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Páginas: 305-317 Recibido: 2023-01-18 Revisado: 2023-05-18 Aceptado: 2023-05-26 Preprint: 2023-07-31 Publicación
Final: 2023-09-01 |
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Olga Fernández-Juliá |
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Alejandro
Gómez-Camacho |
Abstract
The aim of
this article is to find out what scientific production exists on digital
communication and the use of textisms between 2009 and 2022, which will allow
us to identify which are the lines of research most worked on in this field, as
well as to find the current state of the
question. To this end, the systematic review methodology PRISMA (2021) has been
used. After conducting the search and applying the exclusion criteria, a total
of 62 articles were finally obtained from two databases: Web of Science and
Scopus, after which the results were analysed. First, a quantitative analysis was carried out to find out
how the published works were distributed in the
selected years, in which journals they appeared the most frequently and to
which countries and universities the authors with the most publications on the
subject belonged. Second, a qualitative analysis has
been carried out on the thematic lines they deal with and possible future lines
of research. The results show a great disparity between the different articles,
especially those dealing with the relationship between literacy and the use of
textisms, which in turn show discrepancies in their conclusions on the
relationship between the two variables.
Resumen
El objetivo de este estudio es conocer la producción
científica que existe entre los años 2009 y 2022 sobre el uso de textismos en la
comunicación digital, lo que permitirá la identificación de cuáles son las
líneas de investigación más trabajadas en este ámbito, así como el conocimiento
sobre el estado actual de la cuestión. Para ello se ha optado utilizar la metodología
de revisiones sistemáticas PRISMA (2021). Tras realizar la búsqueda y aplicar
los criterios de exclusión, se ha obtenido una muestra final de 62 artículos a
partir de dos bases de datos: Web of Science y Scopus. Posteriormente se ha
realizado un análisis de los resultados. En primer lugar, un análisis
cuantitativo para conocer cómo se han distribuido estas publicaciones
encontradas en los años seleccionados, en qué revistas aparecen con mayor
asiduidad y a qué países y universidades pertenecen los autores con más
publicaciones sobre la temática. En segundo lugar, se ha realizado un análisis
cualitativo sobre las líneas temáticas de las que tratan y posibles futuras
líneas de investigación. Los resultados evidencian una gran disparidad entre
los distintos artículos destacando los que se ocupan de la relación entre la alfabetización
y el uso de textismos, que a su vez muestran discrepancias en sus conclusiones
sobre la relación entre ambas variables.
Keywords
/ Palabras clave
Interpersonal communication,
Mobile communication, Writing, Telephone,
Bibliographic databases, Electronic media, literacy, handwriting instruction.
Comunicación interpersonal, comunicación móvil, escritura, teléfono, base
de datos bibliográfica, medios electrónicos, alfabetización, enseñanza de la
escritura
1. Introduction
Mobile
phones are part of the daily lives of a significant part of the world's
population. According to Statista (2021) 6.259 billion people are smartphone
subscribers and this number is expected to continue to rise in the coming
years. Consequently, the number of
active participants in major social networks is growing, according to the
latest data published by Statista (2022). Facebook currently has 2.91 billion
active participants, YouTube with 2562 million, WhatsApp with 2000 million and
Instagram with 1478 million, being the social networks with the largest number
of users worldwide.
Although
the number of mobile phone users continues to grow every year, mobile phones
started to become a very useful accessory in people's daily lives more than two
decades ago. Around 1993, SMS (short messaging service) appeared and became
very popular since then and is still popular today in many countries (Yus,
2021, 7). Since the beginning of the 21st century, a very rapid increase of SMS
(Short Messaging Service) users started to be observed in the younger
generation that did not follow conventional spelling and grammatical rules
(Verheijen, 2013, 583).
