Media Literacy

You have said that at your agency, "we have seen a dramatic increase in resumes that have shortened abbreviations and text lingo in them which is shocking." What concerns you about this?

AV: Since we are in charge of creating and managing corporate messaging for clients, it is imperative that proper use of the English language and finesse of message are considered at all times. When someone is used to typing in short codes or "text lingo," they have lessened the amount of time spent creating thoughtful commentary with a purpose. You'd be surprised how many will type formal documents for clients and insert text lingo, which is clearly unacceptable. And formulating supporting thoughts isn't a forte of this generation, either, as everything in their world is communicated in short, quick tidbits.

Can you give us any particularly mortifying examples of text lingo you've received?

AV: A cover letter recently came across my desk with the following in the first paragraph: "I M looking for a GR8 job in PR bc I love to write." We also had someone post a response to a tweeted job offer that said, "u should c me" - ugh.

Do you view this situation as one in which the person doing the hiring will have to get used to the texting-style applicant, or should the texting-style applicant learn to conform to the style of the interviewer? Can you see an applicant using text lingo having any shot whatsoever at getting a job?

AV: We personally would never hire someone who doesn't understand proper and formal communication. If they have a lack of judgment on this issue, then what else will they not be equipped to make good decisions about?

When you see the text lingo, does the thought of "American society is going down the tubes" flash across your mind?

AV: Absolutely.

The average teen sends and receives 3,339 text messages a month ... more than 100 a day ... according to the Nielsen Co. Does this square with what you see among young people in the Phoenix area?

AV: Yes, but the amount of texts doesn't excuse the lack of use of proper spelling, etc. I receive over 700 per day myself, and tweet on average more than 50 times per day without ever using text lingo. And, to top it off, I'm still one of the fastest typers/texters. (A good typing class alleviates the use for shortcodes.)

You also have said "a clear decline in verbal and written skills is very apparent in the candidates over the last four years." Do you attribute that to the fact that texting dominates young people's method of communicating, or are there other factors?

AV: I think it's a mixture of texting, but also a lack of reinforcement of education overall. No one is holding a clear standard of communication. We have moved into an "everyone gets a medal and everyone passes" mentality in our schools which has created a substandard level of performance in written and verbal communication. This is especially true in border states where the teachers are navigating two languages, whether they like it or not.

What is your philosophy for your clients about how to communicate their messages to young people? Since texting is basically pidgin English or gibberish, do your clients have to speak the same way back in these "microbursts?"

AV: No. The beauty is that the younger audience doesn't frown upon written out formats. It only works in the reverse.

Is there anything else you'd like to say about the texting phenomenon?

AV: Texting is a great, quick way of communicating. It's overloading us and making us work much longer hours. However; if you are well trained with typing skills, then short codes don't actually make things shorter!

(Amanda Vega describes herself as a "Social Media, PR and Compliance Nerd with 20 years in the space." In addition to running her agency, she has written "PRinaJar" and was a contributing author to "The Social Media Bible." She has been profiled in O Magazine as "One Amazing Power Shopper" and has served on boards for the Internet Advertising Bureau and the Search Engine Marketing Professionals. She began her career as a chat moderator for AOL. She has an MBA from Columbia.)

The average teen sends and receives 3,339 text messages a month ... more than 100 a day ... according to the Nielsen Co. Your thoughts, please ... is this something good, something neutral or something to worry about? Is it trivial or important?

ML: My views on the ways many teens today are using text messaging are derived from my research with adolescents and observing teen-agers in my family engage in this activity. That said, I see the incessant texting phenomenon with adolescents as an outgrowth of their social interactions with one another. Texting primarily is about adolescents participating in a discourse community with peers. In this respect it is a digital "hangout."

And, just as communication between adolescent peers in a face-to-face environment is fraught with all kinds of social innuendo and codes, so is text messaging. Adults often miss the important social subtleties in the symbols and acronyms used in adolescent text messages to one another because we are not full members of their discourse communities. Issues like digital bullying and texting while driving notwithstanding, I don't believe texting is something for adults to worry about.

Do you see the same behavior Nielsen tracked among the university students you know on campus? Have you caught any of your students texting in class when you're trying to talk to them?

ML: Absolutely! Many university students ... especially undergraduate students ... text in class. Most try to hide their phones on their laps or behind books, but I see texting in class on a regular basis. The classes I teach have enrollment caps of 24 students, so I am able to interact with students on an individual basis and can see many of the texting behaviors of my students. I imagine a great deal more texting is taking place in large lecture classes!

