Language used in internet : Chatting and its effect on spelling

Abstract

In response to the rise of technologically-mediated language, there have been speculations about the possible influence of chatting on literacy. Therefore, this study aims to compare mean test scores among groups of teenagers who spend different amounts of time engaged in this activity. Moreover, a second aim of this study is to provide a linguistic profile of features used in online conversations by Maltese teenagers. Firstly, a questionnaire was distributed among 205 participants, aged between 14 and 15 years, to collect information about general chatting behaviour. The respondents also underwent a Maltese spelling test, and a standardised English spelling test. The relationship between chatting and spelling was investigated using comparisons of mean test scores and one-way and two-way ANOVAs. To examine the linguistic resources that teenagers draw on to represent both the Maltese and the English languages, a corpus of Instant messaging conversations, amounting to 7,235 units, was analysed. The target features investigated in the linguistic analysis were the use of logograms and syllabograms, reductions, and phonetic and integrated spellings. In addition, strategies that these students use to imitate speech and strategies used to compensate for the lack of prosodic and paralinguistic cues were also briefly outlined. In the present study, a trend which disfavours those who chat every day has been identified. However, other conflicting trends also indicate that a definite conclusion linking chatting to spelling has to be drawn with caution. Language in Internet chatting is made up of elements associated with informal speech, and code-switching is also prevalent. The use of deviant spelling amounts to 16. 79% of the total corpus, and in some cases the instances of the standard representation of words outweighed the nonstandard forms. The most common spelling strategy is phonetic spelling,