It
is clear that the Internet and the use of
mobile phones have affected the way adults and young people communicate
(Drouin, 2014, 265). This computer-mediated communication (CMC) language, with
its own characteristics, has been referred to as ‘Digitalk’ (Chalak, 2017, 67),
‘textspeak’ or ‘textese’ (Verheijen, 2013, 583). ‘Digitalk’ or ‘textese’ is primarily
characterised by the use of textisms (Burrell and Beard, 2022, 7), which are
defined as intentional discrepancies in the spelling of words and abbreviations
used in text messages (Bernicot et al., 2014). Also considered textisms
are emoticons that are introduced into speech and the repetition of letters,
both of which are resources that function as forms of non-verbal communication
in digital communication (Nixon and Guajardo, 2022) since, as López (2013, 89)
states, this language is characterised by being very close to oral
language.
Textisms
in English, according to Verheijen (2013), are
the use of abbreviations or contractions, phonological abbreviations, acronyms,
clippings, or omission of punctuation marks, apostrophes, and capital letters among others.Some
examples of textisms in Spanish could be the shortening of words, the omission
of punctuation marks, the non-normative use of letters such as k, x,
w, or z,
the emphatic use of capital letters, the creation of new words or the use of
foreign words (Gómez Camacho and Gómez del Castillo, 2017). These textisms can
be classified into three main groups: phonetic-phonological textisms,
lexical-semantic textisms and finally multimodal textisms (Núñez Román et al.,
2022).
As
Drouin (2014, 251) argues, as texting and this new form of writing gained
popularity, the media began to instil a certain fear in society about the
impact it could have on communication and language in general. This idea has
also reached the field of education, with many parents and teachers fearing
that their children or students might somehow forget the norms of the standard
language as taught at
school (Verheijen, 2018, 112; Totanes and Lintao, 2019, 16). Consequently,
there is frequent research that not only attempts to describe the new language
(Tragant et al., 2020), but also asks about the relationship between
literacy and the use of textisms in younger speakers (Gómez-Camacho y Gómez del
Castillo, 2017; van Dijk et al. 2016; Wood et al., 2014) and enquires into the perceptions and attitudes towards
textisms of various age groups. (Wray, 2015)
Consequently,
a literature review of the literature published so far that provides an
overview of how the scientific production on digital communication and textisms
is evolving is highly relevant for the field of education, as it offers a
representation of the use of textisms and their relation to spelling, writing
and other literacy skills, among other aspects.
1.1. Objective
The aim of this
systematic review is to analyse the worldwide scientific production on textisms
and digital standards (textese), in Spanish and English. The aim is to
determine in which countries, which authors,
and in which journals the most is written on this subject, as well as the lines
that have been developed in recent years.
This general
objective is specified as follows:
·
To analyse how the volume of scientific production is distributed in the
years between 2009 and 2022.
·
To identify the scientific journals with the highest number of articles
published on the subject.
·
To find out the most relevant authors who have written on this subject
in the last twelve years, as well as the countries and universities they come
from, and the impact of their publications.
·
To compare the lines of research that have been put forward in the
analysis of textisms and the digital norm (textese) and to analyse their
evolution over time.
2. Method
A systematic review has been carried out following the guidelines of the
PRISMA Declaration (Page et al. 2022) with the main objective of finding
out how many scientific publications deal with the use of textisms and the
digital standard and what their main characteristics are.
First, the eligibility criteria of the publications were determined, and then the information was searched using the Web of Science and Scopus
databases as sources. Finally, the search and selection of publications was
carried out (González Moreno and Molero Jurado, 2022; López-Meneses et al.,
2015).
Given the nature of the data to be processed, it was decided to carry out
a quantitative and qualitative analysis (Colás-Bravo and Quintero-Rodríguez,
2023). Specifically, a quantitative analysis of the data has been carried out
in order to be able to respond to the objectives set out on the years of
publication of articles on the subject, journals with the highest number of
publications on the subject, authors, universities, and countries with the highest production. On the other hand, to
determine the main trends in scientific production on the subject and its
evolution, we opted for a qualitative analysis carried out with the VOSviewer
software tool, which allows us to construct and visualise bibliometric
networks, obtain the analysis of the concurrence of keywords and their graphical
representation, as well as the connection between them and the year of
publication.
