The young people surveyed seem to know, without any sort of instruction, that there are "correct" ways of spelling in chatspeak. For instance, "probably" is abbreviated as "prolly," but never "proly"; "want to" becomes "wanna," never "wana" or "wanta"; "should've" is always "shoulda" and never "shuda."In other words, chat-speak is a 'dialect' of the written English language.
"Kids who are good spellers [academically] are good spellers in instant messaging," she said. "And kids who are poor spellers in English class are poor spellers in instant messaging."
This will surprise a lot of people, but it logically follows if you've read The Power of Babel. After all, we're all speaking a bastardized and watered down version of some previous language. Only history and the printing press has given our dialect any special stamp of authenticity. And guess what, the printing press is rapidly becoming obsolete.
Something that is surprising and even amazing about human beings is our capacity for language. When new dialects and languages arise, they are often reacted to as 'in-correct' versions of the old, correct language. They certainly aren't considered 'real'. But what makes a language or a dialect 'real'? Well, we would ask that it has a complete grammar that can communicate all concepts. And we would ask that it is consitent from one person to another. Surprisingly, those criteria will be met most of the time. Because that's just how people are wired.
Returning to the idea of txt as a written dialect: it's the norm throughout much of the world for people, even children, to speak both an official language and an unofficial dialect at home. There's no reason why modern American kids can't have room in their brains for both 'proper' English spelling and the abreviated spellings of 'txt'.
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