LANGUAGE USE AND TECHNOLOGY: A LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS ON THE SPELLINGS OF SMS TEXTS AMONG THE STUDENTS OF Addis Ababa UNIVERSITY

Abstract

This study was inspired by the aim of showing the nexus between language use and technology. The study has shown this relationship using a linguistic analysis of spelling patterns on some English text messages written via cell phones among the students of Addis Ababa University. A corpus of SMS texts was analyzed using textual analysis. It was found out that the spelling patterns of SMS texts are highly deviant from the conventional writing and rely on the principle of language economy. In most cases, the text messages are written in a way that can save space, time and energy. And this has made them to be vague. Hence, it is an eminent phenomenon that language use is being affected by technology and styles peculiar to this specific domain of language use are being cultivated and developed.