SHORT MESSAGE SERVICE (SMS) AND ENGLISH LANGUAGE USAGE IN SELECTED SECONDARY SCHOOLS IN NSUKKA URBAN

BY

EKERUE CHINEDU J.

SHORT MESSAGE SERVICE (SMS) AND ENGLISH LANGUAGE USAGE IN SELECTED SECONDARY SCHOOLS IN NSUKKA URBAN

TABLE OF CONTENTS Title Page - - - - - - i Approval Page - - - - - - ii Dedication - - - - - - - iii Acknowledgments - - - - - - iv Table of Contents - - - - - - v List of Tables - - - - - - vi Abstract - - - - - - - vii 1.1 CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION - 1 1.2 Statement of Problem - - - 9 1.3 Research Questions - - - 10 1.4 Purpose of Study - - - 10 1.5 Significance of Study - - - 10 1.6 Scope of Study - - - 11 CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW 2.0 Introduction - - - 12 2.1 Theoretical Framework - - - 12 2.1.1 Neogrammarian Theory of Language Change - 13 2.1.2 Image Theory of Meaning - - - 15 2.1.3 The Dynamics of Language - - - 16 2.1.4 Computer Medicated Communication (CMC) - 18 2.1.5 The Global System for Mobile Communication (GSM) 20 2.1.6 GSM Service - - - 22 2.1.7 Short Message Service - - - 24 2.1.8 Advantages of Short Message Service (SMS) - 26

2.1.9 Some Features of SMS - - - 27

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2.1.10 SMS as a Writing Skills - - - 29 2.2 Empirical Studies - - - 29 2.2.1 GSM and the Nigerian Situation - - 35 2.3 Conclusion - - - 38 CHAPTER THREE: METHODOLOGY 3.0 Introduction - - - 39 3.1 Research Method - - - 39 3.2 Area of Study - - - 42 3.3 Population - - - 42 3.4 Sample and Sampling Technique - - 43 3.5 Research Instrument - - - 43 3.6 Analysis of Data - - - 44 CHAPTER FOUR: COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS OF DATA 4.0 Introduction - - - - - - - 45 4.1 Research Question One - - - - - - 46 Table I; Unusual Abbreviations and their Suspected Meaning in the Students‟ Essay Writing - - - - - 46 Table II: Grammatical Errors in the Students‟ Essay Writing - 49 Table III: Punctuation Errors in the Students‟ Essay Writing - 51 Table IV: Spelling Errors in the students‟ Essay Writing - 52 4.2 Research Question Two - - - - - 55 Table V: Unusual Abbreviation and their Suspected Meaning in the Students‟ Text Messages - - - - - 55 Table VI: Grammatical Errors in Students Text Messages - 57 Table VII: Punctuation Errors in the Students Text Message - 58

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Table VIII: Spelling Errors in the Student‟s Text Message - 59 4.3 Conclusion - - - - - - - 62 CHAPTER FIVE: DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION 5.0 Introduction - - - - - - 63 5.1 Discussions of the Findings - - - - 63 5.1.1 Findings from Students‟ Essay Writing - - 63 5.1.2 Findings from Students‟ Text Messages - - 66 5.2 Recommendations - - - - - - 69 5.3 Conclusion - - - - - - - 71 5.4 Suggestions for Further Research - - - 72 References - - - - - - - 73 Appendix AI – 20: Samples of Students‟ Essay Writing Appendix BI – 15: Samples of Students‟ Text Messages

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LIST OF TABLES Table Pg i. Unusual Abbreviations and their Suspected Meaning in the Students‟ Essay Writing - - - - - 46 ii Grammatical Errors in the Students‟ Essay Writing - 49 iii Punctuation Errors in the Students‟ Essay Writing - - 51

iv. Spelling Errors in the Students‟ Essay Writing - 52

v. Unusual Abbreviation and their Suspected Meaning in

the Students‟ Text Messages - - - - - 55

vi. Grammatical Errors in Students Text Messages - - 57

vii. Punctuation Errors in the Students Text Message - - 58

viii. Spelling Errors in the Students Text Message - 59

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ABSTRACT

The advent of the technology called Global System of Mobile Communication (GSM) has brought in a paradigm shift from the conventional English Language Writing, to what researchers now call SMS system of communication. This has been observed in many places as well as Nigeria. English language being an official language in Nigeria and fast becoming a global language cannot diffuse into un-intelligibility through such influences like SMS language. The importance of language generally to man is such that any virus that portends catastrophe to it attracts special attention. Some research works have been carried out to trace the influence of the emerging trends on the users of this technology; this project is one of researchers aims at identifying the influence of SMS language on the writing performance of secondary school students, in Nsukka Urban Area of Enugu State, Nigeria. An extensive literature review has been carried out on the GSM technology, its special features especially the Short Message Services (SMS) that brought in this encoding of English language through text message, computer mediated communication, the importance and dynamics of language and other relevant aspects of the project topic. From the foregoing it is obvious that the SMS of GSM influences students’ writing.

