Learning about language from IMers

The linguistic ramifications of the way people, especially young people, chatter via IM has become a popular topic among researchers.

One new examination suggests that instant messaging represents “an expansive new linguistic renaissance” and is not necessarily a dumbing down of language as some parents and educators fear, according to a report in New Scientist .

In fact, teens tend not to use abbreviations such as OMG and LOL as much as stereotypes would make you believe, according to University of Toronto researchers. In a stunner, the word “you” is used 9 out of 10 times over “u,” they found.

Researchers Sali Tagliamonte and Derek Denis analyzed more than a million words of IM communications plus 250,000 spoken words from 72 people aged 15-20 and found that instant messaging allows teens to use a “robust mix” of formal and slang language that shows off their creativity, according to the New Scientist report.

“IM is interactive discourse among friends that is conducive to informal language,” says Denis, “but at the same time, it is a written interface which tends to be more formal than speech.”

In another study of IM, Kent State University researchers found that instant messaging qualifies as its own language. Not that we really needed university researchers to tell us this, but instant messaging qualifies as its own language according to Kent State University researchers.