Woman Awarded PhD In SMS/Text Messaging
So what’s next? She’s going to work for Telco?
A student awarded a PhD in text messaging has found many people do not abbreviate, but do use unnecessary words – and even use SMS to regale recipients about finding a pen lid.
Dr Caroline Tagg spent three-and-a-half years researching the subject of SMS text messaging and the language used in texts at Birmingham University.
She discovered that people text in the same way as if they were talking, using unnecessary words such as ‘oh’, ‘erm’ and often use grammatical abbreviations like ‘dunno’.
“I saw these in a lot of messages,” she said. “People deliberately use words like this when they don’t need to.”
The 33-year-old recruited a team of friends and family to help undertake the doctorate.
They sent her all the texts they sent and received, which she stored stored in a database and analysed.
In total, she read 11,000 text messages, containing 190,000 words, sent by 235 people.
She said: “It was a long haul but that is normal. I believe it is the first PhD in the UK to look at the language of text messaging.
“There is a panic in the media about the effect of text messaging and people are genuinely worried about it.
Did Dr Tagg really say, “There’s panic in the media about the effect of texting and people are genuinely worried about it”? If so, she should consider the possibility that she may be adding to the worry.I’ve read nothing about her work that does not suggest that the only effect it is likely to have is to make people self-conscious when writing SMSs.
Some are probably already self-conscious. I mean the team of family of friends who supplied the material. I presune it’s true that this was her method, as it would be difficult to obtain material in any other way, and this would have would have the problem that the “guinea pigs” wouldn’t be able to be quite sure that their knowledge that the messages are going to be analysed will not influece what they write. Because they’re not guinea pigs, they’re human beings. But of course Dr Tagg is not the first person to investigate human behaviour as if the subjects have minds no more reflective than those of animals.
Those are my impressions. However, it would be wrong to judge without seeing the thesis itself. Is it available? If not, after all the publicity it has received (which includes Dr Tagg’s own suspiciously-complicated blurb), it certainly should be.
But maybe the whole thing is simply intended as a satire on some of the ridiculous choices of subject that are permittable at university these days. If so, it sounds good!
really its gorgeous what u did.congratulations dr.caroline tagg.
im really so curious to read the whole thesis.how? when to get it please
if possible send me a copy to this e-mail, thanks in advance.
zidaspeedy@yahoo.com
P Homer,
Thank you for your input, really informative.
zida,
I hope someone can help you.
still waiting for a reply Dr. tagg.CongratualtionS for your new baby ahahahahaha. Want to see and read your baby….
zidaspeedy@yahoo.com
too bad