KEY POINTS:
I'm distressed that the NCEA allows students to use so-called txt-speak in exams. Call me a purist, but words without vowels just don't cut it.
Except for the Slavic words. Obviously. Like tvrthrst, or Smr.
They're fine.
As for those crazy hybrids consisting of equal parts letters and
numbers, they're simply a miscegenation. Remember when we learned all we needed to know about the intellectual capacity of Ralphie in The Simpsons? It was when one of his teachers told us, "He spelt Harvard with a 6".
Not only would that not mark Wiggum the younger as educationally subnormal nowadays, it would probably get him an "achieved" grade in Level One English.
I understand that language is not, cannot, be a static thing. It needs to shift and move and change so that it may perform its function.
Words and phrases and constructions spring into being or fall into abeyance with startling speed, as anyone who's read Ulysses or The Canterbury Tales will tell you.
The words we use and the way we put those words together constitute a snapshot of where we are as a culture at any given moment in time. It is unreasonable, not to mention stupid, not to expect language to evolve.
But what worries me about txt-speak, what makes it so insidious, is the elision of words that it involves. The knocking off the bits and pieces that make them what they are.
H8 and Hate, Gr8 and Great may be used to signify the same meanings, but they are definitely not the same words.
What's more, they're ugly.
Mad-looking and misshapen and inauthentic.
Words don't just sound beautiful, they can look very lovely, too, written on the page. Ivory, azure, gossamer, languor, ermine.
Contrast those beauties with the unintelligible nonsense people pass off as words via text. Mite. Gud. C U L8er. LOL.
I'd like to say these Frankenstein-words aren't legitimate, that they don't constitute real language. But of course they do.
They do because they fulfil their purpose of letting the other party know that you mite b L8 but its all gud.
I object to them on the grounds that they're ugly firstly, but also, more importantly, because I think they constitute a threat to the life of language.
It's hard enough in modern New Zealand to find a man who's either capable, or willing, to express himself on any subject, besides possibly sport. I can't see how allowing teenagers to hide behind half-words, rather than actually learning how to use language, will improve matters any.
Crimes against language aside, the other problem with texting is the question of intent. What's sent via text is not always the same as what's received. Attempting to condense a spoken conversation into a 200-odd word message to be displayed on a tiny screen is just asking for trouble sometimes.
How many of us have been hobbled by a text that is completely misread?
Nuances are beautiful things in language and speech. One has to think very hard in order to craft a text that delivers a message with the same degree of subtlety or clarity as can be achieved in two seconds by simply saying it. With texts, the scope for misinterpretation is huge.
It's a rare individual who can manage to convey irony by text and a rarer person yet who can successfully respond in kind. That's why texting is so particularly fraught in the early stages of a new relationship.
What happens when your text joke falls flat or, worse, causes offence or upset? What if she hates text-speak? Or uses one of those horrible little emoticons that you hate?
The wrong text, interpreted wrongly, can be enough to knock a budding romance stone dead.
It's dangerous, frankly, and perhaps that's why we like it. There's nothing like that thrill of satisfaction when the little envelope icon pops up and you know there's a message there composed by someone else just for you.
The allure of txt-flirting is obvious, too. Anything to do with words adds an extra frisson to a flirtation if you're that way inclined. It's the grey areas that add the thrill in this scenario. The challenge of decoding the message, analysing every word and symbol in the hope of revealing the sender's intention and agenda.
It's complete torture, and great fun. Of course, it helps if the sender has something of a way with words. Sw8 M8 ketchya L8er speaks for itself, rather.
Our fascination with texting has also thrown up some new issues in contemporary etiquette.
When did it become acceptable to engage in a conversation with someone while your fingers are flying over the keys sending a chat to someone else? I'm as bad an offender as anyone.
I realised this at a party a few weeks ago, while endeavouring to have a conversation with a new acquaintance while simultaneously txting the address of the party to a new one.
"Sorry," I said, "I'm not being rude." "You are," was the calm rejoinder and, of course, he was completely right. I was being rude, so are we all when we interrupt dinner, drinks or conversation to tap out our strangely worded dispatches to absent friends.
If they really wanted to have a conversation with you, wouldn't they actually be there?
