Assessment
The English language is an enormous, flowing language, with all sorts of creative aspects and devices. Creativity in the English language is evident through use of text speech, occurring due to the lack of paralinguistic features in addition to the mere selection of the 136 available characters, and shown by the nuances and idioms of spoken language.
In text speech, via the use of a meagre emoticon, we can instantly add facial expression to the otherwise featurelessness of text speech. The paralinguistic device of expression is extremely important in all forms of communication, adding emotion and depth to a statement. However, an emoticon can also be used to show sarcasm, a feature of language usually only available by use of nuances, as the only method of detecting sarcasm is via tone, pitch and body language. Emoticons are extremely creative as they make up for the lack of paralinguistic features to show facial expression only by using a few simple symbols. An example of an emoticon in use is [from the text conversation between Mark and Alex] “nm im at skl :’( “. The use of the emoticon “ :’( “ shows the reader that the speaker, or ‘texter’ in this case, is unhappy about what they are doing. Furthermore, this statement brings use to our next point, abbreviations. Abbreviations and acronyms are used to crop down words, or to take the first letter of each word in a phrase, or idiom, to create a new word, normally only a few letters long. These phrases, such as “ nm “ (meaning ‘Not Much’) ,as shown by the previous example, are used in every day text speech, and are widely recognised. These phrases are created due to the fact that in texting, speed and brevity are very important. This is because it is difficult to type extended messages into a phones small keypad; these phrases have developed to make it less complicated to communicate with speed.
Spoken and text language are becoming interchangeable, as slang in spoken language is being used in text-based conversation, and abbreviations are becoming commonly used in everyday language, particularly by the younger generations. For instance, the acronym “ LOL “ is said by many people, taking place of laughter. However, this beats the purpose of LOL, (meaning laugh out loud). Additionally
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