Language Archives - Page 15 of 16

The Life of Slang

March 9, 2012 by Roy Johnson

where slang comes from, and what it’s used for

The Life of Slang is a study of linguistic creation. We know that when a slang word is introduced into the language, it can become Standard English if it is adopted by enough people and put into general use. And of course the reverse can happen when a Standard English term is used in a new way and thereby becomes slang – which is what’s happened to the term gay since the end of the nineteenth century. In fact the process can continue, and by re-adoption the slang word is taken back into Standard English as a legitimate and additional meaning of the term.

People commonly object to slang when it is first introduced – particularly if it comes from another country such as Australia or the United States. But then resistance weakens (among some groups) and people become late adopters and start to embarrass their children by employing slang which is not a natural part of their verbal register – which is why the elderly Duchess of Cornwall made herself ridiculous by describing the engagement of her stepson (and future king of England) as ‘wicked’.

Another popular misconception is that the English language is somehow ‘infected’ by slang from other languages. This is simply not true. Some terms are found useful and adopted, others are not. You don’t hear English people using ditzy, which is a perfectly normal American term for silly or scatterbrained. And Americans refer slightingly to their own lower-class as ‘trailer trash’ not ‘chavs’. Both countries are selective about the terms they wish to borrow and use.

There’s also a longstanding belief that the use of slang impoverishes somebody’s verbal skills or their range of diction. Once again, there is no evidence to support this belief. Slang is simply an additional tool for communication which is used to mark attitudes to a topic or membership of a group. In fact all speakers can switch in and out of a variety of linguistic registers with no trouble. This is an endemic feature of language use.

In this very readable study of slang, Julie Coleman examines the way in which slang is formed – which turns out to be the same way as Standard English, through word-combination, back formation, and borrowings.

How it’s imported from other countries is a different matter. She puts a great deal of store on cross fertilization between British and American troops during the first world war – but this doesn’t seem altogether convincing, given the brevity of contact between the two forces.

There’s an analysis of literary texts from Chaucer onwards that seeks to provide evidence for her claim that the use of slang increases as time goes on. In fact she claims that slang was not commonly used before the renaissance, but admits that she has no evidence to prove it. She also covers slang from other English-speaking countries – Australia, New Zealand Canada, and even India

A great deal of her exposition is a historical account of underworld cant taken to Australia by transported British felons – and despite Australian national pride, developed from the early nineteenth century onwards. Australia is particularly rich in slang since it receives its linguistic influences from two English-speaking sources – both Britain and the United States.

There is a blurred distinction between slang and colloquialism or idiom which is not always easy to disentangle. Words such as wonga and moolah are not used for anything other than slang terms for money, whereas words such as knob and beef can be used in their conventional senses of handle and meat, as well as their common use as slang terms.

She covers terms generated by the press, the music hall, cinema, pop music, television, and radio – with a generous nod to Round the Horne which ‘preserved one form of slang [Polari] that might otherwise have fallen from use altogether’.

She finishes with a survey of the most rapidly developing field of new terms of all – computer technology and its users. The Internet is the ultimate democratic medium and also the most immediate. Events on one side of the world may now be made known on the other as they are happening – via Twitter, Facebook, blogs, and video depositories such as YouTube.

Online dictionaries of slang compiled in the form of Wikis are known to vary greatly in their reliability and quality. Nevertheless, she gives a very respectful account of the user-generated Urban Dictionary. Then, after this fairly exhaustive survey she concludes by re-examining what is required in order to define slang – and it’s not easy.

It’s not necessarily new, or linguistically unusual, or associated with uneducated people, or necessarily vulgar. It’s not just colloquial language taken to an extreme. It doesn’t include dialect or jargon, although local and professional slang do occur. It doesn’t include swearing, though some swearing is slang. Neither is it restricted to the spoken language to the extent that it once was. It isn’t necessarily used for deliberate effect. Slanginess isn’t a quality of words or meanings: what’s slang in one context wouldn’t be slang in another.

