Perhaps no specific terminology represents the decline of literacy in American society more than SMS language, also known as textese, chatspeak and a myriad of other names.
Anytime someone opens their mouth only to spit out “LOL” or “BTW,” I die a little inside. Ok, well maybe that’s a bit harsh, but you get the point. The prominence of such speech reflects a society fully embracing texting, chatting and other new media which, in and of itself, is not bad. The problem is it reflects a culture quickly moving toward a less intelligent method of communication. It’s seeped into the fabric of our culture through YouTube, Myspace, Facebook, IM and numerous other instant communication sites and programs to such an extent that to hear someone use “OMG” in a sentence is almost natural at this point, especially for college and high school students.
That worries me. It worries me because my generation and those following it seem to ignore the fact that reading actually might be good for you. “Legit” might be cool to use among your friends, but it doesn’t help write English papers or get job interviews. I’m not saying people who use SMS langauge don’t read, but if they do, they certainly are ignoring some fundamentals of the English language. Either way, it sounds like they don’t. More than anything, hearing people use SMS language is personally frustrating to me, because it makes them sound like an uneducated Valley girl. It’s not bad to use textese in formats such as texting and Facebook chat. After all, those formats are what it was invented for. Reading “How r u doing?” in a text makes perfect sense to me. After all, it’s a hassle to type out complete words when you can just use an abbreviation and get your point across, especially when you are driving. But when people begin to use it in everyday conversation, I can’t help but roll my eyes. Do they have any idea how stupid it sounds for them to say “LOL” in a conversation? How people can sound so ignorant with so few letters is really the most amazing part of this phenomenon. The rallying call of the 70’s was “peace” while my generation’s is “TTYL.” If that’s not sad, I don’t know what is. So have fun, all of those fluent in textese. Maybe someday you’ll grow up. I can only hope so.