SMS Language as a Means of Communication

Abstract

The language of SMS is born as a combination of numerous aspects of two very different types of communication and at this point can only be described as a spoken mode in a written medium. The invention of mobile phone messages may be considered its source. The objective of texting or sending an SMS message is to use the fewest number of characters needed to convey a comprehensible message. The model adopted in this study is based on Goffman's work (1981) and Cadhain's (2005). Therefore, the present study aims at finding out what type of language is used in texting through the SMS and its characteristic features. Also it aims at identifying to what extent students violate such a language when they text. The analysis showed that 34% of the students did violate spelling intentionally rather than arbitrarily while the rest of the students wrote full words and sentences and this was done at the expense of brevity- the key word in texting.