Texting, one of the newest forms of communication technology, has grown in popularity tremendously over the past ten years. Growing an astonishing 450% from 2006 to 2008 according to Neilson Mobile (Cnet). The text-language that has developed over that past ten years can easily cause a passionate difference of opinion. Many people embrace the texting shorthand, textese, while others refuse to abbreviate or shorten their messages, insisting to use full orthography. Throughout history there has been a fear that communication advancements, such as print, telegram, broadcasting and now text messaging, may cause harm to the language by dumbing it down. In “2b or Not 2b”, David Crystal disagrees with the idea that texting and texese will harm language as he addresses the counter argument and gives examples to support his idea that texting can be elegant and even poetic in a polite, explanative tone.
David Crystal begins his essay with the negative views about texting. Using quotes from John Humphrys’ article “I h8 txt msgs: How texting is
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In “I h8 txt msgs: How texting is wrecking our language”, John Humphrys compares texting to Genghis Khan, describing texting as “pillaging our punctuation, savaging our sentences, raping our language”. Crystal does not incite an argument, nor does he say Humphrys is wrong. But rather, politely provides information and examples to the audience to show that there may be another side to texting than Humphrys’ view. John Sutherland describes texting as “mental laziness” and “penmanship for illiterates”. These harsh words clearly express how passionately these two men dislike texting. But David Crystal uses no harsh wording in his essay, even though he disagrees with these two men. Keeping a polite tone to explain helps Crystal’s argument more than harsh words and anger would