TY - JOUR
T1 - Undergraduates' use of text messaging language
T2 - effects of country and collection method
AU - Grace, Abbie
AU - Kemp, Nenagh
AU - Martin, Frances Heritage
AU - Parrila, Rauno
PY - 2012
Y1 - 2012
N2 - Studies of mobile phone text messaging have reported widely varying proportions of textisms (e.g., u for you, 2 for to). We investigated whether conclusions about textism use are influenced by participant country, text message collection method, and categorisation method. Questionnaire data were collected from 241 undergraduate students in Australia and Canada, who also provided text messages via three methods used in previous research: translation from conventional English, writing a message in response to a scenario, and providing naturalistic messages. Significantly higher proportions of textisms were observed in messages written by Australians than Canadians, and in messages collected experimentally than naturalistically. A re-categorisation of textism forms as "contractive" versus "expressive" was explored and overall implications for text-message collection are discussed.
AB - Studies of mobile phone text messaging have reported widely varying proportions of textisms (e.g., u for you, 2 for to). We investigated whether conclusions about textism use are influenced by participant country, text message collection method, and categorisation method. Questionnaire data were collected from 241 undergraduate students in Australia and Canada, who also provided text messages via three methods used in previous research: translation from conventional English, writing a message in response to a scenario, and providing naturalistic messages. Significantly higher proportions of textisms were observed in messages written by Australians than Canadians, and in messages collected experimentally than naturalistically. A re-categorisation of textism forms as "contractive" versus "expressive" was explored and overall implications for text-message collection are discussed.
KW - adults
KW - mobile phones
KW - spelling
KW - text-messaging
KW - textisms
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84875321522&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/17586801.2012.712875
DO - 10.1080/17586801.2012.712875
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84875321522
SN - 1758-6801
VL - 4
SP - 167
EP - 184
JO - Writing Systems Research
JF - Writing Systems Research
IS - 2
ER -