By David Dyck
Guilbault compares text messages to graffiti
Christian Guilbault, an SFU researcher in the French department, in collaboration with the University of Ottawa and the Université of Montréal, is collecting text messages in order to better understand how language is used to creatively communicate. Their goal is to collect 100,000 text messages for the corpus.
“We want to see if people who speak different languages use different languages in their text messages,” Guilbault told The Peak. He explained that code-mixing and code-switching is common with spoken communication, and since text messages are very close to spoken language, there may be code-switching occurring in text messages.
Code-switching occurs when a word or phrase from one language is used seamlessly with another language. “People can easily say, ‘Let’s go for dim sum.’ Last I heard, dim sum wasn’t an English word, so that’s an easy example of code-switching,” explained Guilbault. “We want to see if people are using that a lot in their text messages or if they’re just using it here and there.”
Although this type of corpus has been compiled before in Europe, they’ve mostly been done in a singular language: French. What makes this corpus more interesting for Guilbault is that the data will be in multiple languages. The project is called Text4ScienceHe is also hoping that the collection will act as a record of a significant sample of communication that would not otherwise be preserved. “It’s very unlikely,” he said, “but if people don’t laugh any more and just say ‘lol’, there you go. It’s unlikely, but you never know.”
Guilbault also believes that this collection can correct some misconceptions about text messages. One of those misconceptions is that text messages are incomprehensible to someone who is not part of the group. Guilbault believes that text message communication is much simpler than people think. Another assumption that Guilbault believes will be proven wrong is that text message lingo will become the norm in other areas of literature, such as term papers or newspaper articles, replacing traditional grammar. “It’s the same way you would talk to members of your hockey team, for instance. You may talk to them in a very specific, unique way, but as soon as you step out of the dressing room, you switch to a different register, a different type of language. We think it’s the same thing.”
He explained that the current generation is using the written word to communicate more than any other generation. “When I was young I used to write only when I had to write letters to my grandmother or when I was in school. Maybe I’d write a few pages a week at the most, whereas younger generations write constantly, they’re always writing text messages or emails or writing on a blog, or writing for school as well. Younger people are developing writing skills much more than we were at the same age,” he said.
What makes texting different from other text-based mediums such as Twitter or Facebook, is the personal nature of texts. Guilbault explained that people feel much more free to experiment with language in texts in a more intimate setting. He compared the idea to graffiti: “People play with graffiti, obviously, it’s made for fun. Text messages are a little bit the same way because a lot of people just have fun with it, and you would never do that with any other form of language.”