In the end she opts to describe it as an attitude to language use which is recognised by fellow users in certain groups. This might seem disappointing to those seeking the reassurance of a quasi-scientific definition. But it strikes me as a step forward, a clearing of the decks from what was once thought to be a simple matter of making word lists and labelling the contents ‘slang’.

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&copy Roy Johnson 2012

Julie Coleman, The Life of Slang, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012, pp.354, ISBN: 0199571996

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The Myth of Mars and Venus

June 8, 2009 by Roy Johnson

Do men and women really speak different languages?

A notion has sprung up in the last decade or so that men and women use language differently – even that they are psychologically and genetically hard-wired for language in different ways. This notion has solidified around the expression ‘Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus’, which was the title of a book which became a best-seller in 1992. This current book is Deborah Cameron’s exploration of gender and language from the perspective of an academic specialist in the field.

Not to hold back on her conclusions unnecessarily, she points out that the notion is complete rubbish. There isn’t any proof or justification for it in any of the published research. There are only vague ‘surveys’ and pop-journalism which make claims which evaporate under the scrutiny of rigorous examination. So the question immediately arises – why is this myth so widespread and enthusiastically accepted as a universal truth? Why do people continue to believe it, when it’s not true?

The answer to that question is that like most myths, it is comforting. It panders to prejudice and reinforces stereotypes of both men and women. And it spares us the difficulty of looking more closely at what we think we are observing.

She looks at all sorts of research into the relationship between language and gender, and it all points to the same conclusions – that for any investigation, the context needs to be given; that larger samples need to be taken; that general conclusions about choice of vocabulary, volume of speech, interrupting, and verbal dominance cannot be made on grounds of gender without many other factors being taken into account.

Rather than speaking differently simply because they are women and men, women and men may differ in their patterns of language-use because they are engaged in different activities or are playing different conversational roles.

What one person thinks of as a supportive tag question (isn’t it?) is another person’s facilitation. It all points to the need for more scientific rigour before making rash claims.

The most serious argument she makes is that giving credence to these myths can be a dangerous reinforcement of prejudice against both men and women which when translated into social action can result in discrimination, persecution on gender lines, and even social exclusion.

She also backs up her claims with excursions into sociology and ethnography, illustrating the point that behaviour which is often seen as essentially gendered is just a different way of responding because of a particular role being enacted – irrespective of gender.

She actually takes this further, into areas which seem to border on the philosophy of human existence in a way which reminded me very much of the work of Stephen Pinker. The ‘explanations’ of language/gender difference which stem from Stone Age evolutionary psychology are examined under her clear, realistic gaze and shown to be wanting.

This is only a short book, but there are thought-provoking ideas on just about every page.

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Deborah Cameron, The Myth of Mars and Venus: Do Men and Women Really Speak Different Languages, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008, pp.208, ISBN: 0199550999

The Oxford History of English

December 24, 2012 by Roy Johnson

academic essays on the development of English language

This is an updated version of The Oxford History of English which is now available with the claim that it’s ‘a book for everyone interested in the English language, present and past’. A reasonable claim – though one might wish to add the caveat: ‘suitable for everyone embarking on detailed academic research into the history and mechanics of English’. Because it is certainly not for beginners. It offers a detailed and scholarly history of the English language, starting as far back as 1500BC.

And as Lynda Mugglestone’s useful introduction claims, the volume encompasses not only standard forms of English but also varieties stemming from geography, status and culture. The book comprises fourteen chapters, each written by a different linguist and representing a variety of interests, which makes the volume invaluable to students of linguistics up to post graduate level. Time-lines, language maps tables and charts complement the textual information. A phonemic table is also included and this is essential to the understanding of some language development explanations such as the Great Vowel Shift.

Nothing essential to the study of the English language is omitted and this is given zest by frequent examples from literary works or artefacts, and by the implicit enthusiasm shown by the contributors. For example, Marilyn Corrie quotes the original of a Middle English text, along with the translation, showing a homely but avid interest in study skills.

And whoever may wish to write this book out again on another occasion, I ask him that he write it correctly, just as this book teaches him.

