Orthographic practices in SMS text messaging as a case signifying diachronic change in linguistic and semiotic resources

From 1998, SMS text messaging diffused in the UK from an innovation associated with a small minority, mainly adolescents, to a method of written communication practised routinely by people of all ages and social profiles. From its earliest use, and continuing to the time of writing in 2015, SMS texting has attracted strong evaluation in public sphere commentary, often focused on its spelling. This thesis presents analysis of SMS orthographic choice as practised by a sample of adolescents and young adults in England, with data collected between 2000 and 2012. A threelevel analytical framework attends to the textual evidence of SMS orthographic practices in situated use; respondents’ accounts of their choices of spelling in text messaging as a literacy practice; and the metadiscursive evaluation of text messaging spelling in situated interaction and in the public sphere. I present analysis of a variety of representations of SMS orthographic choice, including facsimile texts, electronic corpus data, questionnaire survey responses and transcripts of recorded interviews. This mixed methods empirical approach enables a cross-verified, longitudinal perspective on respondents’ practices, and on the wider significance of SMS orthographic choice, as expressed in private and public commentary. I argue that the spelling used in SMS exemplifies features, patterns, and behaviours, which are found in other forms of digitally-mediated interaction, and in previous and concurrent vernacular literacy practices. I present SMS text messaging as one of the intertextually-related forms of self-published written interaction which mark a diachronic shift towards re-regulated forms of orthographic convention, so disrupting attitudes to standard English spelling. I consider some implications represented by SMS spelling choice for the future of written conventions in standardised English, and for teaching and learning about spelling and literacy in formal educational settings

Self-presentation and self-positioning in text-messages: Embedded multimodality, deixis, and reference frame

PhDTexting has often been treated as verbally minimalist, notionally transactional, and, consequently, expressively impaired due to its text-only (mono-modal) character. Despite this, even with the development of new modes of electronically mediated communication (EMC) which made available a wide range of rich (multi-modal) communicative possibilities, texting has maintained its well-established position. This thesis approaches texting as communicatively rich and explores its expressive possibilities in the context of establishing texters’ deictic centres and representing aspects of physicality. Based on the analysis of nearly two thousand text-messages written by British and Polish native speakers and subsequent semi-formal interviews with the senders, I argue that senders position themselves discursively at one of four locations: their own physical deictic centre, the deictic centre of their communicative partner, a mutually agreed space distinct from either of their deictic centres, or a joint (virtual) communicative location with the recipient. I recognise the existence of social location and negative location, as well as location expressed through actions and motion. Additionally, I establish that physicality and body are represented through a variety of enacted (rather than described) sensory information, including auditory, visual, and kinaesthetic. Through the employment of these discursive tools, which follow certain presentation rules, texters create their alterae personae through which actions are performed in virtual space. I argue that text-messages should not be treated as monomodal, but as characterised by embedded multimodality, a term which I introduce. Methodologically, I draw on interactional sociolinguistics (e.g., Gumperz 1982; Tannen semantics (e.g., Lyons 1977; Talmy 1985; Fauconnier 1985), text-grammar (Nunberg 1990), mediated discourse analysis (e.g., Scollon and Levine 2004), and multimodal discourse analysis (e.g., Norris 2004). This interdisciplinary study advances current knowledge about discursive self-positioning and self-presentation in EMC, and provides insights about texting as a mode of communication that offers wide expressive possibilities despite its physical restrictions. As well as adding to theoretical discussion about motion verbs and performativity, the study contributes to research on deixis, physicality, and place, the expression of which is manifested in text-messages. 1989), performativity and speech act theory (e.g., Austin 1962; Searle 1975, 1979)