2.1. Eligibility Criteria
·
Exclusion
criteria
It was decided to exclude
all articles published prior to 2009, as this is the year in which the WhatsApp
instant messaging application was created. Another criterion for exclusion was
the language of the publication, omitting all publications that were not
written in Spanish or English. All conference papers, book chapters, etc. were
also excluded. These two criteria were decided on the basis of the reference
articles cited in the introduction. Finally, the fourth exclusion criterion was
to eliminate those publications that used students with specific educational
support needs or language disorders as a sample. All duplicates have also been
excluded.
·
Inclusion
criteria
Only articles that have been
written from 2009 to the present have been selected. Second,
only publications written exclusively in English or Spanish were selected.
Journal articles have been included.
2.2. Sources
of information
The sources of information used for this study were two databases: Web Of
Science and Scopus, two of the most relevant databases in the field of social
sciences. The last time they were consulted to identify the resources was in
December 2022.
2.3.
Search strategy
In order to answer the objective of this article, three searches were
carried out. In the first one, the term "textism" was searched, then "textisms", and finally the term "textese" was searched.
2.4. Publication
selection process
To
determine whether a study met the inclusion criteria for this review, which had
been previously designed, two mechanisms were established depending on the
nature of each of the criteria.
Firstly, the filtering tools
offered by the Web of Science and Scopus databases were used to eliminate
publications prior to 2009, those written in a language other than English or
Spanish, and finally those that were not articles.
Secondly, to
identify articles that deal with
specific educational support needs or language disorders, as well as topics outside the fields of education or linguistics, the researchers read and reviewed the articles.
3. Findings
3.1. Selection
of studies
After searching for the terms ‘textism’, ‘textisms’, and ‘textese’, 69 publications were found on Web of Science and 84 on Scopus (n=153). In the screening phase, 26 publications were eliminated,
5 of them because they were published before 2009, 4 because they were written in
a language other than English or Spanish and 17 because they were not articles.
Once this screening was completed, 50 duplicate records were eliminated.
In the eligibility phase, after an in-depth reading of each article, 7
were eliminated because they focused on how digital communication affects
people with language disorders or difficulties, as well as other pathologies,
and 8 because they were not sufficiently related to the subject of this study,
focussing on areas such as computer science or medicine, among others.
The articles were selected and assessed according to the eligibility
criteria that were previously designed. Two different methods were used to
decide whether an article met the inclusion criteria of the review. Firstly,
for the inclusion criteria referring to years, languages, and types of publication, the filters provided by the databases
themselves (Web of Science and Scopus) were used. With this first screening, a
total of 26 articles were eliminated, leaving 108 to continue the selection process. Secondly, the 50 duplicate records were
eliminated. Thirdly, to
identify the articles that dealt with specific educational support needs or
language disorders and those whose subject matter differed greatly from that of
this review (textisms and the digital norm), the 77 articles that remained
after all the screening and elimination of duplicates were read in full. After
this complete reading, 15 articles were eliminated. Finally, 62 articles were selected and identified for systematic review.
This whole process is reflected in Figure 1.
Figure 1. Flow diagram of study selection
3.2. Characteristics
of the studies and results of the synthesis
3.2.1. Quantitative
data analysis
The scientific production on textisms and the digital norm since 2009 has
been distributed as shown in Figure 2. The number of articles published
annually is particularly noteworthy in 2011 (n=7), 2014 (n=8) and 2017 (n=7).
However, in the last four years: 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022 we observe a slight
decrease in scientific production on this topic. Between 2013 and 2018, more
than half of the publications analysed in this review are concentrated (61.29%).