This is a neat reminder that books at one time could only be copied by hand, one at a time.

North American English and its formation is dealt with, including citations of additions from Native American terms and usages – such as the native term Skunk. Other examples of English that have acquired semi-detached status are cited and these specifics are used to lead into the universal principles of language change, observable over thousands of years.

Techniques for the analysis of language mechanisms are eloquently explained in the chapter Dialects and Diversity. Reference to rhyme and poetic metre show the development in a quasi graphical manner that is very pleasing to read.

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle gets appropriate consideration as do various Anglo-Saxon sermons and poems. The advent of Christianity is used to demonstrate the gradual transition from paganism as reflected in poetry. The establishment of a written vernacular is documented with due reference to King Alfred as possibly the first educator in English, via The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.

The volume deals in detail with Germanic influences and the French influence that followed it. Issues such as ‘high’ and ‘low’ languages and the imprint left on a society after the departure of conquering nations are all included in a comprehensive and detailed history.

Considering more recent developments, Tom McArthur traces the status of English during the Twentieth Century with a quaint but comprehensive world map showing English language usage.

In his conclusion David Crystal not only charts the observable influences on English of the Internet and its devices, but he also gives his own prospective notions for the future of the language.

Each chapter is given its own lists of suggestions for further reading, and the book finishes with a huge bibliography. Although the level of detail is on a minute scale, the content is easily accessible, navigable and readable, given some prior knowledge on the part of the reader.

I would gladly give The Oxford History of English to anyone embarking on a language-based programme of study, or to any dedicated amateur student of the English language, its history and its prospects.

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Lynda Mugglestone (ed), The Oxford History of English, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012, pp.600, ISBN: 0199660166

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The Real McCoy

June 27, 2009 by Roy Johnson

the true stories behind our everyday phrases and sayings

English is incredibly rich language, full of colorful and unusual phrases and sayings. This is one of those books which offers explanations for commonly used expressions. For instance, why do we say ‘know your onions’, ‘straight as a die’, and ‘the apple of your eye’? The answer in the last example is that the pupil was once supposed to be round. The Real McCoy is unusual as an expression in that nobody really knows its true origin.

Another typical example is ‘Mad as a hatter’. I knew this one, because it comes from the mercury poisoning used in felt hat manufacture – a former speciality in the town where I live. Most of the entries are very short. However, there are occasional special sections dealing with groups of – such as Biblical expressions, colours, eating and drinking, foreign countries, legends and myths, parts of the body and expressions coined by Shakespeare. Most of the entries are ploddingly obvious. I think that just about everybody knows that ‘full of beans’ means ‘lively and in high spirits’ and that the origin comes from vegetable protein.

However, there were one or two expressions I had certainly not thought about, such as ‘curry favour’ which has nothing to do with cooking or the Indian subcontinent, but comes from the expression curry as in to groom a horse with a coarse brush or comb.

And I certainly didn’t realise that a devil’s advocate was originally an official Catholic appointment during the process of beatification. The person’s role was to challenge the case being made for sainthood.

It’s an easy and lightweight approach to the subject. The entries come with no evidence or credible sources, and there’s no bibliography or list of further reading.

This could be useful as a Xmas or birthday present for someone who hasn’t yet thought much about the quirky nature of language. For something more substantial you will need to go to books such as The Oxford Dictionary of Idioms or Michael Quinion’s Port Out, Starboard Home.

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Georgia Hole, The Real McCoy, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005, pp.200, ISBN: 0192806114

The Usual Suspects and Other Cliches

July 1, 2009 by Roy Johnson

all the low down and the full monty on street-cred lingo

At first you might wonder why anybody would want to look into the origins of a cliché. But the more I read the examples in The Usual Suspects, the more they emphasise the tired, stale nature of expressions we often take for granted – or even worse, sometimes use without thinking first. This of course is based on the widely held belief that using cliché is a stylistically bad thing – though there are some people who actually defend them. (They can also be used ironically, but that isn’t taken up here.)

