wtf! kwim? by Charles Richard Maddux, Jr Athenaeum Society April 2, 2009 Honorary Chairman Doctor Freud, Mr. Secretary, co-presenter Dougherty, victims of the Athenaeum Society… Tonight, I am going to present you with what many claim has become a moral dilemma among today’s generation of parents. When I am finished, you will understand one of the most vexing questions facing those of us with children as young as 4 years old. I will uncover for you, one of the most insidious new rituals available today – a practice that is utilized by terrorists and spies the world over. A recent development that can be used to subvert governments and elections, a virus that would make even the best department of defense biologists swoon at its addictive, mind-altering, trance-inducing properties. It interrupts sleep and reduces concentration. It’s an infection so far reaching because of its minimal cost of transmission, that it is already carried and transmitted by 100’s of millions of people around the world. It’s a threat to our worship at church, even our solitary trips to the bathroom. In the end, it’s a threat to our children and their very ability to cogently operate in what is left of the civilization that they will inherit. Gentleman, could texting be the end of the Athenaeum and the literary practices and principles that we hold dear? It all started when my older daughter was 6 years old. She came home one day from her first grade class, abuzz about all the new things she was learning and all the new friends she was making. She asked a simple question, “Dad, can I have a cell phone?” I thought nothing of it and responded with my usual answer to her questions - “no”. At that point, I expected that like most questions my kids ask me, that that would be the end of it. However, it wasn’t, because that night, she got the babysitter on her side. The next day, she asked again, and since I was smarter and rested, I replied that she could have a cell phone when she was 26. THAT, worked. She thought the babysitter was 26. Things were good for a couple of years. Around her 9th birthday, she started asking again. This time, she had a purpose that surprised me. You see, you and I believe that cell phones are intended for talking. Not so. She wanted a cell phone so that she could text. I responded by telling her that she could have a cell phone when she got married at 31. That bought me rolled eyes, hair curlers, and two more years of relative peace. She’s 11 now, fifth grade. Every single one of her friends has a cell phone. Every one of them. And, they don’t have unlimited minutes for talking – no, they have unlimited texting. Each of their lives is becoming busier with school, social gatherings, and other activities. They all need to communicate. She no longer asks for a phone and unlimited texting, she wants to know when. Afraid, and seeking more information, I began to research the issue. I found that most “hip” parents find the best way to communicate with their pre-teen and teenage children is by texting them. If they call their cell phone, they don’t get a call back. But if they text, they immediately get a response. I recalled all the Chinese kids on the subway, rapidly punching keys on their cell phones, obviously texting their mothers. I recalled men in airport bathrooms, standing at the urinal while tapping out texts on their Blackberry’s, clearly communicating with their wives. What goes on in women’s restrooms? Texting is probably unnecessary, since they always go in pairs. My exposure to texting was limited, but I thought I understood it. Why should any language be dumbed down or reduced to slang? Why should anyone be allowed to commit the crime of passing a note without a piece of paper that can be discovered and read aloud to the class? Why should a child be allowed to converse with another, unfettered, with no short-term marginal cost, risk of interruption, or parental censorship? And why – why, should churches construct LCD message boards that display the questions submitted by congregants during the sermon? Do you understand why in my opinion this is a moral issue? Yet, other parents have allowed their children to text freely. So, I decided to take one last shot at understanding my daughter’s perspective. I interviewed her. “Why do you want a cell phone?” “to text my friends.” “Why not just call them?” “texting is quicker.” “How do you know how to write in text?” “we talk about it at school and practice on my friend’s phones. It’s easy.” “Why not just call them?” I asked again, pounding on the table. “because texting is more private.” “So what if I got you texting equipment instead of a cell phone?” “Dad, they don’t make those. Besides, you’ll need to call me.” I knew that if I asked one more question, I’d be outwitted. It was time for the experts… and Google. Headlines. The Daily Mail: “Texting fogs your brain like cannabis”. Newsweek: “Textese may be the death of English”. The Sunday Times: “Our language is being murdered”. CNET News: “Pope’s influence includes technology firsts”. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch: “Church encourages texting during sermons”. The Telegraph: “Vatican warns mobile phones are bad for the soul”. The Chicago Sun-Times: “Texting could help Obama’s turnout”. Hmmmm. I was left with more questions: Was Crispin Thurlow, a linguist at the University of Washington, correct when he observed that the general population was in a “moral panic” over texting? Will my daughter sign her notes to friends with BFF when she is 50? Will kids today be able to spell and write complete sentences that refer to Nietzsche or Sun Tzu, like any good Athenaeum member? Or, will our English language be taken over and made obsolete by an orthography developed at the thumbs of adolescents? Actually, the answer to all these questions is yes. And, according to virtually all linguists, those of us that do not text and are concerned about the evils of texting are far less intelligent than those that text. In his book, “txtng: the gr8 db8”, David Crystal, an acclaimed professor of linguistics at University of Wales, takes on the question of texting. While there are smatterings of news and journal articles on the subject, Crystal provides the only comprehensive text on the