Does Texting Harm Language Ability?

Frequent Texters More Likely to Reject Unfamiliar Words

From PsychCentral:

A new linguistic study suggests university students who extensively text are less accepting of new words.

In the investigation, graduate student Joan Lee designed an experiment to understand the effect of text messaging on language. She found texting has a negative impact on people’s linguistic ability to interpret and accept words . . . .

“The people who accepted more words did so because they were better able to interpret the meaning of the word, or tolerate the word, even if they didn’t recognize the word. Students who reported texting more rejected more words instead of acknowledging them as possible words.”

Lee believes reading traditional print media exposes people to variety and creativity in language that is not found in the colloquial peer-to-peer text messaging used among young people.

She said reading encourages flexibility in language use and tolerance of different words. It helps readers to develop skills that allow them to generate interpretable readings of new or unusual words.