OMG, You And Your Texts Are Killing The English Language - Or Are They?

Tbh, omg, dw, np, lol, lmk. Did you understand what any of these seemingly randomly placed letters meant? If yes, welcome to the 21st century. Texting language, as demonstrated just now has gained a sense of normalcy through its everyday use by a wide array of people on several platforms such as Whatsapp, Snapchat, iMessage, etc. Does it however threaten the English language or is it simply a newly emerged dialect?

Whilst texting is indeed written out and therefore most logically seen as written language, its purpose in the end is to have a conversation with someone who is not physically in near proximity, so what is it? Texting language in its most used form is written spoken language, meaning it is what we would say in a conversation just simply written down. Think about it: When you speak to your friend do you think about punctuation, capitalization or do you refer to inside jokes? Most likely not. So why would we have to do it in texting if it is simply a conversation written down. Therefore, in what world does texting ruin English if it simply reflects the rules all of us already follow in spoken discourse.

Secondly, everyone's always saying how the abbreviations we use are limiting our communication and the language in itself. However, the purpose of discourse is to communicate as efficiently as possible and the abbreviations like omg, tbh, lmk or lol only make this more efficient and therefore male communication far easier for the parties involved. We have previously seen language change in the form of the creation of shorter phrases for stating the main topic such as disinterest instead of lack of interest. Abbreviation increase simplicity of the language and some are even used in written language such as Mr. and Ms. or RSVP or ASAP in emails. So, why are texting abbreviations seen as a threat in the English whilst these aren’t when essentially they have the same purpose? Furthermore, texting abbreviations are widely restricted to texting and social media only, none of us would even consider using tbh in an essay. It gives us more of a variety and how could variety possibly cause harm to a language.

The variety not only abbreviations but also simplified grammatical structures such as “u going?” enables the users of this new form of language to code-switch in between language/dialects, enabling beneficial factors. Not only have recent studies proved that this code-switching is cognitively beneficial but it also develops the interpretation of social situations as a decision in terms of which form of language is more suitable for specific contexts consistently has to be made whilst code-switching.

In conclusion, not only is the fear that texting is destroying the English language completely invalid, it is in fact the opposite that is true. Texting language diversifies English through new abbreviations and the development of a completely new form of language that enables code-switching. So you can safely keep on texting without “killing” English. What are your thoughts on this topic - is texting language as bad as its reputation?