Txtng: The Gr8 Db8

This book takes a long hard look at the text-messaging phenomenon and its effects on literacy, language, and society. Young people who seem to spend much of their time texting sometimes appear unable or unwilling to write much else. Media outrage has ensued. "It is bleak, bald, sad shorthand," writes a commentator in the UK Guardian. "It masks dyslexia, poor spelling, and mental laziness." Exam answers using textese and reports that examiners find them acceptable have led to headlines in the tabloids and leaders in the qualities. Do young people text as much as people think? Do adults? Does texting spell the end of literacy? Is there a panic in the media? David Crystal looks at the evidence. He investigates how texting began and who uses it, why and what for. He shows how to interpret its mix of pictograms, logograms, abbreviations, symbols, and wordplay, and how it works in different languages. He explores the ways similar devices have been used in different eras and discovers that the texting system of conveying sounds and meaning goes back a long way, all the way in fact to the origins of writing - and he concludes that far from hindering literacy, texting may turn out to help it. Contents List

ISBN 0199571333   Pages 256 ISBN13 9780199571338 (What's this?)   Volumes 1 Publisher Oxford University Press   Weight (grammes) 241 Imprint Oxford University Press   Published in Oxford Format Paperback   Height (mm) 196 Publication date 09 Jul 2009   Width (mm) 129 DEWEY 302.231   Spine width (mm) 18 DEWEY edition DC22   Academic level General

List of cartoons; 1. The Hype About Texting; 2. How Weird is Texting?; 3. What is Distinctive About it?; 4. Why do They do it?; 5. Who Texts?; 6. What do They Text About?; 7. How do Other Languages do it?; 8. Why all the Fuss?; Glossary; Appendix; Index

A jolly meditation, helped by the enthusiasm of a linguist revelling in newly coined lingo. Tom Lamont, The Observer

David Crystal has written a great book which explains clearly and easily the new writing system (i.d. 'texting'). This writing system is not new, it has been used through the history, but its use has accelerated and expanded thanks to new technologies.

Definitely, a book we must have at our home library. - Aloxi



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