars when written language abilities; for instance Plester,
it came to looking at how and why people use Wood and Bell (2008) examined 11-12 year olds in
textisms. Since then, there have been several terms of their textism densities and cognitive abil-
researchers that have come to the forefront in ity scores. Those who texted the most had poorer
research examining the impact of texting upon ability scores, however when textism use was
language, these include Dr Nenagh Kemp, Dr looked at instead of frequency of text messaging,
Richard Ling, Prof Clare Wood, Dr Larry Rosen the relationship disappeared. Textism density was
and Dr Michelle Drouin. related to both better verbal reasoning and spell-
ing abilities. It was theorized that these positive
relationships arise from several factors, the first
OVERVIEW is ‘exposure to print’ (Wood et al. 2011); as chil-
dren text more, they engage more with language
As textisms rely heavily on language conventions and become more familiar with it. For instance
(even if they are untraditional) it seems that they a child may not read a book at home, but if they
could cause problems for individuals who have are texting frequently then they are at least being
trouble understanding language or who have not yet exposed to more written words. However, subse-

771
Textism Use and Language Ability in Children

quent research by Wood, Jackson, Hart, Plester & Good vs. Poor Readers
Wilde (2011) could find no evidence to support
an exposure to print argument. Positive attributes As discussed in the overview, it seems that chil-
are also considered to arise from the added prac- dren who are better at verbal reasoning skills find
tice with phonic skills that textisms give; despite it easier to create and decode textisms. Another
many textisms having altered orthography, their important factor that needs to be considered is
phonology is intact e.g. ‘rite’ for ‘right.’ There is reading. Perea, Acha & Carreiar’s (2009) eye
no standard texting lexicon (Baron, 2003) thus the tracking study found that even for individuals who
more you text the more likely you are to be exposed were familiar with textisms, there was a cost as-
to the same word written in multiple ways (e.g. sociated with reading in this style, in comparison
‘tomorrow’ ‘2moz’ ‘2morrow’,) this in turn should to traditional English. Textisms when read, were
strengthen phonologic knowledge through practice less likely to be skipped (in comparison to the
of decoding skills. Plester et al (2009) examined traditional form of the word), took longer to read
this by including a phonological measure in their and were more likely to be subject to forwards/
study. They looked at 10-12 year olds textism use backwards fixations; this leads to the conclusion
(written in response to a hypothetical situation) that textisms are harder to read. The reason for
and found that those who used most textisms had this difficulty could be due to extra demands on
better word reading, vocabulary and phonology. phonological processing as individuals are not
This supports the idea that phonology is linked able to recognize words as easily by sight, or due
heavily to the decoding and creation of words to the fact they must work out which letters are
in textisms. Wood, Meacham, Bowyer, Jackson, being missed (in the case of contractions, shorten-
Tarczynski-Bowles and Plester (2011), furthered ings and clippings.) Phonological abbreviations
this point from their longitudinal study with 8-12 had higher costs than orthographic abbreviations;
year olds. They found that after controlling for this may be due to interference from similar or-
phonological ability, verbal IQ and spelling ability thographic forms. If textisms are harder to read
at the start of an academic year, by the end of the despite levels of textism knowledge, this suggests
same year textism use could predict differences in that poor readers will struggle significantly with
spelling growth. This finding was one-directional, this form of communication. Coe and Oakhill
meaning that textism use improves spelling but (2011) examined 10-11 year olds, and found that
good spelling does not increase textism usage. better readers unsurprisingly were significantly
Evidence also suggests that exposing children to faster at reading text messages than poorer readers.
texting who have never used it before experience a These students were also given a scenario in which
benefit in terms of spelling ability (Wood, Jackson, they had to construct text messages as they would
Hart, Plester & Wilde, 2011.) in real life. Good and poor readers did not differ
significantly in terms of the number of messages
received and sent, but better readers used signifi-
CURRENT SCIENTIFIC cantly more textisms than poorer readers. This is
KNOWLEDGE IN TEXTISM USE likely to be due to the fact that better readers can
use the linguistic rules that textisms follow, thus
Due to the fact that textism use is so pervasive in can code and decode words more easily. If poor
children’s everyday lives, it is important to also readers struggle with textisms, then it is likely that
consider how it affects those who are not devel- students who suffer from developmental language
oping typically. problems will suffer more so.