CHAPTER ONE 1.1

INTRODUCTION Global system for mobile communication (GSM), is a digital telephone system that digitalizes and compresses data to help improve the speed of wireless mobile when communicating… (answers.yahoo.com/question/index3/11/09). GSM is one of the leading digital cellular systems that use narrowband Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) which allows eight simultaneous calls on the same radio frequency (Webopedia.internet.com/img/mock/rcat-new.gif.12/10/09). This system of communication is far more advanced than the traditional analogue cellular technology (Computer.com/ITNewspaperJan.2002 Pg.11). GSM uses a variation of time division multiple access (TDMA) and is the most widely used of the three digital wireless telephony technologies (TDMA, GSM and DMA).In 2007, more than 690 mobile networks provide GSM services across 213 countries and GSM represents 82.4% of all global mobile connections. According to GSM world, there are now more than 2 billion GSM mobile phone users worldwide. The number of mobile subscriptions the world is expected to see by the end of the ongoing year (2009) is reportedly heading for 4.6 billion as reported by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) secretary, recently (Softpedia.mht.14/10/09). One of the objectives for the GSM-based platform was to offer advanced services and functionality from a single network, and to meet this goal, the designers made it part of the standard and based the architecture on the Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) called model. (Comptuer.com/ITNewspaperl.Jan. 2002 Pg.11). GSM services are a standard collection of applications and features available to mobile phone subscribers all over the world and are the world‟s most dominant mobile phone standard. The design of the service is moderately complex because it must be able to locate a moving phone of the same service anywhere in the world. The GSM standard also provides separate facilities for transmitting digital data. This allows a mobile phone to act like any other computer on the Internet, sending and receiving data via the Internet protocol (Wikipedia, 2009). The mobile may also be connected to a desktop computer, laptop or Personal digital Assistants (PDA), for use as a network interface (just like a modem or Ethernet card) (Wikipedia, 2009). With the ascendancy of Information and Communication Technology (ICT), the world has been compressed into a global village. GSM enhanced the velocity of world communication. The gamut of services which mobile phone renders include

(1) Integrated Voice Call

(2) Internet Access; (separate facilities for transmitting digital data which allows a mobile phone to act like any other computer on the internet, sending and receiving data via the internet protocol)

(3) Circuit Switched Data

(4) General Packet Radio Service (GPRS),

(5) Music Player, (Mp3)

(6) Calculator

(7) Calendar

(8) Digital Colour Camera

(9) Short Message Services (SMS)

(10) MAPS

(11) Weather Channel

(12) You Tube

(13) Dictionary

(14) Encyclopedia

(15) Light

(16) Clock/alarm etc.

All these services are mostly transmitted in the English language. The internet, with the majority of its content/ learning is written in English and it is no wonder that people of this planet are using the English language as the vehicle and bridge across borders and cultures. The language has become a source of unity in communicating with a rapidly changing world (Baskerville, 14). So, at a time in history when people want to, and can, through the Internet connect with the world, English just happens to be the tool close at hand that can do the job. English language commands unparalleled international intelligibility. Onuigbo and Eyisi (2009, v) describe it as an important centripetal force that….. pulls divergent chords towards a central point in spite of the diversity of the world today. Even though computer and lasers are tools for the space age, English is the language of transmission. It has become a lingua franca, a global language regularly used and understood by many nations for whom English is not their first language. Any virus that interferes with English language learning portends a catastrophe for world unity and peace in the globalization process. With two billion people now speaking English or learning to speak it, we can creditably imagine a genuine global language.

Short Message Service (SMS) language or textese is a term for the abbreviations and slang most commonly used owing to the necessary brevity of mobile phone text messaging. The objective of textese is to use the fewest number of characters needed to convey a comprehensible message, hence, punctuation, grammar, and capitalizations are largely ignored. People like John Humphrey, a Welsh journalist and television reporter, has criticized textese as “wrecking our language”. He describes emoticons and textese as “irritating” and essentially lazy behaviours, and summarised that “sloppy” habits gained while using textese will result in student‟s growing ignorance of proper grammar and punctuation” (Wikipedia 14/01/09). David Crystal in his findings summarized in his popular book Txting: “the Gr8 Db8” says that despite scholarly research to the contrary, the popular notion that text messaging is damaging to linguistic development of young people and to the English language itself persists. (mhtml:file://:\smslanguage-Wikipedia,the free encyclopedia. Mht12/10/09).

