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Price: $14.95

Format:
Paperback 256 pp.
Cartoons, 129 mm x 196 mm

ISBN-10:
0199571333

ISBN-13:
9780199571338

Publication date:
August 2009

Imprint: OUP UK

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Txtng: The Gr8 Db8

David Crystal

This book takes a long hard look at the text-messaging phenomenon and its effects on literacy, language, and society. Young people who seem to spend much of their time texting sometimes appear unable or unwilling to write much else. Media outrage has ensued. "It is bleak, bald, sad shorthand," writes a commentator in the UK Guardian. "It masks dyslexia, poor spelling, and mental laziness." Exam answers using textese and reports that examiners find them acceptable have led to headlines in the tabloids and leaders in the qualities.

Do young people text as much as people think? Do adults? Does texting spell the end of literacy? Is there a panic in the media? David Crystal looks at the evidence. He investigates how texting began and who uses it, why and what for. He shows how to interpret its mix of pictograms, logograms, abbreviations, symbols, and wordplay, and how it works in different languages. He explores the ways similar devices have been used in different eras and discovers that the texting system of conveying sounds and meaning goes back a long way, all the way in fact to the origins of writing - and he concludes that far from hindering literacy, texting may turn out to help it.

Readership : Everyone interested in what's currently happening to language and communication; teachers, parents, students.

Reviews

  • Review from previous edition: "Crystal has a gift for explication and a wonderful eye for illustrative example."

    --New Statesman. 04.08.08
  • "It's a work that needed to be written. It's wholely persuasuve in its arguments."

    --Marcus Berkmann, Sunday Times 20/07/2008
  • "Wise, engagingly written, informative book."

    --James Delingpole. Daily Mail. 18/07/2008
  • "David is a sophisticated, open-minded tour guide."

    --Lloyd Evans. Spectator. 19/07/2008
  • "He combines an extraordinary knowledge of linguistics with a gift for popularizing."

    --TLS. 19/09/2008
  • "A highly consumable work of pop linguistics."

    --Los Angeles Times
  • "Excellent. Crystal presents a compelling argument in favour of texting as a force for linguistic ability."

    --Melissa Katsoulis, The Times 19/07/2008

List of cartoons
1. The Hype About Texting
2. How Weird is Texting?
3. What is Distinctive About it?
4. Why do They do it?
5. Who Texts?
6. What do They Text About?
7. How do Other Languages do it?
8. Why all the Fuss?
Glossary
Appendix
Index

There are no Instructor/Student Resources available at this time.

David Crystal is honorary professor of linguistics at the University of Wales, Bangor. He has written or edited over 100 books and published numerous articles for scholarly, professional, and general readerships, in fields ranging from forensic linguistics and ELT to the liturgy and Shakespeare. His books include the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language (2nd edn 1997), the Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language (2nd edn 2003), Words, Words, Words (OUP 2006), and The Fight for English (OUP 2006).

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Special Features

  • The world's best known linguist takes a hard look at txtng.
  • He comes up with some surprising and controversial conclusions.
  • Traces txtng system back to the origins of writing.
  • Fascinating, entertaining, instructive.
  • Illustrated with original cartoons by McLachlan.