Such messages are made in a limited format of basically pidgin English or gibberish, or "microbursts." Are we raising a whole new generation that cannot communicate complicated or subtle thoughts, and if so, what are the implications? Is texting having a negative impact on readership capability or academic performance?

ML: I have been a full-time faculty member at two different university settings for the past 14 years. Needless to say, during the years I have been teaching college students, many changes have taken place technologically with e-mail, the portability of laptop computers, wireless Internet access in university classrooms, cellphone capabilities, and texting. During these years, I have also been teaching writing intensive classes to college students and studying the writing practices of "at risk" adolescents.

With these previous experiences in mind, I can honestly say I have seen no dramatic changes in the kinds of writing issues all of these students presented in school or academic settings. Even with the push for accountability in secondary settings to ensure high school students attain basic writing skills, I still see students at the university level who are unable to communicate complicated or subtle thoughts, organize their thinking, synthesize major ideas in writing, elaborate on concepts in writing, and to varying degrees write grammatically correct sentences.

All students p-16 need much more exposure to "academic" expectations for writing and better writing pedagogy. This was true 14 years ago and is still true sadly today. (Please see "The Neglected R" report ... http://www.nwp.org/cs/public/print/resource/2523)

To answer your question about students using "pidgin English" etc. in their writing, most college, high school and middle school students know how to code switch between texting styles of writing and "academic" styles of writing. Even the "at risk" middle school students I have studied know the difference between the two expectations for writing.

When such students do not demonstrate control of grammatical aspects of writing, they are still aware of the mistakes they make. They struggle, however, with strategies for attending to such mistakes in their writing. This is where writing pedagogy is critical. For students who are struggling writers, access to such strategies eludes them not because of the discourse communities they participate in via texting but because of the pedagogy they receive in school.

In effect, peer instruction in writing is the only writing instruction they connect with. Let me emphasize that I do not see peer forms of writing (like texting) as inherently damaging. They're just different. The key for educators teaching young adolescents about writing is to draw on students' knowledge about audience, tone, style etc. in the texting they routinely do and help them see the same rhetorical elements at work in academic writing.

In effect, spelling words correctly is not much of an issue. The issue with writing aptitude truly has to do with the deeper contours of writing described above being fundamentally absent from most student writing; however, this is not a new concern and one that has not arisen in recent years as a result of adolescents texting one another.

You have said that there's "a growing body of research that demonstrates adolescents' use of various digital literacies is a sophisticated literacy practice that is not capitalized on in school settings." How can schools use the texting experience in a positive way?

ML: Briefly, have students analyze the rhetorical elements of text messages, MySpace/Facebook postings, blogs, etc. Show them how much their social writing practices emulate expectations for academic writing and then apply the same analytical technique to academic texts.

Some say that e-mail is headed the way of the do-do bird, as many young people don't bother with it but instead head automatically to Twitter, Facebook or texting. Your thoughts?

ML: It's hard to predict the digital future, but I do not see e-mail going away too quickly in professional settings. For adolescents who are not in the world of work or attending college, e-mail is undoubtedly irrelevant to their lives and way too slow and cumbersome for communication with peers! Thus Twitter, IM, Skype, Facebook updates and texting are much more immediate and appealing to adolescents. They're also more multimodal, which is also appealing to adolescents.

Texting is cheaper than phone messages and less cumbersome than e-mail through a laptop. Are there any other reasons why texting is so enormously popular with young people?

ML: I think the appeal of texting for adolescents is largely the speed and convenience of communication. I also think texting allows adolescents to engage in conversations that exclude adults and other peers "not in the know" from participation. Text messaging language can be secretive and accessible to only a select few. That's part of the "hang out" aspect of texting and also part of the trend-setting creativity of texting where adolescents can create new words.

Is texting a "teen thing" or do you foresee it spreading significantly to adults?

ML: Like many trends in our society, adolescents are usually on the cutting edge of new trends that become mainstream practices and widespread social attitudes. Consider popular music trends. With this in mind, I think texting is going to be around for a while even with adults. The adults I know who text use it for particular purposes with particular discourse communities. Sometimes texting even crosses into professional discourse communities.

(Prof. Lesley has more than 18 years of teaching experience in high school, adult basic education, developmental reading, freshman composition and teacher preparation settings. She is also a fellow of the National Writing Project and past interim director for the High Plains Writing Project. She began her career as a literacy practitioner teaching freshman composition and technical writing at New Mexico State University while working on her master's degree in rhetoric and composition. She has a B.A. from the University of Iowa and a doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania.)

The average American teen sends and receives 3,339 text messages a month ... more than 100 a day ... according to the Nielsen Co. Your thoughts, please ... is this something good, something neutral or something to worry about? Is it trivial or important?

