Научно-исследовательская работа «The Influence of the ‘shortened’ SMS language on the literary language of Russian and English youth»

Good day! My name is Aglyamova Landysh. I study in the seventh form in the Poisevskaya School in Poisevo. This research is done under the guidance of teacher of English language Gubaydullina Lyaysan Tagirovna. The theme of our research work is «The Influence of the ‘shortened’ SMS language on the literary language of Russian and English youth».

The main aim of our work is to study the impact of SMS-messages on oral and written language of today's youth. The influence on perceptions of the student, the development of SMS-abbreviation in English language, the main methods of forming SMS-shortening were described in this research work.

The object of investigation is the language of SMS-messages in English and Russian languages.

The subject of investigation is the impact of SMS-messages on languages of modern people.

This topic is new in the linguistics. Scholars have not yet studied thoroughly the frequency of using these SMS-shortening so we believe that we contributed something to the study of this phenomenon as SMS-language.

In the research work we, firstly, studied the notion of SMS, the influence on perceptions of the student, the development of SMS-abbreviation in English language.

Secondly, we studied the main methods of forming SMS-shortening and gave the analyses.

Thirdly, we compile a dictionary of SMS-abbreviations and SMS-shortening.

With every generation come cries that teenagers are destroying the language with their newfangled slang. In fact, linguists say teenagers are not destroying English but innovating and enriching the language. Universal desire to save time has led to a change of thinking, including text. In the United States SMS-language dictionary was published. So SMS-language has became the second language to millions of people, especially for English-speaking users.

The most popular means of shortening of the words in the SMS-language are abbreviation and acronym. Among the most popular abbreviations are: TTY (talk to you later), BTW (by the way), IMHO (in my humble opinion), FYI (for your information), HAND (have a nice day) and LOL (laugh out loud). Acronyms are abbreviations which were formed “from the first letters of words or phrases”, for example: NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization), DVD (Digital Videodisk), CD-ROM (Compact Disk Read-only Memory) or Web (World Wide Web).

In this study we analyzed SMS-shortenings. The analysis shows us that in the English language SMS-shortenings are formed from reducing of letters and punctuation marks (39%). Also there are lots of SMS-shortenings where one letter or number replaces the syllable (25%). With the same frequency generated SMS-shortenings when change the meaning of symbol and one letter or number replaces the whole word (19% and 17%)

Among the main methods of forming SMS-shortenings in Russian SMS-messages: reduction as the basis; spelling when people write as hear ('Сонце' instead 'солнце'); the part of the word cut off ('Я тя лю!' (Я тебя люблю!)); hyphens are omitted ('Чето', 'изза'); pair of consonants is interchangeable.

It was once trendy to try to speak like people wrote, and now it’s the other way around. For the first time in history, we can write quickly enough to capture qualities of spoken language in our writing, and teens are skillfully doing just that. John McWhorter’s in 2013 further supports the idea that teens are language innovators. He believes their creative development of the English language should be not mocked but studied. He singles out the subtle communication prowess of lol. Teens are using it in non-funny situations, and its meaning has expanded beyond just “laugh out loud.” Now it can be used as a marker of empathy and tone, something often lacking in written communication. This is an enhancement–not a perversion–of language.

We can say that all young people use SMS-messages and this means of communication has a number of advantages. Using of SMS-messages, only when information transfers, is justified and not dangerous. But unlimited using of SMS replaces the live chat and communication face to face. In my opinion, it has negative impact on the classical language because people do not use grammar or syntax rules.