The Death of Language

According to The Times of India (Nautiyal, 2004), students were using Short Message Service (SMS) lingoes in their exam papers. This may not seem to be a serious issue, but on a long-term run it will be as this will lead us to the death of language.

A way to learn lingo - Instant-Messaging (Source: http://communicator.pulver.com/)
What is a lingo? Well, it is best described as uncommon or unintelligible language because it is not normally use during a verbal communication. It is usually practiced by people in online chatrooms and text-messaging. Over the past couple of years, the numbers of this "language" or rather text abbreviations has increased. Environmental Studies (2007) provides a few examples of such abbreviations:

• AFK - Away from keyboard
  
• ASL - Age, sex, location
  
• ASAP - As soon as possible
  
• F2F - Face to face
  
• F2T - Free to talk
  
• RUOK - Are You OK?

Other similar cases where text abbreviations was used excessively is when a Scottish girl wrote her essay using text abbreviations instead of plain English (BBC News, 2003). Both of these incidents should be handled with seriousness as this could destroy the fundamental of the English language, or any languages for that matter.

Not everyone understands the meaning of the SMS or Internet lingoes. As said by Schirato and Yell (1996), any text must be drawn upon established and shared set of meaning if it were to be recognisable and readable. And according to Halliday & Hasan (1985), the context of situation plays a role on our understanding of the language and text. In both of these cases, it is important to remember that the examiners might have problems to understand the abbreviations and acronyms used as they are not from the online context of situation. The students should not allow this bad habit of them to affect them to the extent they will use in academic papers.

Another way to learn lingo - SMS(Source: http://www.bonrix.net/)
In my opinion, this is just a habit. It can be solved as long as one has the discipline to do it. Students must be more aware on using the appropriate language at an appropriate time as this could determine the life and death of language.



REFERENCES:

BBC News 2003, Is txt mightier than the word?, viewed 4 October 2007,
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/2814235.stm>

Environmental Studies 2007, Sms terms & sms glossary & sms definitions & sms abbreviation, viewed 5 October 2007,
<http://www.environmental-studies.de/SIM-Card/SMS/SMS-glossary/sms-glossary.html>

Halliday, M & Hasan R 1985, Language, context and text: aspects of language in a social-semiotic perspective, Deakin University, Victoria

Nautiyal, K 2004, Btw, is sms ok in da exm ppr?, Times of India, viewed 3 October 2007,
<http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/927414.cms>

Schirato, T & Yell, S 1996, Communication and cultural literacy: an introduction, Allen & Unwin, NSW, pp. 90-117