SL: I don't think this is a trivial fact. It is actually quite important ... this means that texting is the preferred method of communication among teens, who prefer it over telephone and e-mail. However, I would not see it as something to worry about, but rather something to acknowledge and to work with: it is an evolution in the way kids communicate, and evolutions are natural and unstoppable.

Do you see the same kind of texting behavior among young people in Hong Kong?

SL: Yes, definitely. In Hong Kong, China and all Asia, teens prefer texting over any other form of communication.  The same goes for Europe ... I am originally Italian and spend some time there every year. The phenomenon is the same all over the world. This makes me think even more that it is not so much a cultural preference, but a natural evolution brought forward by the availability of certain technology.

Such messages are made in a limited format of basically pidgin English or gibberish, or "microbursts." Are we raising a whole new generation in America that cannot communicate complicated or subtle thoughts, and if so, what are the implications? Is texting having a negative impact on readership capability or academic performance?

SL: This is an interesting question. On the one hand, it is true that this form of communication impacts the ability to communicate articulately and with depth. A lot of research has been done in these last few years about brain plasticity and how the medium affects the brain, so that by communicating always through a certain type of technology the brain develops in accordance with that technology. This means that it is very likely that teens will have a harder time communicating in a style and fashion which suits the academic parameters the previous generations have been raised in.

On the other hand, teens seem to understand each other very well. They would tell you that the thoughts they communicate through their gibberish language are actually subtle, that they can tell a mood or thought based on the sequence of words or a particular character used. This means that they are not lacking in communication skills, they are merely using a very different form of communication.

The problem is that this form of communication has evolved so quickly and so suddenly from one generation to the next that the supporting system, academic and social, is not ready to work with it. In this sense, the new generation will be a groundbreaking force ... it will change the rules, and it will probably have a difficult time doing so.

Some say that e-mail is headed the way of the do-do bird, as many young people don't bother with it but instead head automatically to Twitter, Facebook or texting. Your thoughts?

SL: This sounds very true. E-mail communications require structured thoughts. They are one-way communications, like letters, and therefore they are not practical for immediate, spontaneous, flowy exchanges. I think e-mail will not be completely outdated, at least for now, but it definitely will lose ground as an immediate form of communication.

Texting is cheaper than phone messages and less cumbersome than e-mail through a laptop. Are there any other reasons why texting is so enormously popular with teens?

SL: By their nature, teens are explorers. They are drawn to the most efficient way of communicating, which is quick, inexpensive, spontaneous and requires less energy. Texting does all this. Sending a quick text doesn't require looking up a phone number, or an e-mail address. It doesn't require cumbersome hardware. You don't have to wonder if the other person has received your text or not. It creates an uninterrupted flow between two people and gives teens a sense of connection with each other, which they naturally crave.

Is texting a "teen thing" or do you foresee it spreading significantly to adults?

SL: While it is mostly a teen thing, it is also spreading among adults. Facebook's success is not casual. However, adults will always feel a slight sense of disconnection from it, while teens live and breathe it.

Does your book "The Principle of Relevance" deal with texting?

SL: "The Principle of Relevance" deals with all digital communications, including texting, although it is not specifically dedicated to texting, it is mostly dedicated to e-mail overload.

When you speak at American companies, does the subject of the texting phenomenon come up? Do executives and workers seem to be concerned about it?

SL: At the moment, executives are mostly worried about the enormous quantity of e-mails they receive on a constant basis, on the computer and on their Blackberry. Most executives receive an average of 300 e-mails every day. My view on this is that this is also partly due to the fact that, as I mentioned before, e-mail is currently used in the corporate world for any kind of communication. Therefore people send e-mails even when texting ... or a conversation ... would be more appropriate. This creates situations where executives receive ... and send ... what I call "stream of consciousness" e-mails: one-liners of unstructured thought that create a lot of e-mail clutter without being productive. I have dealt with this in my short workbook "Manage Your Inbox," which is a sequel to "The Principle of Relevance."

(Stefania Lucchetti is an accredited mediator with the Hong Kong International Arbitration Center and a Coach U graduate. She is also an attorney and has been practicing corporate law for over 10 years in Europe and Asia focusing on the telecoms, IT, media and Internet industries. She assisted Internet pioneers such as Altavista and Yahoo in the early days of their penetration in Europe. Stefania regularly speaks for Fortune 500 companies and is often a guest in university programs. She is also a blogger on Technorati and the Huffington Post and is a member of the Information Overload Research Group (IORG). One of her blogposts ... http://stefanialucchetti.com/?p=206 ... is generally about communications in the new generation.)