The Rise and Fall of Texting Cultures
Fifteen Pairs of Mouths (2016-19) Esmeralda Kosmatopoulos. 24/7 Exhibition, Somerset House.
Did you know that texting was never intended as a form of communication? In its youngest years, it was incorporated in mobile phone design for commercial use, and for services such as the announcement of a new voicemail message. But texting soon fit the technological gap in society for a shorter and quicker form of communication. Today it is the single most used feature on smartphones (1), and I want to examine its transformation.
The rise of texting was not a global phenomenon. It peaked in countries such as Norway, Finland and the Philippines, but took longer to pick up in the US and even more surprisingly Japan, as both cultures were already economically and socially invested in pagers. Like many emerging forms of technology, texting cultures were heavily influenced by younger generations, who utilised this novel messaging service to develop new forms of communication. As a result, perhaps one of the most fascinating developments of texting, was its impact on language.
Texters were presented the challenge of conveying their message through only 160 characters and a small screen for its display. This pressure resulted in what texting critic David Crystal calls ‘one of the most idiosyncratic varieties in the history of language...Textspeak’ (2). Creative approaches bended and twisted languages into abbreviations (txt), letter-number homophones (gr8) and non-standard spellings (luv).
If you were to attribute the above text to a particular format, I bet you’d say text wouldn’t you? This was actually an excerpt from one of my teenage diaries, which I recently stumbled upon (in shame). The infiltration of textspeak to other areas of my life appeared in notes to my friends, workbooks and instant messaging platforms like MSN. Unlike mobile phones, these mediums have no spatial restrictions, giving no indication why I should have chosen to write this way. Eija-Liisa Kasesniemi, author of Mobile Messages (2003), believes that:
‘One of the reasons young people took to texting was a tactic of consolidating and shaping their own shared culture, in distinction from the general culture dominated by their parents and other adults’ (3)
Teenagers continued to reverberate textspeak in other types of communication, because it enhanced their independent culture. The language I used therefore became a code I could speak in outside of adult society.
Strengthening this generational linguistic divide, adults couldn’t stand the diffusion of textspeak in writing practices, and believed that it had a negative impact on young people’s standard of language. John Sutherland wrote in 2002 that texting was ‘thin and unimaginative...mask(ing) dyslexia, poor spelling and mental laziness’ (3). Interestingly, text speak actually predates text messaging, and is most commonly known to arise through internet chat forums. But it was also once considered in Victorian times an intellectual play on words! In a 1867 poem by Charles C Bombaugh, he uses phrases such as ‘I wrote 2 U B 4’, and ‘U R virtuous and Y’s’ (4), a clear indication of the historical nature of textspeak.
But texting is of course a little outdated. In an era of 3G and wireless connectivity, it was quickly replaced by communication apps such as WhatsApp and Snapchat, offering cheaper and more interesting alternatives. Messages continued to be sent in short, sharp bursts, but were now unconstrained by cost or size restriction, contributing hugely to rising levels of instant messaging engagement.
In 2020, written language of the youngest generation is no longer characterised by the abbreviations of text speak. Instead they are defined by an absence of words, replaced by the little pictures we know as emojis. Originally developed in Japan in the late 1990’s, emojis reached their global audience upon their release by Apple in 2011. By 2017, 6 billion emojis were exchanged each day, 🤣 becoming so popular that it was selected as the Oxford Dictionary’s 2015 word of the year.
Many argue that emojis give textspeak the emotion that it was missing. How many times have you sent a text message or email, that was perceived in a way that you hadn’t meant it? Dr Caroline Tagg, professor in applied linguistics, says that:
“The thing about texting and to an extent, other forms of online communication, is that you can’t use gesture and intonation, facial expressions and other things we take for granted when we’re speaking” (5)
As a result, emojis are often seen as a mechanism to enhance online writing through the expression of one’s feelings. My boyfriend laughs at me, as unlike the majority of millennials, I’m known as the only one of our friends to send physical texts and I tend to stick to the traditional :) instead of exploring the 3,304 existing emojis. But even though I’m a minority, emojis certainly emerged from a messaging culture amongst young people, and are often used independent of words in communication.
But is an emoji really an adequate method for communicating one’s feelings, or is it a product of a generation raised on the immediacy of the digital age? Just as texting was born from a societal need for a quicker form of communication, emojis suit the landscape and neurological conditioning of our digital devices, leaving users with even shorter forms of attention.
What sort of communication does society need in the solitary days of COVID-19? Where in the past, technology has been criticized for its reduction of face-to-face communication, in our present landscape it offers us the only communication possible outside of the house! Suddenly there is a move towards collective communication, and our online platforms are filled with dance classes, mimes, images of drawings, musical performances and online parties. Short sharp communication seems to have been pushed to the side for a space that is ever so more social.
Technological turning points are never out of the blue, they are driven by shifts amongst generations and cultures. Communication is therefore led by the needs of society. It’s socially binding, collective in nature, and brings people together from all parts of the world. Never before have I felt so connected to my friends and family, yet I can’t even physically see them. I wonder what new technological trend is on the horizon, to meet our needs in these very strange times.
References
1) Burke, K (2018) How Many Texts Do People Send Every Day (2018)? Text Request. Available online.
2) Crystal, D (2008) Texting. ELT Journal. Volume 62.1. University Oxford Press.
3) Goggin, G (2006) Cell Phone Culture. Routledge.
4) Brown, M (2010) 'I wrote 2U B4'! British Library shows up textspeak as soooo 19th century. The Guardian. Available online.
5) Tagg, C (2012) The Language of Text Messaging and Social Networks [Transcript] The University of Birmingham. Available online.
