PhD in Texting: Caroline Tagg SMS PhD
Friday, August 07, 2009
Caroline Tagg earned a PhD by studying text messages. Dr Caroline Tagg spent three-and-a-half years researching the subject of SMS text messaging (texting abbreviations) and the language used in texts at Birmingham University.
Although this is the first of its kind, a PhD in texting sounds ridiculous. The results of this study do not apply and cannot be applied outside of her study area, which in this case is UK.
In total, she read 11,000 text messages, containing 190,000 words, sent by 235 people. She stored the texts in a database and analyzed.
Friday, August 07, 2009
Caroline Tagg earned a PhD by studying text messages. Dr Caroline Tagg spent three-and-a-half years researching the subject of SMS text messaging (texting abbreviations) and the language used in texts at Birmingham University.
Although this is the first of its kind, a PhD in texting sounds ridiculous. The results of this study do not apply and cannot be applied outside of her study area, which in this case is UK.
In total, she read 11,000 text messages, containing 190,000 words, sent by 235 people. She stored the texts in a database and analyzed.
She analyzed spelling, grammar and abbreviations used in social and business texts. Caroline said the average text contains 17.5 words.
And she discovered from her 80,000 word thesis that there is more to texting that just abbreviations - something most people associate with texting.
"Actually, not many people use abbreviations," she said. "People use playful manipulation and metaphors. It is a playful language. Not only are they quite creative, it is also quite expressive.
"It was interesting to be able to research a number of linguistic methods and frameworks and apply them to the text message, because the text messages were quite fun.
"It was enlightening."
Dr Caroline Tagg should next conduct this kind of research in the Text Capital of the World, the Philippines. She would be surprised to know that all her results in UK is useless!And she discovered from her 80,000 word thesis that there is more to texting that just abbreviations - something most people associate with texting.
"Actually, not many people use abbreviations," she said. "People use playful manipulation and metaphors. It is a playful language. Not only are they quite creative, it is also quite expressive.
"It was interesting to be able to research a number of linguistic methods and frameworks and apply them to the text message, because the text messages were quite fun.
"It was enlightening."
