CHAPTER II

REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE AND STUDIES

This chapter contains the related literature and studies gathered by the researcher.

This includes information that is relevant to the study. It also presents the synthesis of

the state-of-the-art, gap bridged by the study, theoretical framework, conceptual

framework.

Related Studies

LOL, OMG, BRB, ppl instead of people, u in place of you, and 2 for to. These

are just examples of what one might see in text messages as well as posts on social

media and emails. Typing fewer characters to express a message of course reduces

the burden of punching those keys, especially the very small ones on those smart

phones. It is quick. And it is evolving with its own set of rules. There are concerns that

these exercises can impair one's literacy and grammar skills. In fact, a press

release two years ago from Penn State highlighted a study by Cingel and Sundar that

claims a negative relationship between texting and grammar skills:In this study, text

messages of students are recorded and saved over a time period. These text messages

are then analyzed and categorized according to the following types of grammatical

violations:

Table 1 Grammatical violation in coded messages

Category of violation and violations types Example

Unconventional orthographic forms

 Ellipsis …
 Start of sentence emoticon :D Hi there

 Start of sentence kiss x love you

 End of sentence emoticon  (instead of punctuation)

x (instead of punctuation)
 End of sentence kiss
LOL LMAO (instead of punctuation)
 End of Initialism
Are you coming out later??
 More than one question mark
It was so awesome!!
 More than one exclamation mark
 :D ;x (instead of punctuation)
 More than one emoticon
Xxx (instead of punctuation)
 More than one kiss

Punctuation and capitalization

It was ace are you coming out later?
violations
I am going out later
 Mid sentence missing full stop/
Are you going out later
come
i will be out later
 End of sentence missing full stop
I am going to see tom tonight.
 Missing question mark
it will be a great night.
 i for I
Im not coming out.
 Missing proper noun capitals Robs books are blue.

 Missing start of sentence capitals These shoe’s are comfy,

 Missing contraction apostrophe

 Missing possession apostrophe

 Unnecessary apostrophe Am going out later

I going out later.

You want to come with me?

 Missing words I am go to school.

 Missing pronouns/subject campin later (could be: Are you camping

 Missing verb later?/I am camping later/ I will see you at

 Missing function words (e.g., do, camping later)

with) Their going to town too but sweets.

 Missing word endings (e.g., -ed, Does you want to go out later?

ing.) Tryna, hafta, wanna, gonna

 Missing other

Grammatical homonyms

Ungrammatical word forms

Word/verb reduction
This recent study was over a twelve month period. A battery of standardized tests were

administered at the beginning and at the end of the study. Participants are from three

levels of education: primary, secondary and college. The results show that at all levels,

there is no correlation between a student's performance on the grammar and literacy

tests and text messaging. In fact, for secondary pupils, greater use of word reduction is

correlated with better performance in spelling. Those who type messages with words

like "tryna", "hafta", "wanna" and "gonna", can in fact spell better than those who do

not.1

Exploring the longitudinal relationships between the use of grammar in text messaging

and performance on grammatical tasks, this research has demonstrated that use of

texting slang (textisms) when text messaging does not appear to impact negatively on

children’s spelling attainment. However, less attention has been paid to the impact of

text messaging on the development of children’s and young people’s understanding of

grammar. This study therefore examined the interrelationships between children’s and

young adults’ tendency to make grammatical violations when texting and their

performance on formal assessments of spoken and written grammatical understanding,

orthographic processing and spelling ability over the course of 1 year. Zero-order

correlations showed patterns consistent with previous research on textism use and

spelling, and there was no evidence of any negative associations between the

development of the children’s performance on the grammar tasks and their use of

grammatical violations when texting. Adults’ tendency to use ungrammatical word forms

(‘does you’) was positively related to performance on the test of written grammar.

Grammatical violations were found to be positively associated with growth and spelling

for secondary school children. However, not all forms of violation were observed to be

consistently used in samples or text messages taken 12 months apart or were

characteristic of typical text messages. The need to differentiate between genuine

errors and deliberate violation of rules is discussed, as are educational implications of

these findings. Text messaging may offer quick way to send notes to friends and family,

but it could lead to declining language and grammar skills according to research.

Tweens who frequently use language adaptation-techspeak -when they text performed

poorly on a grammar test, said Drew Cingel, a former graduate student in

communications, Penn State, and currently a doctoral candidate in media, technology

and society, Northwestern University. When Tween write in tech-speak, they often use

shortcuts such as homophones, omissions of non-essential letters and initials, to quickly

and efficiently compose a text message. “They may use a homophone, such as gr8 for

great, or an initial, like, LOL for Laugh out loud,” “And example of an omission that

tweens use when texting is spelling the word would, w-u-d”. Cingel, who worked with S.

