Short Message Service: A New Language
Our group decided to explore Short Message Service (SMS), including ‘text talk’ and emoji, as a new language. We created a Weebly site that explored the history of the text shorthand and the development of text messaging itself, as well as the advent of the emoji and its current use in technology. We included a short ‘how to’ of text talk and emoji use for those viewers unfamiliar with the convention, but also to illustrate certain trends in language use and some of the reasons behind the choice of shorthand or abbreviation. We conclude our exploration with research findings that either support or refute the use of text talk and emoji in everyday life.
We included several short videos to illustrate out points, and also include a learning activity that you are able to explore your knowledge of the language.
Take a look using the link below!
Short Message Service: A New Language
Emily V., Jenn B,, and Kara C.
Hi Emily, Jenn and Kara,
Nice work on your website! Looks like you had a lot of fun putting it together. BTW I took the acronym quiz and only missed one! LOL.
Your site would be useful to share with my students, so with your permission, I’ll bookmark it for use next year! GTG.
~Sandra
Great team effort. I liked the weebly.com interface you designed – it’s really clean and engaging.
I got through to the learning activity and scored 85% (thank goodness). I noted that researchers had found both positive and negative impacts of abbreviated language on student outcomes.
In Australia, there is some debate about literacy outcomes and there has been some recent publicity over the finding that interventions in curriculum the past few years have not seen any better outcomes. I think literacy is something that is a big concern in most English speaking countries.
If students are not learning formal language (and one of the research studies you quoted found students were struggling to adopt formal language), then there is a problem with them going on to further study and performing in workplaces. I think emoji is not a language for the business world. I see it as ‘cryptic’ in the examples given in the video, and thereby open to confusion/misunderstanding.