These issues are debated by Betty Kirkpatrick in the introductory essay to her collection which considers both the definition of cliché (when does an expression become a cliché for instance?) and the various categories of cliché. She debates intelligently with authorities such as Fowler and Eric Partridge and even considers how clichés blend easily into idioms, proverbs, catchphrases, vogue phrases, and allusions. Her entries run from the proverb cliché absence makes the heart grow fonder to You wish! and zero hour. She includes both traditional clichés, as in beat about the bush, and more recent usages such as spend more time with my family – which is what politicians and public figures say when they’ve been sacked – which neatly combines cliché with euphemism.

She also identifies what she calls ‘filler clichés’ such as at the end of the day, you know what I mean, and with all due respect. My own pet hates – used repeatedly, day after day by Sean Rafferty on BBC Radio 3 – are as it were and so to speak, both completely meaningless fillers which send me reaching for the off switch or tuning in to Jazz FM.

So a typical entry in this collection runs as follows:

push the envelope is an idiom cliché which is also a vogue cliché. It means to try to achieve more than seems possible, to take a risk, as A good coach is constantly driving the athlete to break new barriers, encouraging him to push the envelope. The cliché dates from the turn of the twentieth century, but the phrase may go back to early aviation test flights (1940s) where the ‘envelope’ refers to the line on a graph that represents the limit of an aircraft’s known capabilities.

It’s interesting to notice that in some clichés – such as flotsam and jetsam – the words in the phrase are almost never used separately from each other.

Most of the explanations listed are quite easy to understand – as in the case of to spend a penny. Even young people must know that this was once the standard charge for entering a public toilet. But maybe non-English readers will not. For this reason I suspect the book might be specially useful for people with English as a second or other language.

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Betty Kirkpatrick, The Usual Suspects and Other Clichés, London: A & C Black, 2005, pp.222, ISBN: 0713674962

Tone – how to understand it

September 14, 2009 by Roy Johnson

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Tone – definition

To the linguist [or speech therapist] ‘tone’ means the quality of sound produced by the voice in uttering words.

In a general sense, ‘tone’ is the attitude of the speaker or writer as revealed in the choice of vocabulary or the
intonation of speech.

This attitude might be immediately apparent — in tone of voice, for instance.

It might on the other hand be a complex and subtle manner which takes time to establish — in an extended piece of writing, for instance.

Examples

Written or spoken communication might be described as having a tone which is, for instance:

ironic serious flippant

threatening light-hearted pessimistic

Use

Tone is used to convey an attitude. This may be done consciously or unconsciously.

It could be said that there is no such thing as a text or verbal utterance without a tone.

In most cases, tone is either taken for granted, or perceived unconsciously.

NB! Tone is sometimes difficult to describe and analyse. It’s a subtle and complex matter.

Tone, taken at its most literal, is a feature of non-verbal communication. It is the physical level at which the sound of the human voice is transmitted.

Linguists and speech therapists chart intonation patterns by a system of marks on the page to suggest the rising and falling of the voice tone.

Intonation is the term by which we refer to the patterns of sound which are evident in every utterance. We sometimes use the term ‘monotone’ to imply an absence of intonation. This usually suggests some negative state of mind on the part of the speaker.

Every language has its standard set of intonation patterns. These have to be learnt by the non-native speaker as an essential constituent of the transmission of meaning.

The intonation patterns of a language are the first things a child learns in its progress as a speaker. They are the first elements a child selects from the body of ‘comprehensible imput’ which is necessary to trigger the acquisition process.

Interestingly, intonation is a difficult hurdle for the second-language learner. It seems that the intonation of one’s own native language becomes deeply internalised, and the ability to hear the intonation of a second language is not as sharp as it is in a young child.

We can, perhaps, appreciate these difficulties if we take the single word ‘hello’ and consider the variations possible in expressing it to imply an attitude. [This isn’t easy to reproduce on screen, but bear with us.]

‘Hello, hello, hello.’ stereotype policeman

‘Hello?’ ‘Is anyone there?’

