Natasha Wing
How are instant messages and texts closer to spoken language rather than written?
Instant messages are closer to spoken language rather than written because of many reasons. Instant messages and texts are informal and spell words how they are pronounced like, ‘lyk’ and ‘hac’ would be examples of this. It would be in spoken language. Both written and spoken language can be used to show emotions through the use of facial expressions or emoticons. Spoken language is a lot more formal than written language. Multi Modal texts are texts that can be written and spoken, for example, a text message, which is written down, but can also be spoken due to the elements of spoken language within the text. Some people may argue that Instant messages and texts are multi modal as they can both be spoken and written. Traditionally language has been separated into speech and writing.
New technologies mean that this distinction is becoming more blurred. An example of this would be when people talk online using instant messages, it could be said that they were writing a form of spoken language. Communication of which has many of the qualities of spoken language but is not actually spoken, is referred to as Multi Modal text. Instant messages can be described as a multi modal text as it uses many of the features of Multi Modal Texts. Instant messages and text messages are closer to spoken language rather than written. Texting and Instant messages share many of the same purposes and features of talk that spoken language. For example, people often text to share gossip or arrange to meet up. As well as this, people often text using the same informal language that people would actually speak in. People can also show emotion and even body language through use of creative use of the text system. Predictive