Peter Baskerville in his book Global English: a Paradigm Shift (www.knol.google.com 14/10/09) says: “change has been the one constant in the development of the human race since the beginning. But never has change been so immense as it has been in the past decade. Just think about the massive changes taking place in our environment, technology, communications and economies just to name a few… and so it is now with language, in the form of Global English. According to him, recent statement has been made by researchers, that English in the 21st century has not only become the lingua franca of international business but is becoming the lingua franca of all global communication. The eventual effect on the English of this development can only be guessed at today, but there can be little doubt that they will be as important as anything that has happened to English in the past sixteen hundred years (Philip, Durkan.www.askoxford.com/world of Oxford/history. 1/10/09). In Nigeria , GSM means telecom explosion. The GSM revolution began in August 2001 and changed the face of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) in Nigeria. Since the GSM launch, mobile telephony has rapidly become the most popular method of voice communication in Nigeria. Growth has been so rapid that Nigeria has been rightly described in various fora as “one of the fastest growing GSM markets in the world”. A growing number of population in Nigeria own a mobile phone, making it an increasingly important aspect of everyone‟s lives. Likewise, GSM has revolutionized our business environment. Today, the people of Nigeria can transact their business from the comfort of their homes through the GSM facility (mhtml:file://E:\allAfrica-com. 16/10/09). Hamadoun Toure, International Communication Union (ITU) secretary general said, “ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) are vital within developing countries to ensure that ordinary people can fully participate in the knowledge economy of the 21st century (Softpedia.mht. 14/10/09). Nigeria is developing, and so… should not allow the ICT driven globalization, development, peace and unity be hampered by the said serious influence of the GSM/SMS, internet/email systems of communication. A high proficiency in the communicative ability of Nigerians in English language should rather be encouraged. Opinion differs as to the use of SMS language. People have expressed their concern about the influence of SMS on the English language and said that the popular SMS and e-mail phonetic spelling have corrupted the English language. There have been some reports in the media of children using SMS language for essay in school: (mhtml:file://H:\sms language. 10/14/09).

Prince Charles in The Guardian of June 8, 2005 attacked teachers in a gathering, saying that plans to allow children to study text messaging as part of GCSE English studies were damaging the prospects of future generation. Others maintain that text messaging is merely one stage of our revolution and it is on the way out. While some people decry the woe of text messaging and SMS language, others like David Crystal, a Professor of Linguistics in the University of Wales, Bangor9 said in The Guardian of February 28, 2005, that “the advent of new language styles and forms engendered by the Internet, and related communication development such as SMS messaging, should be greeted with delight”. To him, it is the greatest opportunity for the development of the English language since the advent of the printing press in the Middle Ages (mhtml:file//E:\textually_org). Experts believe that the new form of communication such as mobile phone texting, email and internet messaging are helping us to stay in touch with each other (mhtml://:GlobalEnglish.org/English a paradigm shift). In China, it is believed that text messaging preserves everyone‟s dignity by eliminating the human voice. It has also been observed that English has undergone four stages in the past and is in the process to the fifth. The four stages English Language has undergone as recorded by Peter Baskerville are

(1) Old English (Germanic tribe) 450 to 1100 AD

(2) Middle Age English (William the Conqueror) 1100 – 1500 AD

(3) Modern English (Dialect of London) 1500 – 1800 AD.

(4) Late Modern English (Industrial Revolution) 1800 – 2000.

(5) Post Modern English (Internet) since 2000.

Baskerville consequently observed that “those sceptable about a new English being created from the technology of the internet and text messages will only need to view the new 900 SMS acronym list from a social mobile network provider SMS Fun Dictionary to see how a new language can form from English within just a few years. The curiosity for this project arose when I intercepted a student teacher‟s text message during a gathering. This was what I saw in her mobile phone. Hi  hw r u. U‟re gr8, ryt? GF, I wntd 2 c u FTF A3 drng d hols, bt u wr scrse. FYI, u r enlstd 4 an award in ur dept. IMHO, u sld rsh bk 2 skul 2 clm it, IYKWIM CUL. :-*, MK  The effort both the girl and I made to decode the message proved abortive, until I personally took this message home and used the internet to find the full meaning of some of the abbreviations. The translation reads thus: “Hello love, how are you? You are great, right? Girl friend, I wanted to see you face to face, any place, anytime, any where during the holidays, but you were scarce. For your information, you are enlisted for an award in your department. In my humble opinion, you should rush back to school to claim it, if you know what I mean. See you later, smiling! Mike Love”

It may be illogical to hope and to believe that language is dynamic and thus not allow the apprehensions created by the above mentioned systems become verified. From the foregoing, it is obvious that something is happening between the conventional English grammar and/or usage and the system of its usage in the GSM/SMS as an information communicating technology. The pattern with which information is passed through the GSM has changed in structure and probably in other linguistic levels of English language. The major interest in this project is therefore to find out whether GSM/SMS system of communication has influenced conventional English language to such extent that students in secondary schools forget the standard rules of the language.

Some researches have been done on the influence of GSM/SMS language, with university undergraduates. An example is that of the National Universities Commission (NUC) and the British Overseers Administration (ODA) in 1990. Chiluwa (www.educ/utas.edu/au/users/Journal, Oct. 2009), of the Covenant University, Nigeria also researched on the extent to which textmessaging constructs Christian value belief system and sentiments in Nigeria. In the same vein a similar investigation was carried on the socioliguistic of mobile phone SMS usage in Cameroon and Nigeria by Feuba Wanji Elvis of the Department of English, University of Yaunde. Ezekwesili (2008: 382) has also studied the impact of GSM/ICT on undergraduate writing. All these researches found adverse impacts of SMS coded language on the English language. To the best of my knowledge, no such research has been conducted with secondary school students. No analysis has also been done on the pattern of text messaging with this group of students in Nsukka Urban. This study therefore, aims at determining the influence of the short message service (SMS) on secondary school students on the learning of this all important language and by extension, on the teaching of the most widely spoken language of our time, English.

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