Sources

My first source is an article from Linkedin called "How Texting Changed the Way We Communicate" by Deltra Perryman. What I like about this article is that it is somewhat personal while not denying facts. The author discusses the way she uses her cell phone in comparison to her daughter, as well as the things she likes and doesn't like about texting. It mentions some issues I hadn't thought of when I started this, like how we are perceived as rude for holding 2 conversations at once, because often, that doesn't seem to affect people my age, we are constantly holding multiple conversations. This was my least intense article. It was personal, but gave me a lot to use in terms of ideas and feelings to mention in my project.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140918225325-76067504-has-text-messaging-changed-the-way-we-communicate


My next article is from Time magazine and it is called "Is Texting Killing the English Language?" by John McWhorter. This one went a little more in depth. Namely into how texting is closer to a spoken language than a writing style. It breaks down a few reasons why we shouldn't be concerned about texting changing English, things like how we write more formally that we speak and so we should stop comparing a formal written style to a casual language. It also discusses how English is constantly changing and that change is nothing new for English.It ends by mentioning that texting language is still coming along and evolving, further reason not to worry.

http://ideas.time.com/2013/04/25/is-texting-killing-the-english-language/

My next source is a research study called "Texting, Techspeak, and Tweens: The Relationship between Text Messaging and English Grammar Skills." This study goes the deepest exploring if there is a relationship between texting and a decrease in formal writing skills. It contains the most statistics and usable facts for my project. It says that they found no viable proof that texting is destroying language skills. It gave me a working definition for "techspeak" as a formal scientific term and helped me develop questions for my own study.

http://nms.sagepub.com/content/14/8/1304.full.pdf+html


My last source is interviews. Through Facebook message and email, I asked 13 people 3 simple questions. The 6 younger people were my friends, my cousin and my cousins roommates, the older, some of my moms work friends and coworkers. I wanted to display a few ages from my generation and a few from previous generations. The questions I asked were:
1. Do you believe texting is changing the Enligsh language, spoken or written? 

2. What kind of changes do you see?

3. Do you think these changes are for better or worse? Why?

I chose these questions because they were fairly simple and somewhat open ended. I wanted to see how people truly did react to texting and the language of texting and report that in addition to the facts I found. I think peoples perception of texting will have a greater impact on the language than facts and statistics.