‘Hello!’ ‘At last I’ve found it!’

‘Hello!’ ‘Here we go again!’

‘Hello!’ ‘Fancy meeting you.’

and of course…

‘Hello!’ Greeting a friend

Even a non-verbal utterance such as a cough or a clearing of the throat can be eloquent by means of its tone. An example of this is the cough which says ‘Be careful! People are listening in to what you’re saying’. A slightly different cough acts as a warning not to go any further with an action or an utterance.

Intonation as part of literary writing is conveyed often by narrative description as in:

‘Oh Jeremy!’ she exclaimed in a shocked tone.

‘Jeremy!’ she screamed, as she saw him leap from the parapet.

As practised readers, we infer the tone of literary dialogue without the explicit narrative description used in the first example given above. We hear the delivery in our mind’s ‘ear’ as clearly as we hear it in reality when taking part in a dialogue ourselves.

Tone is perhaps applied more widely in an almost metaphoric sense to convey a whole attitude. For instance we might receive a letter from someone expressing the sentiment that they had trusted us, but felt let down by something we had done. The letter might have an ironic tone, or an angry tone, or an indignant tone.

Tone in this sense is conveyed by an amalgam of choice of vocabulary and syntax on the part of the writer. For the reader, this selection creates an imaginary audible impression, as the tone is heard in the mind’s ear.

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Totally Weird and Wonderful Words

July 8, 2009 by Roy Johnson

a dictionary of obscure, unusual, and bizarre terms

Do you know what illecebrous, langsuir, and telematology mean? No – I thought not. They are ‘attractive’, ‘female vampire’, and ‘the study of peat bogs’ respectively. Not a lot of people know that. Of course, you might say that not many people would want to know that. But if you are one of the exceptions – people who are fascinated by etymology, unusual words, and obscure terms – Totally Weird and Wonderful Words is the book for you. It’s a collection of really out-of-the-way lexical items and words you have probably never heard of before. Entries run from abligurition (spending a lot on food) and abnormous (18th century, ‘mis-shapen’) to zoonosis (disease transmitted from animals to humans) and Zyrian (a north Russian language).

The alphabletised entries are interspersed with mini-essays on various categories of obscure terms, and laced with lots of New Yorker type cartoons. The weirdness of the entries might lie in a word’s obscure meaning, or it might be its unusual orthography – a strange conjunction of letters, as in kalokagathia (nobility and goodness of character).

It doesn’t pretend to be encyclopedic, but I was surprised that one of my own favourite obscure terms wasn’t in there. Borborygmous means ‘rumbling of gas in the stomach’ – and despite its quasi-medical connotations it always brings a smile to my face. But another of my favourites is included. Carphology is ‘the delirious fumbling with bedclothes prior to the onset of death’. Not a word you would need to use every day – but when applied at the right moment, very impressive.

Some which make sense (to a UK audience at least) are terms such as brannigans (the name of a chain of wine bars) which means ‘a drinking bout, a spree, or a binge’. And sometimes the examples are perfectly serious and reasonable – such as steganography, which is ‘the art of secret writing, or cryptography’.

Some are made up, such as igry, which is defined as ‘the way you feel when someone else does something that ought to embarrass them, but doesn’t’. Others are fanciful technical or quasi-scientific inventions.

There’s even a chapter at the end of the book giving you advice on how to create your own weird and wonderful words. However, you should remember that language is entirely democratic. New words will only ever become established if lots of people decide to use them – and that is usually because there’s a need for them. You could struggle for years putting together scientific and Latinate parts of speech – but unless there’s a real need for them, they will die unused. Meanwhile blogging, dogging, and gazumping have caught on because they serve a real purpose – though none are listed here.

Some of the words are clearly deft inventions; others are squeezed out of interpretations of classical terms (it helps if you know Latin and Greek); and others have interesting etymologies, but turn out to be disappointing. It’s interesting to know that there is a word for people who elect to have amputations for the sake of body modification, but somehow disappointing to learn that the word when you get there is only the rather plain nullo.