Figure
2. Articles published by year in Web of Science and Scopus on textism and
textese
Of the 62 articles that make up the total, 58 were written in English and
only 4 in Spanish. This fact should not be confused with the language in which
textisms are studied in each of the articles since, although only the articles
written in two languages have been selected, these articles deal with digital
communication and the use of textisms in a total of thirteen different
languages. 61.29% of the articles analysed focus on digital
communication and textisms in the English language (Kemp et al., 2010;
Houghton et al., 2018; Al-Kadi and Ahmed, 2018). Second, we find 6 articles, i.e., 9.68% of the total that focus on the study in
the Spanish language (Hunt-Gómez et al., 2022; Gómez-Camacho et al.,
2018) and another 6 articles that focus on French (Jacquet et al., 2021;
Goumi and Besançon, 2019; Lanchantin et al., 2015). Third, we find 3 articles that work on the Dutch language (Verheijen and van
Hout, 2022; Van Dijk et al., 2016) and 2 that do not focus on any
language as they review the use of textisms in general. Finally, we find one
article focusing on Singapore English and Singlish (Ong, 2017), one on
Afrikaans, English and Isixhosa (Bock, 2013), one on English and Basque (Cenoz
and Bereziartua, 2016), one on english and malay (Marzuki, 2013), one on
Nigerian (Onanuga, 2017), one on Kerala and finally one focusing on Portuguese
(Núñez-Román et al., 2022).
The 62 articles finally analysed are spread over a total of 50 journals.
In first place, we find the Journal of computer assisted learning, which
accounts for six of the articles. It is worth noting that, as can be seen in
Table 1, the four journals with the highest number of articles on textism and
textese are from the United Kingdom.
Table 1
Analysis of the main journals publishing
articles on textism and textese
|
Name of the journal |
No. Of publications |
Country of origin |
H-Index |
Scopus Quartile |
JCR Quartile |
Areas |
|
Journal of computer assisted
learning |
6 |
United Kingdom |
98 |
Q1 |
Q1 |
Education |
|
Writing
Systems Research |
4 |
United Kingdom |
16 |
Q1 |
|
Linguistics and language |
|
Language Matters |
3 |
United Kingdom |
12 |
Q2 |
Q4 |
Linguistics |
|
Journal
of Research in Reading |
2 |
United Kingdom |
53 |
Q1 |
Q2 |
Education |
|
British
Journal of developmental psychology |
2 |
United States |
82 |
Q2 |
Q3 |
Psychology |
|
PsychNology journal |
2 |
Italy |
26 |
|
|
|
|
Reading and Writing |
2 |
Netherlands |
80 |
Q1 |
Q1 |
Education |
Although scientific production on
this subject is very divided between years and journals, in the case of the
authors, we find that 69.35% of the articles reviewed were written by nine
authors. This shows that there are a number of authors who are highly specialised
in these subjects, as shown in Table 2:
Table 2
Analysis of the main authors publishing
articles on textism and textese
|
Author |
Number
of publications |
University |
H-Index |
|
Nenagh Kemp |
12 |
University of Tasmania |
25 |
|
Abbie Grace |
5 |
University of Tasmania |
|
|
Alejandro Gómez-Camacho |
5 |
Universidad de Sevilla |
11 |
|
Lieke Verheijen |
4 |
Radboud University |
10 |
|
Clare Wood |
4 |
Nothingham Trent University |
33 |
|
Frances H. Martin |
4 |
Newcastle University |
|
|
Antonine Goumi |
3 |
Université Paris Nanterre |
6 |
|
Rauno Parrila |
3 |
Macquarie University |
53 |
|
Beverly Plester |
3 |
Coventry University |
|
|
|
|
|
|
In terms of universities, we find scientific production
on this subject in a total of 72 universities. As with the authors, we find a number of universities, specifically 8,
which account for the production of 54.17% of the universities in total. The
university with the greatest presence in this review is that of Tasmania
(Australia) with a total of 13 articles, followed by Radboud University and the
University of Seville with 5 articles each. Finally, we find Covertry
University, The University of Newcastle (Australia), Universite de Toulouse,
Université Paris Nanterre and Université Toulouse- Jean Jaurés with three
articles with a member of this university.
As can be seen in Figure 3,
Australia (n=12) and the United States (n=11) are the countries with the
highest scientific output over the last thirteen years. In third place, we find
the United Kingdom (n=8) followed by the European countries Spain (n=7), France
(n=6) and the Netherlands (n=5).
