by Nathan Breck

Created on: June 08, 2009

OMG wut a loaded ? !

No, but, seriously: this question demands some close analysis. Nobody can deny that the proliferation of texting lingo, or 1337 speech, or whatever technologically-rooted new idiom one wishes to discuss, is radically (and rapidly) changing our language. Moreover, it is changing its written and read form from the clean, publishable standards of books, journals, newspapers, and magazines, to the sloppy, private standards of cell phones, chat rooms, and Facebook. The question, of course, is what it means to "destroy" the English language.

Obviously, English won't disappear (well, the histrionic ravings of a few English teachers about cell-spelling could give that impression, but we're speaking realistically here), so what do we mean to destroy the language? Equally obviously, we mean to corrupt its expressive power, narrows its range of meaning, limit its confines of thought, and inhibit its various uses.

Given these criteria, it can be clearly seen that text messaging is not destroying the English language. It certainly does not inhibit the use of English: it enlivens it, and makes it more accessible. Cell-speak is the language of forgotten grammatical inhibitions, much as 1337 speech is the caricatured online-English. They both serve to make English more usable to their communities of interest: and they both undeniably succeed. We cannot seriously suggest that making written English more accessible to the less literate is a bad thing. That would be remarkably elitist.

However, it can be questioned whether the language of texting meets the other criteria. Does texting limit confines of thought? No, certainly not. While I would argue that people who spend all day texting probably have already set up some self-imposed intellectual restrictions, that cannot be written down as an direct effect of texting. Correlation is not causation. Texting so far is not a "language destroyer" for two of the criteria.

Does texting narrow the range of meaning in the English language? On this, we must conclude it does. Texting simply does not provide an avenue for the word "teleological," and I suspect that such a word would never arise in text messaging. The fundamental purpose of text messaging, combined with the analog constraints of the cell phone, as well as the sloppy/casual (depending on your attitude towards texting) atmosphere means that certain meanings simply will not arise in a textversation as they might in a conversation. The implied brevity

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