Slang exists for a reason. In most conversations nowadays, it is used as a result of familiarity and for the sake of efficiency. Once you become familiar with a mode of communication you’ll learn the slang to help speed up conversations, minimize characters, etc. There’s also an element of proving your awareness by using slang; if you understand how to use certain terms, you’re in the club. You know wassup.
That’s all fine and dandy, but as you have probably felt at one point or another if you regularly use technology to communicate (let’s be real here – you do), it can get to be a bit much. One places where this has become clear is in dating apps, where people not only use “chat speak” frequently, but have also developed special terms that apply almost exclusively to online dating environments. For instance, this collection of handy Tinder terms reveals phrases like “text game” and “1 AM text” that have grown to have very particular meanings among online daters . In this case, slang and texting terms have almost become a sort of code that you can only really understand through experience.
Outside of online dating, text slang remains more traditional, but it has grown to include so many different abbreviations and sequences of characters that it just about makes up 1T5 0WN M1N1@TUR3 L@NGU@63. Consider this glossary of chat lingo for online gamers. It was written specifically for players in interactive bingo games who can participate in live chats with one another. But,if you look through the terms you’ll see it’s actually applicable to most social gaming atmospheres, and even social media at large. For instance, terms like “BRB” and “ROFL” have become so popular that many people put them to use every day when communicating through technology.
But while this kind of text language is helpful to so many people, it’s also worth considering that using it too often might definitely makes you sound, well, dumb. It’s been frequently argued that using text speak could harm students’ writing skills, not because it necessarily cheapens social interactions, but because it contributes to the formation of bad habits. You know, like, #NoRagrets (not even a letter). The concern is that students will grow so used to interacting with one another through abbreviations that they’ll ultimately struggle to use ordinary language in formal writing (for essays, college and work applications, etc.).
Even more damning for those who like to use chat slang excessively is a 2014 study that found it to be a turn-off for teens and twenty-somethings. Basically, hundreds of people aged 13-25 were surveyed about whether or not they approved of messages containing certain abbreviations, and the survey resulted in high disapproval rates for a number of popular slang terms.
Given that this is generally assumed to be the same age group that most frequently uses chat speak, that’s a pretty harsh study. By no means does it imply people shouldn’t ever use text abbreviations. Sometimes, they do come in handy. Though slang terms add color to our English language, they may very well start to discredit our intelligence, if it hasn’t done so already.
Featured image via Raphael Rychetsky on Unsplash