This information allows us
to have an international overview of how research on digital communication and
the use of textisms is distributed around the world.
Finally, the characteristics
of the study samples and the participants were
analysed. Of the 62 articles selected for this review, 55 of them had
participants or samples. The mean number of participants in the studies is
294.02. The article with the fewest participants of those analysed is Bernicot et
al. (2012) with 19 and the one with the highest number of participants is
Parrella et al. (2021) with a total of 7734. There is a large difference
in the number of participants between the different articles.
On the other hand, the ages
of the participants are also very varied. Most
of the articles, 35 of them, focus on young people between
the ages of 18 and 25 years. In second
place are the 12 articles that focus on 13–17-year-olds, followed by the 10
articles that study children aged 9-12. The least numerous studies are those focussing on adults over the age of 25, with only 4
of them.
3.2.2. Qualitative
data analysis
The
articles analysed in this systematic review can be divided into three different
themes: Those that study the relationship between the use of textisms and
literacy, those that approach the subject from a descriptive point of view, and finally
those that focus on the attitudes and perceptions of different groups of people
about the use of textisms.
The
articles which study the relationship between the use of textisms and literacy
are the most numerous, accounting for 40.32% of the total number of articles
analysed. These, in turn, can be divided into two main blocks: those which
study literacy in a global way, which are a total of 12 articles, and another
13 articles which focus on specific skills within literacy, among which we can
highlight spelling, which is dealt with in 6 articles, informal and formal
writing, which is dealt with in 3 articles, reading (1), creativity (1) and
some combine two of the aforementioned skills, for example, reading and
spelling or writing and spelling.
On
the other hand, we find a total of 23 articles which address the question of
textisms in a descriptive way, trying to characterise how textisms are used in
different contexts by people of a specific age.
Thirdly, we find a total of 12 articles
that focus on attitudes and perceptions towards textisms. Finally, it is worth
highlighting the existence in this list of two articles that carry out a
bibliographical review of what has been published on textisms in recent years.
Among
the 25 selected articles that address the relationship between the use of
textisms and literacy in general or specific aspects of literacy, there is a
wide disparity in the conclusions reached by the different studies on the
nature of this relationship. We find a number of studies that conclude that
there is no negative relationship between the use of textisms and literacy,
i.e., they consider that after having carried out the study it cannot be said
that the use of textisms harms the literacy of the participants, such as the
study carried out by Wood et al. (2011). In this case, they even
state that in the case of children, the use of textisms is associated with an
improvement in literacy skills, especially in spelling. These results are
congruent with those published by Plester et al. (2009), although they
insist that these correlations need to be studied further and emphasise that a
good way to do this would be through a longitudinal study. Bernicot et al.
(2014) conducted such a study and concluded that the correlation between the
level of traditional spelling and the density of textisms depended on the type
of textism used, as well as other variables.
We
also found studies that not only deny a possible negative relationship, but
also affirm the existence of a positive relationship between the use of
textisms and spelling ability. Wood et al. (2011) found that the use of
abbreviations was related to better spelling skills. In the same vein, Bushnell
et al. (2011) found that the proportion of textisms correlated
positively with overall spelling ability.
Finally,
several studies conclude that the relationship
they have observed between textisms use and literacy is negative. Drouin (2011) found a
negative relationship between the use of textisms in certain contexts and
literacy, in particular with reading accuracy. Along the same lines, in the
study by De Jonge and Kemp (2012), a negative relationship was observed between
the use of textisms and reading, spelling, and
morphological awareness.
To be able to describe
the lines of research of the total number of articles
more precisely, an analysis of the connections between the keywords in
each of the articles was carried out. To do this, we used
VOSviewer software version 1.6.7, a tool whose main purpose is to construct and
visualise bibliometric networks. Figure 4 shows the co-occurrence matrix with
the criterion of two or more repetitions. This criterion was met by a total of
31 items of 143.
