Textisms, Texting and Spelling in Spanish Language Teaching

Author(s):

Alejandro Gomez -Camacho(submitting)Macarena Navarro-Pablo(presenting)Coral Ivy Hunt-Gómez(presenting)

Conference:

ECER 2017

Network:

31. LEd – Network on Language and Education

Format:

Paper

Session Information

31 SES 11 A, Writing In and Out of School

Paper Session

Time:

2017-08-24

17:15-18:45

Room:

W4.24

Chair:

Irina Usanova

Contribution

Recent data show that of the Spanish population aged over 89.8% use several instant messaging applications daily (AIMC, 2015). Instant messaging is by far the most used Internet service in Spain, and given that nine out of every ten speakers write and read instant messages every day, they are probably the most frequent text typology in Spanish (Yus, 2010). Text messages have created a new written code that has been called textese (Jonhson, 2015) and also digitalk (Turner, 2010). Nevertheless, despite having more five hundred million people communicating in Spanish, this new written code has not received enough attention within Spanish Language studies. Consequently, the practice used in texting is not a juvenile alternative jargon (Betti, 2006) or a linguistic prank, but a form of communication in Spanish that could influence standard Spanish writing practice (Alonso & Perea, 2008; Mas & Zas, 2012) and which has a tremendous influence on digital literacy within the Spanish Language educative context (Cassany, 2003). The influence of text messages on standard writing practices has been researched in languages close to Spanish (Bernicot, Goumi, Bert-Erboul, & Volckaert- Legrier, 2014), and these previous studies have been used to establish parallelisms with Romance languages, specifically Spanish, French and Italian (Panckhurst, 2010).

The taxonomies of textisms in the Spanish language have already been established by previous research (Gómez-Camacho, 2007, 2013; Gómez-Camacho & Gómez, 2015). Several authors (Calero, 2014; Caurcel, Gómez, & Íñiguez, 2013; Vázquez-Cano, Mengual-Andrés, & Roig-Vila, 2015) have identified frequent features in text messages: suppression of silent letters (h, for example), digraphs (for example, ll,ch, qu, gu), simplification of graphemes representing the same phoneme (for example, b instead of v, i instead of y, k instead of c or qu) and vowel suppression. There are also recurrent features: writing numbers and mathematical symbols which are homophones and using letters by their name (for example, x, +, d , t, and 2 instead of por, más, de, te, and -dos).

This study introduces a classification of textisms in Spanish which has three main sources. First, the three maxims of the text message style established by Thurlow & Poff (2013): shortness and speed, paralinguistic restitution, and phonological approximation. Second, the classifications of French textisms established by Bernicot et al. (2014) and Lanchantin et al. (2014). Finally the classification for the Spanish language by Gómez-Camacho (2007), revised by Vázquez-Cano et al. (2015). Taking these previous models into account, this paper puts forward a codification of Spanish textisms in which they are divided into repetitions, omissions, non-normative graphemes, lexical textisms and multimodal elements.

A recent study of the Spanish language by Gómez-Camacho & Gómez (2015) shows that there is no negative relationship between use of textisms and undergraduates’ orthographic competence in the Spanish language. In this study, subjects presented occasional orthographic difficulties unrelated to the characteristics and frequency of textisms used in their text messages.

Method

The subjects of the study were 4th year students of the Degree in Education Sciences of the University of Seville. A simple random sample was selected (N=388 students, academic year 2014-2015), which entailed 51.05% of the total students matriculated on the final year of the degree, which was 760 students. Subjects, at the time the rating scale was applied, were carrying out final internships of their degree in Education Science in several educative centres. The mean age of the subjects was 22 years (81.2% range 20-23), with 113 (29.1%) males and 275 (70.9%) females. From the textisms classification, a scale was constructed and named “textisms and written norm in Spanish teaching practice”. It comprised 39 items (37 items with Likert 1-5 range scale, being 1 strongly disagree and 5 strongly agree) aimed at undergraduate Science of Education students. The main objective of the rating scale is to poll the subjects’ opinion of the Spanish written norm used by young people in the final years of their secondary education in texts sent through their smartphones or shared on social networks, as well as their opinion of the educative repercussions textisms might have on teenagers who are acquiring linguistic competence in Spanish. Therefore, the scale moves from three dimensions established a priori and which approach the perception of textisms in Spanish from three different perspectives. In Dimension 1, which dealt with orthographic mistakes and textisms, it was asked if textisms appearing in Table 1 were orthographic mistakes when in Spanish written texts. In Dimension 2, which dealt with textisms use and repercussions for education, it was asked if those textisms were causing mistakes in formal written texts produced by compulsory education students. Finally, Dimension 3 reflected the frequency of use in their own messages of each type of textism included in the classification. The validity of the instrument used has been studied at a theoretical as well as at an empirical level. Regarding theoretical validity, an initial version of the scale was examined by five lecturers and researchers from the Department of Language Didactics of the University of Seville. Empirical validity, that is, the one obtained by administering the instrument to the sample, was determined by analysing the construct validity of the scale using the Multidimensional Scaling-PROXSCAL (Borg, Groenen, & Mair, 2013; Rodríguez, Pozuelo, & León, 2014).