772
 Category: Effects and Impacts

Dyslexia and Texting provide no extra phonological information. Thus

those dyslexic students with more phonological E
Dyslexia is characterised by poor reading, spelling ability can remove redundant letters more easily.
and writing. As seen from the previous sections, A problem however arises from this study due to
those who are poorer readers (Coe & Oakhill, the fact we cannot be sure if the dyslexic students
2011) and those who are poorer at spelling (Plester intended to spell words incorrectly in a way which
et al, 2008) find texting harder. Dyslexia can be may be interpreted as a textism, or if they reflect
characterised using a dual route model of reading the poor spelling ability of this group.
(Coltheart et al, 2001), which states that individuals A French study by Simoës-Perlant, Thibault,
have two routes to access word knowledge, either Lanchantin, Combes, Volckaert-Legrier & Largy
via orthographic representations or phonological (2012) attempted to overcome this problem.
representations; dyslexic individuals can have a A repeated measures dictation task was used
deficit in either one or both of these routes. Texting on typically developing children and dyslexic
relies heavily on phonological knowledge, which children. They were required to write down two
means that dyslexic individuals with phonological paragraphs, one in a formal style and one in a
deficits will struggle to create and understand cer- textese style, these were then compared to see
tain types of textisms, mostly those which fall into if errors were intentional or not. For this sample
the categories of letter/number homophones and typically developing writers used more textisms
non-conventional spellings. Dyslexic individu- than dyslexic individuals; the reason that Veater
als who experience problems with orthographic et al (2011) may not have found this result is due
representations are also likely to have difficulty to the fact they could not determine the difference
accessing textisms which are ‘sight read’ such between intentional and unintentional textisms.
as symbols and initialisms. This suggests that Further analysis of Simoës-Perlant et al (2012)
children who experience dyslexia will have more revealed that typically developing individuals
difficulty with textese as a language in compari- were significantly more likely to use contraction
son to typically developing children. Veater et al, textisms than dyslexic individuals; this can be
(2011) examined 10-13 year olds with dyslexia explained by the fact dyslexic individuals have
and compared them to two control groups; one trouble playing with word sounds and phonetically
reading age matched group and one chronological reducing the number of characters.
aged matched group. All three groups sent similar Overall, while it seems that there is currently
amounts of text and had broadly similar textism no evidence of a negative effect of textism use on
ratios. However, within these ratios, there was dyslexic individuals, it does seem that dyslexic
a clear preference for dyslexic children to use individuals do not gain any positive benefits from
non-phonetic textisms, opting for initialisms and playing with phonology. With regards to Col-
symbol use. This suggests that this group will not theart et al’s (2001) dual route model of reading,
benefit from the additional phonological practice it seems in terms of texting it is the phonologic
afforded by phonetic textism use. This is further route which causes most disruption for dyslexic
supported by the fact that Veater et al (2011) found individuals. However, this may be because neither
positive correlations within both control groups be- of the above studies explored the different types
tween textism use and phonologic awareness. Only of dyslexia which may have been present within
one textism type was significantly correlated with their samples. Schneps, Thomson, Chen, Sonnert
literacy outcomes for the dyslexic group (‘other & Pomplun (2013), have also shown that dyslexic
clippings’); we theorise that dyslexic individuals individuals can benefit from reading on a smaller
have difficulty with this style of writing due to screen such as a phone in comparison to paper-
the fact that it relies on the omission of letters that based alternatives. Due to the fact that dyslexic

773
Textism Use and Language Ability in Children

individuals have a diminished visual attention suggested that carers advocate a joint approach
span, the small screen on these devices presents to new-media (Durkin & Conti-Ramsden, 2013)
information in manageable chunks improving where they engage with both the child and tech-
both speed and comprehension. It seems that nology at the same time, in order to motivate and
digital devices could help dyslexic individuals facilitate learning in new environments. There
in the future. is much potential for new-media such as texting
to provide a gateway into language learning in a
Specific Language Impairment fun and applicable way for these children, which
(SLI) and Texting is something future research needs to consider.

SLI refers to the developmental disorder where Non-Developmental

individuals have difficulties with language which Disorders and Texting
cannot be explained by IQ, sensory impair-
ment or neurological damage. Conti-Ramsden, Texting is also used by adolescents with non-
Durkin & Smith’s (2010) study found that SLI developmental language disorders, such as deaf-
adolescents were much less likely to text than ness. Okuyama (2013) analysed a corpus of sent
their typically-developing counterparts. Durkin messages by deaf students and found that they
et al (2011) followed up this study by examining used several textisms similar to hearing adoles-
SLI adolescents with expressive and/or receptive cents, including initialisms, accent stylization,
language problems. They found that once again contractions and letter/number homophones.
adolescents with SLI were less likely to reply to Grammatical structure in deaf SMS messages also
SMS messages than age matched peers; those with represented the same grammar structure used in
SLI that did respond had higher reading abilities, American Sign Language. This study shows not
but these messages were still shorter and contained only that texting can be used by children with
fewer textisms than those sent by their typically language disorders easily for communication, but
developing peers. Punctuation usage across groups it also shows that the way in which we originally
was similar, suggesting that it is textism usage learn grammar impacts upon our later grammatical
that these individuals have trouble understanding choices when texting (rather than vice versa); as
rather than grammar. Once again research suggests can be seen from differences in structure between
that this subgroup of children do not suffer nega- deaf and hearing individuals. This is supported
tive consequences due to texting, but do not get by other research which has shown texting to
the same benefits from it as typically developing have no significant links with grammatical abil-
children. Due to the fact that SLI children do not ity in children (Wood, Kemp, Waldron & Hart,
text as often they are exposed to less print. Also, 2014). Text messaging can also benefit others
as they prefer to use fewer textisms they play less who suffer from speech and language disorders,
with phonology, thus these representations are such as those with Broca’s Aphasia (Beeson, Hig-
not being strengthened in the same way as their ginson, Rising, 2013). A case study of an adult
peers. The reason this group may reply to SMS with this condition found that training in texting
messages less frequently could be due to a lack on a phone keypad helped to improve spelling
of understanding. However, it has been suggested and word naming abilities, further showing that
by some that new-media communication is easier those with non-developmental disorders are not
for those with language impairments in compari- harmed by texting, but can in fact use it as a tool
son to face-to-face situations, due to the reduced to access language when non-traditional methods
pressure of immediate speech and processing have failed.
(Durkin, Conti-Ramsden & Walker, 2010.) It is

774
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