Shyam Sundar. Distinguish professor of communication and co-director of Penn State’s

Media Effects Research Laboratory, said the use of this shortcuts may hinder a tween’s

ability to switch between tech-speak and the normal rules of grammar. 2

Data were gathered from text messages and Facebook group chats between the

respondents and the researchers. Students’ written outputs like free writing, two week

journal entries, descriptive essays and definition essays were also gathered. Findings

revealed that the emoticons, onomatopoeic spelling and omitted apostrophes and

emoticons were mostly present in their outputs. Moreover, textismin formal and informal

writing was found to be not influential, and there significant difference of textism in

students’ formal and informal written outputs. There was also a negative trend of

relationship between textism and written outputs. Therefore, textism did not affect the

writing performance of the students.3

Local Literature

Bastardizing the language. This is what teachers have to say about text

messaging. With the Philippines being tagged as “texting capital”, many wonder how the

proliferation of mobile phones has affected the Filipino’s facility for languages. Reading

students' essays with words like “4u” or 2gthr yrs 18r” and looking at the sign post that

reads “Ped Xing” ( meaning pedestrian crossing), one can tell that cellular text

messaging or Messaging Service (SMS) has revolutionized the way Filipinos talks, write

and read. But doesn’t text messaging further thwart or impede the facility for

languages? Assistant professor Mildred Rojo-Laurilla, of De La Salle University-Manila’s

Department of English and Applied Linguistics (DEAL), attempts to provide answers in

her research title “A preliminary Investigation on the Linguistic Aspects of Text

Messaging”. Laurilla partly dispelled the popular observation that cellular phones may

bring harm than good to students. Results of her study indicate that college students are
able to discern the formal language-the kind that is used in the classroom-from the non-

conventional texted English.1

The extraordinary popularity of text messaging in the Philippines has

spawned a subculture the media has dubbed Generation Txt. Teenagers and young

upwardly mobile professionals have developed their own text language. To save on

space (one is allotted only 164 characters per text), texters have developed their own

abbreviated vocabulary to express themselves complete with "emoticons," a

combination of symbols and punctuations that add up (with a lot of imagination and

head tilting) to little faces that characterize expressions of happiness, anguish,

confusion, disgust, embarrassment, and a host of other emotions. Thus, if you wanted

to say, "I’ll be late. Could you save a seat for me? Thank you," in text language,

that would be, "ILBL8. :( C%d u sav a sit 4 me? THNQ! :)" 2

Foreign literature

The English language as you may know is evolving since the beginning,

one read of Beowulf or The Canterbury Tales is enough to be reminded of how far

removed we are from the language of our ancestors. Texting is the next step in

evolution of English language so we should be cautious about it. There are two main

arguments about text messaging. One is that text messaging is impacting the English

language by impacting teenager’s ability to write English using proper punctuation and

spelling. The opposing position is, of course, that it does not impact English language

and in some way might actually enhance it. Perhaps as we document and collect works

of writers and leaders, texts will be abbreviation rich. Future generations would have to

study and analyze those abbreviations to understand them. It is accurate to say that the
use of texting impacts teenager’s language skills which in turn can impact our English

language.1

As the availability, affordability, and popularity of mobile phones has

increased in the last decade, text messaging has become one of the primary means of

communication among adolescent peer groups. As such, it can be speculated that

mobile phones and text messaging have become an integral aspect of the culture of

young people today. However, little research has of yet identified how people react to

an absence of texting behavior. This study attempts to demonstrate the extent to which

people have become reliant upon text messaging to maintain daily relationships with

peers, as well as their own self-concept. Frequencies and patterns of alternative

behaviors, non-compliance, and anxiety are measured during separate restriction

periods among a group of high and low text users, ages 18–23. Results indicate that

there was a significant difference between individuals identified as ’high’ and ’low’ text

users, although regardless of this distinction, texting emerged as the preferred form of

contact among peers within this cohort. A high degree of quantitatively and qualitatively

reported anxiety during periods of restriction was also noted, suggesting that this

behavior has become an integrated element of daily living for this group. 2

With children’s increasing use of mobile phones, concerns have been

raised about its influence on their literacy skills. One well-known feature of children’s

text messages is that they do not always adhere to conventional written language rules

and use a register that is called textese. In this register, children make use of phonetic

replacements, such as ur instead of your and acronyms, such as lol [1] and drop words

(e.g. [2]). This has led to the assumption that characteristics of textese may leak into

children’s general writing, ultimately resulting in language deterioration [3,4]. However,

this is in sharp contrast to findings from several studies showing that children who used

textese frequently did not perform poorly on spelling and tasks measuring literacy

abilities (see [5] for a review). More recently, this research has been expanded to the

effect of textese on children’s grammar abilities in written language [2,6–8]. Outcomes

of some studies suggest a negative influence of textese on grammar [ 7]. Nevertheless,

variability in coding of textese between studies and use of written tasks, which do not

strictly represent grammar, may have masked the effect of textese on children’s

grammar abilities. Therefore, the main aim of the present study is to ascertain whether

use of textese influences children’s grammar performance in spoken language. 3

Synthesis of the State-of-the-Art