Today we annotated samples of your own text language, using the terms and devices listed here. We identified that, while the main purpose of the modifications to standard English in text communication is to aid brevity (to make communication quicker by having to type less) there was also some subsidiary benefits due to the development of a particular tone in the communication.
We agreed that you could tell some things about people based on the style of their texts.
Tonight’s homework is to write, in your book, an analytical paragraph that explains in detail the observations you made when you annotated your own transcript of a text conversation.
Your paragraph might start like this:
The writers in my transcript use a range of devices to shorten their text messages. The main device is initialism, which can be seen in words like “wbu” which stands for “What about you?”. Another device they use is…