Some fall into the technical category of what might be called ‘extreme jargon’, as in the following definition of the term contango:

the fee that a buyer of stock pays to the seller to postpone transfer of the stock to the next or any future settlement date. It was also usually paid on a per share or percent basis. The word also has a modern meaning, ‘the condition in which distant delivery prices for futures exceed spot prices, often due to the costs of storing and insuring the commodity’. The antonym of contango is backwardation.

Phew! So now we know.

Many are so obscure it’s difficult to imagine there ever being an occasion when they might be used – either in conversation or in print – such as dromaeognathous, which means ‘having a palate like that of an emu’.

In keeping with its total weirdness, this is a book with three introductions and two forewards. In fact you can open it at any page and be amazed or amused – or both, simultaneously.

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Erin McKean (editor), Totally Weird and Wonderful Words, New York: Oxford University Press, 2007, pp.304, ISBN: 0195312120

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Treasury of Sayings and Quotations

July 29, 2009 by Roy Johnson

origins of quotes, proverbs, and expressions

This Treasury of Sayings and Quotations is a compilation of phrases, bon mots, and observations from sources all over the world. Some are well known, and others are novelties drawn out of the data-bank of human wisdom from all over the world which you are invited to enjoy or send into further circulation. Oxford University Press do a lot of these quotation dictionaries: their Humorous Quotations, Catchphrases, Idioms, Literary Quotations, and Modern Quotations are all very popular.

The distinctive feature in this compilation is that it has multiculturalism writ large in its selection of materials. They range from the folk-like African proverb When the spiders unite, they can tie up a lion, to the more obviously urban Russian maxim, We pretend to work, they pretend to pay us. The categories are arranged alphabetically – from Ability and Africa, through Marriage and Memory, to Women, Words, Writing and Youth. Then the entries under each topic are arranged chronologically – so, under Writing we go from II Maccabees in the Bible, to Derek Walcott in the Guardian of 1997.

I come from a backward place: your duty is supplied by the life around you. One guy plants bananas; another plants cocoa; I’m a writer, I plant lines. There’s the same clarity of occupation, and the same sense of devotion.
Derek Walcott 1930

Shakespeare of course crops up in more categories than you can shake a stick at [which is not listed]: The course of true love never did run smooth (Midsummer Night’s Dream) and Is it not strange that desire should so many years outlive performance? (Henry IV, Part 2).

It’s been brought up to date with entries such as shock and awe, dodgy dossier, and the mother of battles which cast a chilling light on the people who used them in the last few years.

It includes well-chosen words from Biblical times to the present day, proverbs from around the world, and well-known phrases and quotations, giving their sources and revealing the contexts from which they emerged. There are even explanations of terms as unlikely as this from the world of recreational drug use:

chase the dragon
take heroin by heating it on a piece of kitchen tin foil and inhaling the fumes. The term is said to be translated from Chinese, and to arise from the fact that the fumes and the molten heroin powder move up and down the piece of tin foil with an undulating movement resembling the tail of the dragon in Chinese myths.

More than a thousand new items have been added to the latest (fourth) edition. I am never quite sure what use people make of these compilations, but once you open them, they are very difficult to close. It’s the easy browsing I suppose – plus the fact that every entry is a gem of condensed human experience.

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Oxford Treasury of Sayings and Quotations, Oxford: Oxford University Press (4th edn) 2011, pp.720, ISBN: 0199609128

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Troublesome Words

May 31, 2009 by Roy Johnson

A-Z of problematic English words – with explanations

Before he became a best-selling travel writer, Bill Bryson worked as a sub-editor on The Times. This is a successful guide to problems of English language he wrote for journalists at the time, now updated and in its third edition. It’s arranged on an A to Z basis – running from abbreviations and acronyms, through mean and median (know the difference?) to wondrous, years’ time, and zoom. He explains words we commonly misunderstand, words we confuse, tricky issues such as foreign terms, and points of grammar such as split infinitives. And he does this with all the verve and wit which have made him such a well-loved writer.