global phenomenon from the perspective of a linguist. Crystal claims that to understand texting, you need to understand how languages develop both stylistically and contextually. But, you can’t just make inferences about how languages are used, you actually have to study them quantitatively. Oftentimes, the strange things that you actually notice about a language make up only a tiny fraction of what is really used. For example, I bet almost all of you can curse in at least three languages. Unless you live in New Jersey, you, or the native speaker, rarely use those words. (See Exhibit A) When most of us think of texting, we think of such nightmarish text sequences like “ROTFLMAOWTIME” or “rolling on the floor laughing my ass off with tears in my eyes”. Or, we think of emoticons, those cute little symbols constructed for example, by a colon, apostrophe, and parentheses, so that they resemble different expressions on your face. Most pervasive is the myth that a text message never includes vowels, only abbreviated words. From a linguist’s perspective texting is no more surprising than English, or Latin, or Arabic. Many of the conventions used in texting today have antecedents that are much older than the sum of the ages of everyone in this room. Okay, maybe half those in this room. At least until the 19th century, the English language evolved quickly and was utilitarian and imperfect. Then it became bourgeois. People expected it to be used properly and spoken well, particularly if you were to move up in the world. The proper use of language demonstrated to everyone that you encountered that you were educated. Texting, however, emerged among the educated. But unlike the technology we are familiar with, texting didn’t emerge with an unlimited supply of paper or with a full-size keyboard typically used to type emails. Texting grew out of Short-Messaging-Service (or SMS) technology, which limited the user to 160 characters - what would fit on a cell phone screen. Imagine an Athenaeum paper limited to 160 characters. Perhaps you already wish this one was. The noticeable things about texting that are most upsetting to people have been around for centuries, often for practicality or as the subject of games or brain-teasers. Logograms, written symbols that represent a word or part of a word, like $, #, %, and pictograms, symbols used in picture writing, like the emoticons I mentioned earlier, are familiar to all of us. We use them every day in transactions or when we drive through Nashville or navigate an airport. The Chinese have been using logograms as the basis of their written language for millennia, although most would argue that Chinese is not a very efficient way to communicate. What frightens many people about texting is the lack of vowels or the use of letters to represent sounds or whole words. It looks like a “dumbed down” version of a language, therefore, those using it must be “dumbing” themselves down as well. I doubt, however, that you considered yourself “dumb” when you solved your first mindbender. (See Exhibit B) Remember puzzles like M1Y L1I1F1E – for once in my life THODEEPUGHT – Deep in thought that made you feel like a genius? This type of puzzle, also known as a rebus, was particularly popular in the nineteenth century and was often used in social settings among the educated elite. Texting uses the rebus in many forms. The text “c” “u” “l8r” (see you later) is an arrangement of pictures representing the sounds of words. Some language purists are insulted by the abundant use of initialisms in texting. All of us, though, have been using initialisms for years – RIP (rest in peace), am (ante meridiem), pm (post meridiem) and for those of you familiar with the 1950’s, TTFN (ta ta for now). As a parent, you may have resorted to initialisms during a conversation in front of your small children when you wanted to disguise what you were talking about. Most people are able to forgive the long-standing use of initialisms, the brilliant use of rebuses, and the centuries old uses of pictograms and logograms, however, everyone it seems is most shocked by the flagrant use of contractions, the dropping of vowels in texts, and the use of clippings, which is the dropping of consonants at the end of a word. Before we all get carried away, vowels are not only dropped frequently in Arabic and Hebrew, but precedents in English are also well-established. I’m sure all of us use Mr. (Mister), Mrs.(Mistress), Ms. (Miss), asst (assistant), Dr. (doctor), kg (kilogram), ad (advertisement), memo (memorandum), or even ABT (Anglo Babylonian Time) just about every day. Just like texting, these conventions grew out of “normal” English as part of an evolutionary process that responded to the communication technologies in place at the time - pen and paper, telegraph, typewriter, computer, cell phone. Why worry - studies, such as one by Waseleskis of Indiana University, have shown that only 20% of text message content is abbreviated, contracted, or clipped. It’s just not that linguistically subversive. Surprisingly, and contrary to popular opinion, research has demonstrated that texting actually requires that children know how to read and write. In fact, all of the variations in texting are a result of creativity and play with language. Creativity and play, however, come with both benefits and costs. Timothy Shanahan, President of the International Reading Association offers the following: “A generation ago, a teen who couldn’t read well could still participate pretty fully in the social conversation among peers. But with so much written chatter, being able to read and write have become definite social advantages. There is simply much more pressure to know how to read than in the past when it comes to conversation, shopping, or work.” Even Kentucky’s own Bronwyn Williams, associate professor of English at the University of Louisville admits that “In coming years literacy will mean knowing how to choose between print, image, video, sound and all the potential combinations they could create to make a particular point with a specific audience.” Having proven to myself that the threat that texting poses to my daughter’s use of language is at least no greater than the adulteration of the language already promulgated