Thao Vu
Instructor Gianunzio
ENG100
September, 5th, 2014
Texting: Is it A Linguistic Evil?
According to the Nielsen survey, which was conducted in December, 2011, a teen sends teens send an average of 3,417 texts a month. Nowadays, texting has become the most preferred form of communication among people, especially the young generation, because of its convenience. Meanwhile, as texting is becoming more and more popular, it touches off a worrying issue that our society is really concerning about: Does texting harm our traditional writing skills? Throughout social media and network, we find that a majority of people suggest that texting is a great threat to our basic writing as it encourages using nonstandard English with poor spelling, careless grammar, and using too much abbreviation. However, British linguist David Crystal, who is international known as a leading authority on languages, particularly in English language, shows a completely different aspect of texting in “Texting: Why All The Fuss?” a chapter from his popular book Txtng: The Gr8 Db8 (2008). By many strong evidences from his observation, analysis and many other reliable researches, Crystal argues that all the myths about how students get accustomed to texting language and use it in their schoolwork do not exist. Through his point of view, language is not being destroyed but is evolving in texting. Texting actually is not a great threat to our English since students are well aware of the difference between formal and informal language. It even has some good impact on our writing skill. However, in my opinion, texting also affects children’s ability to write properly and creates many problems relating to both physical and mental health, and human relationship.
Vu 2
In the reading, Crystal’s argument about texting is really clear and precise. Social media is excessively exaggerating this issue. We encounter hundreds of articles on newspaper, web site, which exposes how texting uses