The study, conducted by Joan Lee for her master\u2019s thesis in linguistics, revealed that those who texted more were less accepting of new words<\/strong>. On the other hand, those who read more traditional print media such as books, magazines, and newspapers were more accepting of the same words<\/strong>.<\/p>\n The study asked university students about their reading habits, including text messaging, and presented them with a range of words both real and fictitious.<\/p>\n \u201cOur assumption about text messaging is that it encourages unconstrained language. But the study found this to be a myth,\u201d says Lee. \u201cThe people who accepted more words did so because they were better able to interpret the meaning of the word, or tolerate the word, even if they didn\u2019t recognize the word<\/strong>. Students who reported texting more rejected more words instead of acknowledging them as possible words.\u201d<\/p>\n Lee suggests that reading traditional print media exposes people to variety and creativity in language that is not found in the colloquial peer-to-peer text messaging used among youth or \u2018generation text\u2019.<\/strong> She says reading encourages flexibility in language use and tolerance of different words<\/strong>. It helps readers to develop skills that allow them to generate interpretable readings of new or unusual words.<\/p>\n \u201cIn contrast, texting is associated with rigid linguistic constraints which caused students to reject many of the words in the study,\u201d says Lee. \u201cThis was surprising because there are many unusual spellings or \u201ctextisms\u201d such as \u201cLOL\u201d in text messaging language.\u201d<\/p>\n Lee says that for texters, word frequency is an important factor in the acceptability of words<\/strong>.<\/p>\n \u201cTextisms represent real words which are commonly known among people who text,\u201d she says. \u201cMany of the words presented in the study are not commonly known and were not acceptable to the participants in the study who texted more or read less traditional print media.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" From the University of Calgary press release by Jennifer Myers: Research designed to understand the effect of text messaging on language found that texting has a negative impact on people\u2019s… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[9],"tags":[262,25,26,193,12,235],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1438"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1438"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1438\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1440,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1438\/revisions\/1440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/images\/blogpics\/WomanwithCellphone.jpg\" "\\"texting\\"")
Research designed to understand the effect of text messaging on language found that texting has a negative impact on people\u2019s linguistic ability to interpret and accept words<\/strong>.<\/p>\n