In my general perusing of my Sunday newspaper recently, I
came across a very alarming article, which showed a PDF image of a recent GCSE English
examination completed by a 16 year old student at a top UK secondary school.
At first I thought nothing of it, expecting the article to
be heaping praise on another successful student from one of the UK’s leading
academic institutions. Imagine my horror then, when upon closer observation of
the said PDF image, I noticed an exam paper littered with ‘text talk’.
The said image had focused in on an essay question
requesting the exam participant to provide a detailed analysis of two
characters featured in Jane Austen’s ‘Pride and Prejudice’. I was shocked to
see phrases like: ‘She really h8D him’ and ‘They cud not av been more in luv
<3’.
For those of you unfamiliar with text speak (or txt spk) I
will translate the aforementioned. ‘h8D’ should be taken to mean ‘hated’ and
the ‘They cud not av been more in luv <3’ should be taken to mean ‘They
could not have been more in love’.
I couldn’t believe what was I was seeing. Has the youth of
British society succumb so much to social media, smartphones and other such demons
that defile the English language that they have lost all appreciation of the
English tongue?
Don’t get me wrong, I am an avid user of social media and
smartphones etc…But never would I resort to sub-standard English, which, in my
opinion and it’s my opinion only, reduces the value of the English language and
portrays our youth as a generation completely devoid of any language intellect.
Am I looking at this from the wrong perspective? Is it that
the English language I know is becoming obsolete and as a copywriter I am
rather sensitive about the subject? Or, should I see the positives and embrace
the idea that the next generation has developed a whole new English language
that will shape the future of society, not just in Britain, but all over the world.
I almost convinced myself then. Absolutely not, I refuse to
accept that ‘text talk’ is the replacement of years of our beautiful language,
represented in many different accents across the UK and in many different
cultures across the world.
Embracing the idea that my children would not understand me
when I tell them ‘I love you’ unless I wrote it ‘ i luv u’ or I <3 u’, I
just can’t entertain the notion. Again, for those of you unfamiliar with ‘text
talk’ this image <3 is meant to depict a heart shape.
Maybe I’m being too harsh; critics of my opinion would
suggest that ‘text talk’ is not dumbed down English. In fact, it’s quite the
opposite. Those who support ‘text talk’ believe it’s a very inventive form of
shorthand, which requires a high level of grammatical intelligence in order to
alter letters with numbers to create a ‘word’.
Whilst the article I read is only one instance of such an
incident, a number of education experts have said it has become a widespread
problem. Whilst the ‘language’ is perfectly eligible to the youth of today,
traditionalists struggle to interpret text language.
Having been in copywriting for a number of years, maybe it’s
my age and the generation in which I was taught was very particular about the
use of English language. Supporters of ‘text talk’ stress that the majority of
children passing through the current education system are intelligent enough to
decipher between where to use text talk and where not to.
In fact a recent study conducted by Coventry University
revealed that the more text speak teenagers used in text messages, the higher
they scored in tests of reading and vocabulary.
So maybe I've been proved wrong, perhaps text talk is not
dumbing down the next generation, it’s actually enhancing their ability.
Maybe it’s just a sign that I don’t like change… I am
certainly a traditionalist ‘I 8 txt spk’ – I was being ironic. I’m going to
stick to my copywriting roots, good old fashioned English language, served
neat. ‘Viva la resistance’.
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