by her grandparents and their forbearers, I need to address the moral implications of texting if I’m going to make a decision in her best interest. To put it simply, I’m going to ignore Athenaeum taboo and briefly talk about texting, religion, and politics. In 2008, we got a significant first glimpse into the power of texting. Many pundits and technology experts claim that the use of texting was one of the primary differentiators between the Obama and McCain campaigns. Although some will point merely to the use of the technology - the constant connectedness of everyone through their cell phone - we need to remember that although the technology is always present, it’s the packaging of the message and the message itself that matters in delivering results. David All, a Republican strategist was quoted as saying “what Obama is creating is this army of individuals, these grass-roots activists, who are out there trying to change the world in 160 characters or less”. In the Obama campaign, the packaging of the message, or the language of text, had tremendous impact and was utilized to reach a broad range of people. What helped was that the text messages could be added to, personalized, and instantly forwarded to everyone in a recipient’s phonebook, often hundreds of people. In leveraging the cliquishness and personal nature of texting, Obama used the power of texting to make his message personal. He was also shrewd to give a piece of juicy information – the Vice Presidential pick – in exchange for a cell phone number. In the future, will this tactic still be as effective if another candidate attempts to replicate it? Using texting to personally organize and network individuals is going to become the norm, and if you aren’t already receiving political text messages, you will be. In my research, I was particularly drawn to the interplay between religion, religious practice, and texting. In 2005, the Bible Society of Australia completed a translation of the Bible into SMS text messages and made it available. (See Exhibit C) It started “In da Bginnin God cre8d da heavens & da earth.” To send your friend the entire Bible meant sending 30,000 individual SMS messages. Now, the Bible Society offers a daily text message, in textese, with a Bible verse that you can add personal text to and send to all your friends. (See Exhibit D) This is a handout of The Lord’s Prayer. I hope it gives you a flavor of the power of the language, the use of the conventions, and the audience. Linguistic scholars claim that this isn’t a far stretch from the Greek and Latin manuscripts which contained frequent abbreviations or “nomina sacra”. Yeah, and I’m a woman. Vigorous debates in Islam and Judaism have occurred regarding the conversion of their sacred texts to textese, or even an exact duplication in a format to fit a cell phone. How does a Muslim handle a cell phone containing the Quran alongside other documents that were produced by infidels? Some imams say they shouldn’t be on the same phone. Similarly, orthodox Jewish cell phone users have requested “kosher” phones so that they are free of “corrupting influences”, like texting, access to pornographic websites, or phone sex lines. Although I did not find it surprising that texting was used in the Muslim world to contact imams with questions and quickly receive fatwa’s, I was surprised to find that in many places, a Muslim man must tell his wife “I divorce you” three times before the divorce is considered final and lawful. I was very surprised to find that many Muslim men were getting a divorce by texting their wives three times. In Malaysia, this practice was recently banned, and was still being debated in Egypt in 2008. When Pope John Paul II started sending texts to phones on a daily basis in 2004, I don’t think that he expected to start a movement that would end at the pulpit. He was probably helped along by this year’s World Youth Day, which included a “digital prayer wall”. Individuals could text personal messages from their cell phones and have them posted in public view for others to pray with them. Things got to the pulpit though, in O’Fallon, Missouri, where the Rev. Mike Schreiner receives text messages from the congregation while he is giving his sermon. A 14 year old congregant commented, “you get to ask the pastor anything you want to while he’s talking.” Her friend agreed, “you don’t want to admit your sins to the rest of the church, but this way you can still ask something important”. Rev. Schreiner says “It gets back to Jesus Christ and the Sermon on the Mount where I picture Jesus having a conversation with the people. With texting, it becomes more of a dialogue.” At the same church, the Associate Pastor allows the messages to be displayed in real-time on the big screen for all to read. Other churches post real-time survey results. I wonder if that’s why the Vatican warned in November that “mobile phones are bad for the soul”? Putting all moral implications aside, where does this leave me regarding the dilemma that I face with my pre-adolescent daughter? A 2006 study by Plester, Wood, and Bell demonstrated that the younger a child is when they get their first phone, the higher their scores in spelling and writing. So, with the potential demise of criterion-based CATS testing, portfolios, and teacher accountability, I’m getting my daughter a smart phone, unlimited texting, and a list of her state legislators. Maybe that way, everybody can learn something. And about the future of the Athenaeum Society… Looking around, I’d say it’s safe for at least another 10 years. After that? wtf! kwim? Exhibit A ROTFLMAOWTIME Exhibit B Rebus Examples M1Y L1I1F1E “For once in my life” THODEEPUGHT “Deep in thought” Exhibit C The Bible in text In da Bginnin God cre8d da heavens & da earth. Exhibit D The Lord’s Prayer dad@hvn urspshl we want wot u want &urth2b like hvn giv us food &4giv r sins lyk we 4giv uvaz don’t test us! save us! bcos we kno ur boss ur tuf &ur cool 4 eva! ok? Separate notes Texting is also used to facilitate flash mobbing, the gathering of people at a location for the performance of a pointless stunt. Will texting one day replace the monthly Athenaeum postcard? Site on the web called transl8it.com that is English to Text and Text to English.