LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 19:12 December 2019
ISSN 1930-2940

Editors:
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         T. Deivasigamani, Ph.D.
         Pammi Pavan Kumar, Ph.D.
         Soibam Rebika Devi, M.Sc., Ph.D.

Managing Editor & Publisher: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.

HOME PAGE

Click Here for Back Issues of Language in India - From 2001

BOOKS FOR YOU TO READ AND DOWNLOAD FREE!

REFERENCE MATERIALS

BACK ISSUES

  • E-mail your articles and book-length reports in Microsoft Word to languageinindiaUSA@gmail.com.

  • PLEASE READ THE GUIDELINES GIVEN IN HOME PAGE IMMEDIATELY AFTER THE LIST OF CONTENTS.

  • Your articles and book-length reports should be written following the APA, MLA, LSA, or IJDL Stylesheet.

  • The Editorial Board has the right to accept, reject, or suggest modifications to the articles submitted for publication, and to make suitable stylistic adjustments. High quality, academic integrity, ethics and morals are expected from the authors and discussants.

Copyright © 2016
M. S. Thirumalai

Publisher: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
11249 Oregon Circle
Bloomington, MN 55438
USA
Custom Search

Phonological Factors in Short Message Service (SMS) of
Telugu Native Speakers: A Pilot Study

G. Anjaneyulu, M.A. (English), M.A. (Ling.), B.Ed.
Dr. G. S. Gabriel, Ph.D.

Abstract

Short Message Service (SMS) is a transmission of short text messages to and from mobile phones, handheld devices, fax machines, landline telephones or IP addresses. SMS has become an integral part of everyday communication in many countries today. Within the emerging field of new media sociolinguistics, SMS language is viewed as a resource for endless creativity, reflexive practice, social intervention, resistance, and play. SMS language is characterized by abbreviations and acronyms and reflects a collective identity function because these adaptations require a special shared knowledge to understand the language and use it later. Text-messaging in bi/multilingual settings exhibit an additional feature of code mixing. In the context of India, a vast majority of college students use texting on their mobile phones. Since most of them have restricted competence in using English, it would be interesting to see how they communicate using SMS language. This paper reports outcome of analysis of 360 text messages in English and Telugu languages exchanged by ten college students who are native speakers of Telugu. Details of the type of phonological level adaptations (e.g. vowel deletions, consonants deletions, geminate dropping, and punctuation errors etc., in English only messages and in code-mixed items) will be discussed in this paper along with implication of the results for language use practices in informal communication in a multilingual set-up.

Keywords: Telugu Native Speakers, SMS texts, Phonological factors, Linguistic adaptations

Introduction & Background

Short message service (SMS), first introduced commercially in 1995 refers to the transmission of short text messages between mobile phone users by typing messages on a keyboard then sending them. Today SMS has emerged as one of the major digital communication media, with an estimation of over one billion messages exchanged per day around the world” (Bomodo, 2010). Each short message can be up to 160 characters in length when English alphabets are used. Text messages are created on the touch screen or a small keypad of the mobile phone and read as text on the screen of the phone.

The terms ‘text messaging’ or just ‘texting’ refers to the brief typed messages sent using the Short Message Service (SMS) of mobile/cell phones, Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs), smart phones or web browsers (Thurlow and Poff, 2011). SMS communication allows for a reasonable use of short forms at syntactic and lexical levels which save character space as compared with using the full forms of words. Text messaging was broadly defined as asynchronous text based technological mediated discourse (Baron, 2005) that pursues simple sentences structure for communication.

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

G. Anjaneyulu, M.A. (English), M.A. (Ling.), B.Ed.
Research Scholar (Ph.D.) Dept. of Linguistics
Osmania University Hyderabad
anjaneyulughana@gmail.com

Dr. G. S. Gabriel, Ph.D.
Professor of Linguistics
Potti Sri Ramulu Telugu University
Hyderabad
gundlagabriel@gmail.com
Custom Search
  • Click Here to Go to Creative Writing Section

  • Send your articles
    as an attachment
    to your e-mail to
    languageinindiaUSA@gmail.com.
  • Please ensure that your name, academic degrees, institutional affiliation and institutional address, and your e-mail address are all given in the first page of your article. Also include a declaration that your article or work submitted for publication in LANGUAGE IN INDIA is an original work by you and that you have duly acknowledged the work or works of others you used in writing your articles, etc. Remember that by maintaining academic integrity we not only do the right thing but also help the growth, development and recognition of Indian/South Asian scholarship.