academic text

Presumably I am not the only one to have received exam scripts written partly in text message English? It is a trend that we in our department have noticed quietly growing over the last two or three years. Students writing quickly, particularly towards the end of an exam, will descend into the abbreviated jargon they use many times a day in communicating with their friends. I confess to never having sent a text message (I only acquired a mobile phone earlier this year): I suppose I must be one of the few people left in the country, under the age of 70, who hasn't. So it came as a bit of a shock at first. Perhaps I am one of the last remaining anachronisms who is at all troubled by the likes of: "In L8 17thC bills of xchange were issd by govt on a regulr basis as overcs trade xpnded." Or "The 4t of migratn to US attactd a gr8 % of servants and yng peple @ this time." Or, my favourite to date, "In Shxpeare's Eng u had 2 b rich 2 go to schl but sumX bys + grls lrnd reading and ritng at Om." Well, @ 1st i 4t, ang on a mo, wot is this? I cdnt bleve wot i was cing. NO! ?nt sumfing b dun? Thn it ht me: txt spk. Text speak is now an established form of the written language. Apparently mobile phone owners fire off an average of eight text messages every day and by the end of 2004 we will have finger typed a total of 23 billion. We sent 85 million of them on Valentine's day last month - 5 million more lots of "i luv u" than on a normal day. So most young people, in particular, probably write more words in text English now than in standard English. When set against this kind of abbreviated jargon the usual catalogue of colloquialisms or linguist errors in student work - split infinitives, the misuse of the apostrophe s, the difference between fewer and less, among other old favourites - are as nothing. Regardless of the specific subject matter in question, one of the aims of formal education is still to develop the ability to produce written work that is grammatically and orthographically "correct", as defined by authorised standards, and is suitably "academic", as determined by the conventions of a particular discipline. What students who write in text speak fail to realise is that, in many contexts, the way in which they express themselves is at least as important as what they actually say. The lingua franca of texting all goes to demonstrate the ancient theory that there is a high degree of correlation between the medium and the message. The vehicle of communication that we choose not only structures the content of what we say, but also the way in which we say it. We have one language for text and another for email, an English of the personal missive and another of the business letter, each of which has its own conventions and implicit understandings. The problem comes when there is a mismatch between medium and message, as when text speak intrudes into academic essays, or informal usages are employed in formal documents. The fact that students are masters over the mechanics of new technology does not mean they have learned the rules of their various applications, which, although ever shifting, are still distinguishable. Just because text speak is quick to write does not mean it is acceptable in an exam script; simply because a senior professor is easy to contact by email does not mean that it is appropriate to address him or her as if they were an old mate. At every major stage in the development of technologies of communication over the centuries, educationalists have worried about the effects that a new medium will have on the construction of knowledge, the form of its transfer and the mode of its expression. In Plato's Phaedrus, Socrates warns against the damaging effects the introduction of writing into the didactic process will have on the nature of oral exchange. With the advent of printing in Europe, scholars and churchmen noted the impact of the press in standardising written and spoken vernaculars. In the electronic age the language is patently evolving with a speed never before seen and some long-established rules or proprieties of its use appear under threat. We can do nothing other than celebrate the inventiveness of which text speak is evidence. But as teachers we must insist that our charges learn to select that form of the written language, from the many now available to them, which is most suitable in the context. In a world in which standards of acceptable practice are being redefined at a bewildering rate, some lines have to be drawn in the sand and defended. Just a 4t.