Text Messaging and Grammatical Development

There is widespread concern about the possible impact of mobile phone slang on the grammatical understanding of children and young people. This longitudinal study will investigate whether there is any evidence of a detrimental impact on grammatical development and other related literacy and language skills over the course of a year.

There are three main ways in which ‘textisms’ might have an impact on grammatical understanding of standard English:

• Spelling of individual words: Textisms that use phonetic spellings (e.g. frendz) may make it harder for young children to learn grammar-based spelling rules (e.g. that plural words generally end in -s rather than -z).

• Spelling of word combinations: Phonetic spellings of common phrases (e.g. you’re or even your instead of you are) may make it more difficult for children to learn to spell or abbreviate these correctly in formal writing.

• Correct use of orthographic and punctuation conventions: Capital letters and punctuation marks are often omitted in text messages, and this may have an effect on formal writing.

The researchers will collect and analyse the text messages of 100 primary school children (aged 8-11), 100 secondary school children (aged 12-16) and 100 undergraduates (aged 18-24), focusing on the frequency of textisms and non-standard grammar. Participants will take grammatical tests at the start of the study, and again, one year later.

This will allow the researchers to examine any effects of mobile phone slang on grammatical understanding, and also to see whether these vary depending on the age group.

This project builds on an earlier study by the same team, which looked at the effects of text messaging on children’s reading ability and phonological processing.