Tice: What is Texting Doing to our Literacy Levels?

So I wanted to get this down before I forgot about everything. In Friday’s class, my pod brought up an interesting subject within literacy that, with all of the talk about literacy it still seems to be an odd duck.  Texting and what it is doing to our literacy levels.  Now texting is something that is read like a book but there is something lacking from texting that literature has successfully kept over the years. The ability to access emotion.

For example I am currently reading Pride and Prejudice. I can read the text and come to an emotional conclusion, much like a movie.  Texting lacks this in a major way.  I have a friend that if I do not add a smiley face, a “haha”, or a “lol” at the end she automatically thinks i am mad at her, then i have to convince her otherwise.  That need to do that with her has spread out to other text messages where I may not actually need to do that otherwise. While text messages can be understood within the context of the conversation, the context of emotional range is lacking.

Texting is a literacy in itself, it can be read, understood, and it has its own written language. The “BRB, LOL, TTYL, ILY” to name a few, has even come into the speaking realm. I have heard people I know tell me in person “LOL”.  Of course I look at them and ask why they said that, they’re not actually laughing.  The usual response to something like, this is that they are so use to texting it that it has come out in their speech.  I am one that does not use the chatspeak that so many of the younger generations are use to.  I can understand the use of chatspeak with the old school Nokia phones that if you wanted a “S” you had to press a button four times. With the Invention of smart phones there is no necessity for chatspeak anymore, since smart phones come equipped  with a full keyboard.

Younger generations text quite a bit, but what is all of this texting doing to their literacy levels? I think there is is a very real possibility that if the use of chatspeak and substituting words for letter such as “r” instead or “are” continue when there is now no actually need for them, that the overall levels of literacy may go down. Even in the Szwed’s article it mentioned that America, being a first world country is not as concerned with literacy as some other countries.  Literacy is something that we should be concerned with. The more I see this chatspeak, a language invented out of necessity, in a world that no longer needs it the more i think of the possibility that in some ways we are going backwards instead of forwards.  I will agree that literacy is more than just reading and writing, but there has got to be a limit to how much of this we are willing to accept.

I will also agree that a person can be literate in some things and not others. This sort of chatspeak however, in its wide range, will not help when they attempt to get a job or head further into the academic world.