Figure 4. Graphical representation with VOSviewer of
the thematic areas associated with textism and textese
To interpret the figure
above, it should be taken into account that, as Colás-Bravo and Quintero
Rodríguez (2023, 55) indicate, the frequency of occurrence determines the size
of the terms and the label. Terms with high levels of correlation are located
in the central area, while words with low levels of correlation are located at
the extremes.
In the network obtained in the analysis, three thematic clusters can be
distinguished:
·
Cluster 1 (red colour) In this first cluster we find
15 items. It is the most numerous group and includes the following terms:
abbreviations, literacy, spelling, knowledge, mobile phones, links, children,
students, teenagers, adults, sms, lol, literacy skills, texting, and text-messaging.
·
Cluster 2 (green colour) Secondly, in the green
group there are 10 items, among which we can highlight language, digital
communication, WhatsApp or instant messaging.
· Cluster 3 (blue colour). Finally, in the
third cluster, the smallest of all, there are six
items: text messaging, textims, computer-mediated communication, linguistics, undergraduates, and literacies.
The analysis of the clusters
shows a strong relationship between textisms and language in general with
literacy, especially in children and undergraduates, although adolescents and
adults also appear to a lesser extent.
On the other hand, in order
to analyse the evolution of research articles between 2009 and 2022, the same
concurrence analysis has been carried out, with the difference that on this
occasion the colours of the graph provided (Figure 5) are determined by the
year or years in which these terms begin to appear.
Figure 5. Graphical representation with VOSviewer of
the evolution by year of the themes associated with textism and textese.
The keywords observed in the
first articles analysed, approximately between
2009 and 2014, are mobile phones, SMS, and undergraduates. This indicates that since
the terms ‘textisms’ and ‘textese’ began
to appear in the literature, they have been associated with the use of mobile
phones and specifically with SMS (Short Messaging Service). In these early
years, studies focused on undergraduates.
In the following years,
between 2014 and 2017, terms such as language, abbreviation
spelling, or language began to appear.
In the most recent years, that is, from 2018 onwards, we find keywords such as
WhatsApp, digital communication or computer-mediated communication.
It can be seen how the focus
of studies on this topic has changed over the last few years. At the beginning,
studies were mainly focused on the study of SMS, and the approaches are opening
up in terms of their subject matter towards a greater presence of linguistic
studies that try to characterise what linguistic communication is like. In
addition, studies are increasingly focussing on
the WhatsApp instant messaging application
WhatsApp.
4. Discussion and conclusions
The last two decades have seen a series of substantial changes in the way
we communicate, brought about by CMC and the widespread use of instant
messaging applications that have been appearing over the last few years. The
growing interest in these changes, reflected in modifications of digital
written language with the use of shortenings, emoticons, or changes in the way words are written, is indisputable. This is why
scientific production on digital communication and the use of textisms appeared
shortly after the first manifestations of changes in language, in SMS. For this
reason, it was considered appropriate to carry out a bibliometric analysis to
find out what has been written on this subject, which topics have been
addressed the most, which authors are most specialised, and which journals have been responsible for disseminating this type of
study in recent years, as well as other relevant issues. In this way, in
addition to knowing what has been done to date, it allows us to consider
possible future lines of research that may be of interest to the subject.
The volume of scientific production on digital communication and textisms
does not show a linear trend in the years that have been analysed (2009-2022).
This is why it is currently very difficult to predict what the trend will be in
the coming years in the number of articles to be published on the selected
topic.
In the process of screening
publications, all publications that were not written in Spanish or English were
eliminated, but by applying this filter, we only lost a total of two articles that were written in another
language. Of the 62 articles analysed,
58 are written in English, which is 93.55% of the total. This fact could be explained by other data that have been analysed in
other research objectives of this review, such as the fact that four of the
five journals with the highest number of publications are from English-speaking
countries such as the United Kingdom or the United States. It is noteworthy
that the four journals with the most publications are from the United Kingdom
and all of them have a high quartile in Scopus, which indicates that there is a
real interest in studies on this subject, which is capable of attracting high
impact journals such as the Journal of computer assisted learning, Writing
Systems Research, Language Matters or the Journal of Research in
Reading. In these four journals, we find the Social Science area as one of the main areas, with two
sub-areas standing out: education and linguistics and language.
