LOL, OMG and TTYL: parents and teachers worry that teenagers鈥� use of these and other forms of . Perhaps they will take comfort from a study suggesting that instant messaging (IM) actually represents 鈥渁n expansive new linguistic renaissance鈥�.
鈥淚nstant messaging represents an expansive new linguistic renaissance鈥�
and Derek Denis at the University of Toronto, Canada, say teenagers risk the disapproval of their elders if they use slang, and the scorn of their friends if they sound too buttoned-up. But instant messaging allows them to deploy a 鈥渞obust mix鈥� of colloquial and formal language. In a paper to be published in the spring 2008 issue of , the researchers argue that far from ruining teenagers鈥� ability to communicate, IM lets teenagers show off what they can do with language.
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鈥淚M is interactive discourse among friends that is conducive to informal language,鈥� says Denis, 鈥渂ut at the same time, it is a written interface which tends to be more formal than speech.鈥�
He and Tagliamonte analysed more than a million words of IM communications and a quarter of a million spoken words produced by 72 people aged between 15 and 20. They found that although IM shared some of the patterns used in speech, its vocabulary and grammar tended to be relatively conservative. For example, teenagers are more likely to use the phrase 鈥淗e was like, 鈥榃hat鈥檚 up?'鈥� than 鈥淗e said, 鈥榃hat鈥檚 up?'鈥� when speaking 鈥� but the opposite is true when they are instant-messaging. This supports the idea that IM represents a hybrid form of communication.
Nor do teens use abbreviations as much as the stereotype suggests: LOL (laugh out loud), OMG (oh my god), and TTYL (talk to you later) made up just 2.4 per cent of the vocabulary of IM conversations 鈥� an 鈥渋nfinitesimally small鈥� proportion, say the researchers. And rumours of the demise of you would appear to have been greatly exaggerated: it was preferred to u a whopping 9 times out of 10. Tagliamonte and Denis suggest that the use of such short forms is confined mostly to the youngest users of IM.
