Discourse of Text Messaging: Analysis of SMS Communication

by Caroline Tagg

Understanding the discourse of text messaging hasprofound implications for society. SMS text messaging has impacted considerablyon how we communicate with others. Negative, sometimes alarmist media coveragecontinues to fuel debate surrounding its 'damaging' effects on language and literacy,yet these portrayals tend to be based on extreme or fictionalised accounts oftext messaging. What kind of language do people really use when they text? Drawing on a range of academic sources from variousfields, this book describes the language used in a corpus of over 11,000 textmessages, as yet the largest collection in the UK. In particular, the book showshow the discourse of text messaging is shaped by users' often creativeresponses to the functions and constraints of the medium. This is an essential book for upper levelundergraduates and postgraduates studying discourse analysis, as well aseducators wanting to understand this important new form of discourse.

241 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 17, 2012