He’s particularly good at showing the subtle distinctions between similar words (such as amid and amongst) and words which are easily confused (such as blatant and flagrant).

I couldn’t agree with him on data being a plural noun – but he does invite readers to challenge his judgements. You have to be on your intellectual toes. Sometimes his explanations are rather cryptic

Comprise means to contain. The whole comprises the parts and not vice versa.

But the correlative of this is that he packs a lot in. And occasionally this terseness works entirely to his advantage:

When something is not working properly, it is defective; when it is missing a necessary part, it is deficient.

The reason there are all these problems with English is that we have so many different terms for the same thing. Bill Bryson explains all this in his other excellent book Mother Tongue, to which this is a follow-up. He also throws in all sorts of extras – such as how to pronounce the name of the fish coelacanth (see-luh-kanth).

You will almost certainly learn about the meaning of words you never thought about before. Did you know the difference between ‘expectorate’ and ‘spit’ for instance?

There’s a very good bibliography and a glossary. Anybody interested in sharpening their writing skills will profit from reading this book. It’s a reference guide, a tutorial, and a very entertaining insight into language niceties for the general reader.

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Bill Bryson, Troublesome Words, London: Penguin Books, 3rd edn, 2009, pp.256, ISBN: 0141040394

Txtg: The Gr8 Db8

June 14, 2009 by Roy Johnson

text messaging analysed, described, and defended

Ever since Text messaging first began there have been moans and complaints that it was lowering standards of literacy, corrupting our youth, and bringing about the collapse of Western civilization. Even the normally rational John Sutherland, writing in the Guardian, complained about texting:

Linguistically, it’s all pigs ear … it masks dyslexia, poor spelling and mental laziness. Texting is penmanship for illiterates.

David Crystal has answers for every one of these common objections. Texting isn’t even that new: writing in abbreviated forms has been around for a long time. Other languages (such as Hebrew and Arabic) do not use vowels as part of their writing system. In actual fact, the amount of abbreviating and acronyms such as ROFL is quite small. And most convincing of all to me, users in other languages all follow more or less the same ‘rules’ for abbreviation.

What’s more, the use of pictograms and logographs have been around for a long time; the rebus or word puzzle is an ancient tradition in UK and other cultures; and reducing terms to their initial letters is deeply enshrined in our culture – as in pm, NATO, eg, asap, OK, and GHQ.

The same is true for omitting letters, or ‘clipping’ as it’s known technically. Mr and Mrs are cases in point. Any form of word shortening makes complete sense in an SMS system, and nobody has any problem failing to recognise Tues(day), approx(imately), biog(raphy), mob(ile), gov(ernment), poss(ible), and uni(versity.

Crystal has a good chapter on the amazing literary aspirations of the SMS poets and writers – people who compose haikus, short stories, and even serial novels using this extraordinarily restricted form.

In terms of users, women are more adept and enthusiastic than men, and another interesting feature he reveals is that text messaging was late to take off in the USA – for two reasons. One was that phone calls were cheaper there, and the other is that many people need to drive to get about, unlike European countries and Japan, where the country is smaller and more people use public transport.

The content of text messages varies from personal greetings and co-ordinating social activity to political electioneering, advertising, and even schemes to quit smoking. Crystal lists plenty of examples which I imagine will be good stimulus material for the A level students doing language projects who will find this book particularly useful.

At a more advanced level, he also looks at how other languages handle text messaging. Unsurprisingly, it turns out that all of them do more or less the same thing, though some even mix English abbreviations with their own language – which is called ‘code-mixing’. This is an example from German:

mbsseg = mail back so schnell es geht (‘as fast as you can’)

He ends by allaying the fears of all those who think text messaging lowers any kind of standards of literacy, or communication. In fact the reverse is true. And to prove that he’s done his homework he ends with a huge glossary of terms and multiple lists of text message abbreviations in eleven different languages. U cnt gt btr thn tht!

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David Crystal, Txtng: The Gr8 Db8, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009, pp.256, ISBN: 0199571333

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