Expected Outcomes

Subjects who used these textisms more frequently proved to be more tolerant of the new form of writing in the normative as well as in the educative context. Previous research of text messages and the norm they use has been centred on the French and English languages and on a comparison of them with other European languages. The present study focuses on the standard used in text messages in Spanish and on the perception of this norm among educated young speakers – future teachers who will be in charge of the literacy process of Spanish speakers in the coming decades. According to the norm used in text messages, this study validates a textisms classification suggested for Spanish that reflects the differential characteristics of Spanish orthography, including its diagraphs, tildes and opening exclamation and question marks that do not exist in English. The results confirm that future Spanish teachers consider textisms to be orthographic mistakes. However, they use them in their own text messages without prejudice to the orthography of the formal texts they produce. In this respect, it is also concluded that age is related to the use of textisms – the older the user, the lower the frequency. However, gender does not show a significant link to the use of textisms. As regards the process of learning standard writing practice, the main conclusion reached is that future Spanish teachers consider the use of textisms in text messages prejudicial to teenagers learning the language. However, they do not apply this criterion to themselves. A clear difference is established between textisms modifying the standard Spanish writing practice and those providing new elements non-existent in formal writing. The first group is less used and received a very negative valuation, whereas the second group is more frequently used and is better tolerated.

References

AIMC (2015). Audiencia de Internet 2015. EGM: 3ª ola 2015 octubre/noviembre. (http://goo.gl/qT9gax) (2015-12-16). Alonso, E, & Perea, M. (2008). SMS: impacto social y cognitivo. Escritos de psicología, 2(1), 24-31. Betti. S. (2006). La jerga juvenil de los SMS :-). Cuadernos del Lazarillo, 31, 68-76. Bernicot, J., Goumi, A., Bert-Erboul, A., & Volckaert-Legrier, O. (2014). How do skilled and less-skilled spellers write text messages? A longitudinal study. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 30, 559-576. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/jcal.12064 Borg, I., Groenen, P., & Mair, P. (2013). Aplied Multidimensional Scaling. Heidelberg: Springer. Calero, M. L. (2014). El discurso del WhatsApp: entre el messenger y el sms. Oralia, 17, 85-114. Cassany, D. (2003). La escritura electrónica. Cultura y educación, 15(3), 239-251. Caurcel, A., Gómez, J.M., & Íñiguez, Y. (2013). A SMS-like language analyzer for Spanish. Linguamática, 5(1), 31-39. Gómez-Camacho, A. (2007). La ortografía del español y los géneros electrónicos en la educación secundaria. Comunicar, 29, 157-164. Gómez-Camacho, A. (2013). Redes sociales y expresión escrita. Lenguaje y textos, 38, 95-104. Gómez-Camacho, A. & Gómez, M. (2015). Competencia ortográfica y mensajes de texto en estudiantes universitarios. Perfiles educativos, 150, 157-164. Johnson, G. M. (2015). The Invention of Reading and the Evolution of Text. Journal of Literacy and Technology, 16(1), 107-128. Mas, I., & Zas, L. (2012). De lo necesario a lo inevitable. Casi dos décadas de código SMS. In T. Jiménez, B. López, & V. Vázquez (Eds.), Cum corde et in nova grammatica (pp. 585-595). Santiago de Compostela: Universidade. Panckhurst, R. (2010). Texting in three European languages: Does the linguistic typology differ? Actes du Colloque i-Mean 2009 Issues in Meaning in Interaction. University of the West of England: Bristol. Rodríguez, F., Pozuelo, F.J., & León, J.C. (2014). The role of ICT coordinator. Priority and time dedicated to professional functions. Computers & Education, 72, 262-270. Thurlow, C., & Poff, M. (2013). The language of text- messaging. S. C. Herring, D. Stein & T. Virtanen (Eds.), Handbook of the pragmatics of CMC (pp. 163-190). Boston, MA: Mouton de Gruyter. Turner, K. H. (2010). Digitalk: A new literacy for a digital generation. Phi Delta Kappan, 92 (1), 41-46. Vázquez-Cano, E., Mengual-Andrés, S., & Roig-Vila, R. (2015). Análisis lexicométrico de la especificidad de la escritura digital del adolescente en WhatsApp. Revista de Lingüística Teórica y Aplicada, 53(1), 83-105. Yus, F. (2010). Ciberpragmática 2.0 Nuevos usos del lenguaje en Internet. Barcelona: Ariel Letras.

Author Information

Alejandro Gomez -Camacho (submitting)

Universidad de Sevilla, Spain

Macarena Navarro-Pablo (presenting)

Universidad de Sevilla, Spain

Coral Ivy Hunt-Gómez (presenting)

Universidad de Sevilla

Didáctica de la Lengua y la Literatura

Seville

Search the ECER Programme

Search for keywords and phrases in "Text Search"
Restrict in which part of the abstracts to search in "Where to search"
Search for authors and in the respective field.
For planning your conference attendance you may want to use the conference app, which will be issued some weeks before the conference
If you are a session chair, best look up your chairing duties in the conference system (Conftool) or the app.