One textism does not a language corrupt

I’ve been working on a short paper on the effects of texting on literacy (forthcoming soon). Texting — SMS-speak, IM-speak, abbreviated and misspelled words, etc. — is much hated by teachers, parents and linguists who complain that textspeak is creeping into formal writing assignments — which it is. There is evidence — formal and anecdotal — of this happening in schools around the world.

My issue with this is the hysteria that has been created — the sense that a generation of youth cannot speak or spell correctly. The hysteria is based on a small number of actual textisms in essays, no more than grammar mistakes, spelling mistakes or the other inevitable mistakes that learners make when they practice writing.

The focus is on the mistake, e.g. the one textism, and not the 499 good words in an essay. The exception/mistake defines the whole piece. In the same way that when you read a book and notice a typo, you remember it. You make a mental black mark against the author and the editing process of the publishers. It’s wrong that these mistakes get made, but they need to be fairly assessed against the bigger picture of the narrative, the story structure, the characterisations, etc.

Let’s not create a whole category for texting and regard it as the death knell of English. Let’s not hysterically focus on the small mistakes. Let’s deal with them as best we can, but ask the bigger question: can young people, especially in SA, write long pieces? According to much research, they can’t because they never practice it. We need to get our kids writing, much longer pieces and more often. The few textisms need to be dealt with, but they don’t mean the end of a communicative generation.

As Aristotle said: “One swallow does not a summer make.”

(Image: Aristotle by Jastrow. Public Domain)