It is ironic as linguists are not the ones who are concerned about this matter but the teachers in school who have had to mark some some badly written write-ups . David Crystal , a linguist who came up with ' Txtng : the Gr8 db8' basically makes two general points :
- The language of texting is hardly as deviant as people think
- Texting actually makes young people better communicators, not worse.
I personally feel by knowing the different kinds of usage of english , be it in new-media terms ( electronic text messaging) or even in journalism short-hand, all of it are various ways of communication and it is our responsibility to be aware of it and learn accordingly . As for adults, they should educate the younger generation appropriately and not come across as questioning such language ability as a form of judgment. Logically, before you can learn how to write abbreviated forms effectively, one will need to have a sense of how the sounds of your language relates to the letters, as mentioned by David crystal in a written news article. In addition to that, statistics have also shown that the more adept children were at text messaging, the better they did in spelling and writing as they were more aware of what was and was not appropriate.
This whole issue of literacy in the new media still comes aross as a national controversy, but as long as we know our role in what is appropriate in english language , we will inevitably be more responsible for our way of educating ourselves and future generations.