In addition, the authors with the highest number of publications on the
subject almost all come from universities where English is the main language,
such as Nenagh Kemp and Abbie Grace from the University of Tasmania and Clare
Wood from Nothingham Trent University. We highlight the case of Alejandro
Gómez-Camacho, Antonine Goumi and Lieke Verheijen, the only authors of those
with more publications who do not come from a university located in an
English-speaking country, although almost all the publications of these authors
that form part of the review are written in English.
Regarding the subject matter of each of the articles, a keyword analysis was performed using VOSviewer software. It is worth highlighting the relevance of the
word ‘language’, which is shown to be the most relevant of the selected
articles, as all of them try to find out more about the language of digital
media.
It
is worth noting the presence of numerous articles that address the relationship
between the use of digital language characterised by the use of textisms and
literacy. These studies have probably been designed with the aim of responding
to the widespread fear that has been conveyed in the media (Drouin, 2014, 251)
and that parents and teachers have been sharing for several years about whether
the language of their children and students
could deteriorate (Verheijen, 2018, 112).
However, in the review, no clear and unique answer can be found to the question of whether the
use of textisms could affect literacy.
These
diverse results could be due to, as Verheijen (2013, 596) states, the great
differences in the design of the studies' methodologies as well as the samples
selected. In this review, we find studies ranging from studies with 19
participants (Bernicot et al., 2012) to studies with a sample size of
718 participants (Rosen et al., 2010).
Regarding
the evolution of the subject matter of the articles in recent years, it is
worth noting that despite the initial predominance of studies that focused on
studying SMS (Plester et al., 2009) (Kemp, 2010; Coe et al. 2011;
Marzuki, 2013), a new trend can be observed: exploring digital communication
via WhatsApp (Van Dijk et al. 2016) (Gómez-Camacho and Gómez del
Castillo, 2017; Tragant et al. 2020), thus opening up a new space in the
field of education that could have a long way to go.
Finally,
this systematic review allows us to determine possible lines of research that
could be addressed in the future, such as the continuation of studies that
focus on WhatsApp, describing the language used in this application, as well as
the correlation that may exist between the use of textisms in this application
and literacy, as there are still few articles that we found with these
characteristics, which prevents us from generalising or comparing the
conclusions between studies. Thus, if the observed tendency to affirm that
textisms not only do not harm literacy but
that students who use them have more skills in general or in specific areas
such as spelling, it would be important for parents and teachers to be aware of
this so that, as Bushnell et al. (2011,
35) argue, they can help this new form of written communication to foster
children's interest and skills in language and literacy. Furthermore, the
analysis of language and textisms used on emerging platforms such as Twitch
could be explored.
By way of speculation, one could say that it is a good idea to introduce
the digital norm as a resource for literacy in the classroom. Following the
model of Bernicot's research (2014) for the French language, the difference of
textisms that associate phonemes and graphemes in a different relationship to
other textisms suggests that new ways could be explored for the didactics of
spelling that relate textisms to the academic norm. In the case of the Spanish
language, the faults related to the digraph "qu" may establish a link
with the textisms of k. In the case of auxiliary signs, the omission of tildes
is a recurrent fault in the Spanish language that could be worked on the basis
of textisms of omission of tildes, which are also very frequent. However, this
is not a conclusion supported by the present study, but a suggestion.
Support
This study is part of the
doctoral thesis entitled "Textismos y norma digital del alumnado
adolescente" by Olga Fernández-Juliá, under the supervision of Alejandro Gómez-Camacho.
It is also part of the project "La escritura digital del alumnado
adolescente en Andalucía. La mensajería instantánea y sus implicaciones
educativas" (US-1380916) of the University of Seville, co-funded by the
European Union's ERDF Operational Programme 2014-2020 and by the Regional
Ministry of Economic Operational Programme ERDF 2014-2020 of the European Union
and by the Consejería de Transformación Económica, Industria, Conocimiento y
Universidades de la Junta de Andalucía (Spain).
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