SMS may even be a good thing!

I was delighted to know that Rui Baptista has read and answered to my post. I guess I came across as a bit rude – rudeness is never a good thing, but I was a bit picked by the assertion that those who use SMS-lingo “think like monkeys”.

Rui Baptista explains in his new post that he is against only those students who use SMS abbreviations in exams and essays, being incapable of knowing that the written language has spelling and grammar rules that should be followed.

Also, he says he read the article “The Language Instinct”, adding some other readings to the discussion. I’m not familiar with the net article. I recommend the book, which is not too expensive and one of the most thrilling reads for anyone interested in language and science. As Robert Lane Greene says, “whatever your views on this subject, it's hard to read the book and then happily go back to seeing language as a set of iron-bound rules that are constantly being broken by the morons around you. Instead, you start seeing this human behaviour as something to be enjoyed in its fascinating variability.”

Now, to the matter at hand. My point is: is there any cause-effect relation between SMS-lingo and badly written essays or exams? I really don't think so. In fact, some argue that SMS language can improve spelling. I won’t go that far, but I do think that students who have good linguistic skills and read a lot will write well and still use SMS-lingo in their mobile communications. Students who write poorly and mix registers would probably not write better if cell phones were forbidden or non-existent. I bet good students will tend to be even more creative and use non-standard usages more frequently than poor students, but in the right context (apart from eventual subversive mixes).

Now, think a bit out of the pessimist frame of mind created by years of noticing poorly written essays while considering good essays the normal situation (a pessimist bias Portuguese people are prone to fall into). Do you agree with me when I say that there is a stable group of good students who write well, are creative, interested and ready to discuss things and make the effort of learning? I guess you agree this group is real. Let's not discuss if it has increased in size or not (I'll agree it has decreased in relative size). Now, I believe you should know that, in their cell phones, you'll find SMS-lingo and all sorts of alternative spellings.

So, I really think Llosa is wrong. A person does not think like a monkey just by using creative uses of informal language. Calling them monkeys is insulting to all the good people who simply use their languages fully and creatively, knowing when to use each register and not limiting themselves by ancient purist conceptions of language, which curtail the normal development of the very thing that makes us humans: the spoken and written word (as you see, I agree with you in some aspects).

I know you are genuinely worried about all those students who don’t know how to spell. We should be all worried. However, saying that SMS spelling is a symptom of “monkey thinking” is an attack to their own ways of communication. If we don’t explain that this linguistic creativity is legitimate in its own space, we are erecting a barrier between those students and formal texts, since young people will normally choose creativity and freedom when they have to make a choice. Fortunately, there is no choice to be made: language is wonderfully flexible and rich.

You should forbid all SMS-lingo in exams and essays. But, please, don’t say that students think like monkeys for using creative spelling in informal contexts, even if that opinion has been previously expressed by a Nobel Prize laureate.