Larvatus Prodeo

Hot on the heels of lexicographer Erin McKean’s advice that if it feels wordish, use it, here comes some more legitimation for linguistic innovation. The well known author and linguist, David Crystal, has published a new book on sms-speak – Txtng: The Gr8 Db8.

In a fascinating piece in The Guardian, Crystal rebuts claims that texting is some sort of linguistic vandalism. Abbreviations and rebuses and other linguistic forms have a history as old as the written language, he argues. What’s distinctive about texting is the combination of linguistic features:

Some of its juxtapositions create forms which have little precedent, apart from in puzzles. All conceivable types of feature can be juxtaposed – sequences of shortened and full words (hldmecls “hold me close”), logograms and shortened words (2bctnd “to be continued”), logograms and nonstandard spellings (cu2nite) and so on. There are no less than four processes combined in iowan2bwu “I only want to be with you” – full word + an initialism + a shortened word + two logograms + an initialism + a logogram. And some messages contain unusual processes: in iohis4u “I only have eyes for you”, we see the addition of a plural ending to a logogram. One characteristic runs through all these examples: the letters, symbols and words are run together, without spaces. This is certainly unusual in the history of special writing systems. But few texts string together long sequences of puzzling graphic units.

Crystal also points out that only a minority of text messages are actually written in text speak. But most of all, in a similar spirit to McKean, he finds the linguistic challenges of text message composition, well, fun:

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