Thursday, December 20, 2012

Happy Birthday SMS! 20 years old.



The first SMS was sent  by a British engineer called Neil PapWorth, who wrote from his computer “Happy New Year” to his colleague Richard Jarvis.
One year later, in 1993, Nokia showed the first mobile phone which permitted the challenge of SMS between users in a commercial way.

SMS permitted to express any kind of feelings in a few 160 characters. In fact, SMS is the most favourite way of communication to wish New Year, Christmas and Saint Valentine´s Day.

Therefore, there are differences between male and female use of SMS language.

According to Norwegian researcher Richard Ling, there are differences in the SMS language of females and males. The lexical, morphological and syntactic choices between males and females SMS users suggested to Ling that women are more skillful  and more "literary" texters. Richard Ling observes:

  
Women's messages tend to be "longer".
 Women used more "complex structure" and grammar.

Men's messages tend to comprise "one-sentence", "one-clause" or "one-thought" constructions (the latter is markedly observable among male users within the ages 16 to 19).

More greetings and words of parting were observed in women's messages.

Women had messages with emotional and practical (e.g. arranging a meeting) content unlike men, who mostly used SMS language for practical content only.

Women and the younger users (across gender) tend to use more shortened forms and emoticons than men.

While women observed conventional rules more than men, the difference is marginal. This involves the use of correct spelling, punctuation, capitalization etc.

Sources:









By: Sandra Barranco Aguilar

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