In today’s fast-paced, technological world, texting has changed the way we communicate in a very fundamental way. To that end, many are worried about what the effect will be on those who choose to communicate primarily through texting – some worry that we are losing the nuance and complexity of real communication as a result of the need to truncate our words and phrasing into short bursts of instant information. Others, however, believe that texting has actually been a boon to teenagers and adolescents, who are typing and writing more than they ever have been before. While Chast’s cartoon “The IMs of Romeo and Juliet” implies that the subtlety and romance of the English language is being pillaged by the brevity of texting, David Crystal in “2B or not 2B?” argues that texting has actually improved children’s ability to spell, use grammar and learn vocabulary. Analyzing these two texts, Crystal’s work is much more open-minded and sensible than Chast’s tongue-in-cheek fearmongering.
Roz Chast outlines the main problem that she has with texting and its bluntness in her cartoon “The IMs of Romeo and Juliet” (347). In this panel, Romeo and Juliet are revealed to be in their respective rooms, dressed in modern clothes with books, food and clothes strewn everywhere – the classic messy teen’s room. In the central panel, Juliet and Romeo engage in a texting conversation over inane topics like “scool,” “going to nicks party” (sp) and others. The text is deliberately shortened or misspelled, with no capitalization or punctuation. Expressions of love are made with “xo”s, “okay” is shortened to “k,” and so on. The cartoon’s use of stereotypically truncated texting etiquette showcases Chast’s viewpoint that teenagers using texting have no rules. They do not need to learn how to spell things correctly, or even spell them out, because ideas are conveyed much more quickly and simply with single letter homonyms. Chast’s point with this cartoon is that texting and IMing dumbs down our vocabulary, making the ostensibly romantic and florid relationship of Romeo and Juliet turn into a tawdry tale of two dumb kids talking to each other about nothing in particular.
Despite this perspective, David Crystal has a different idea of the results of texting. He correctly identifies this sort of fear of texting changing language as something that has happened before: “Ever since the arrival of printingpeople have been arguing that new technology would have disastrous consequences for language” (Crystal). Instead of it teaching children the wrong way to spell things, Crystal merely argues that it teaches them how to appropriately abbreviate and truncate language (something that has been in place for centuries in English writing, he notes). This does not hinder children’s language development, but rather helps it along – “Children could not be good at texting if they had not already developed considerable literacy awareness” (Crystal). This provides a much more subtle and complex understanding of texting and its effects on those who use it than Chast’s cartoon, which glibly insults the intelligence of its subject by implying text-speak is synonymous with vapidity. Instead of seeing it as a loss in language, Crystal prefers to see it as a resolution, “merely the latest manifestation of the human ability to be linguistically creative and to adapt language to suit the demands of diverse settings” (Crystal). Crystal even lauds texting for having a lot of creative potential, as SMS-based narratives and other experiments take shape. By taking a more even-handed view of the phenomenon, Crystal comes across as more reasonable, and therefore provides a better argument.
As previously mentioned, I believe that Crystal makes the better argument than Chast on the effects of texting on human behavior and understanding of language. People do not use shorter speech in texting because they do not know how to correctly spell things, but merely to convey information much faster and more easily. There is not the same standards or rigor applied to texting and instant messaging as there is on paper writing and formal prose; to that end, it should not be expected that those who text that way follow the same rules when they are writing a paper or letter. As Crystal says, the ability to abbreviate in that way shows a clear understanding of such language anyway, so the use of texting merely keeps them in practice for that knowledge of vocabulary.
Opinions like Chast’s are certainly not new, but certainly say more about the person making those statements than they do their subjects. The perception of Romeo and Juliet as sloppy kids made even sloppier in their writing is definitely a judgmental, dismissive view of youth as much as it is the phenomenon of texting. Furthermore, since texting and IMing are here to stay, it is better to contemplate the way it is changing vocabulary and work with them instead of dismissing them as dangerous trends. Crystal’s perspective much more closely aligns with mine, as we see the potential benefits of texting as opposed to fearing it.
Works Cited
Chast, Roz. “The IMs of Romeo and Juliet.” In They Say, I Say. Ed. Malcolm Gladwell, Dennis
Baron, David Crystal, and Roz Chast. P. 347.
Crystal, David. “2b or Not 2b?” In They Say, I Say. Ed. Malcolm Gladwell, Dennis
Baron, David Crystal, and Roz Chast.
