Licenciado

SOCIOLINGUISTICS ANALYSIS
GROUP RESEARCH REPORT
Boris Cadena Daniela Espinoza Adriana Guanuche Luis Paredes

THE STANDARD LANGUAGE AND THE NORM IN TEXT MESSAGES

In a linguistic community, the linguistic uses of certain groups of prestigious become into model. The group of these uses is the norm. When the language fits to it, is called standard language.

In theSpanish language the standard variety is a built up dialect with vocabulary and syntactic constructions, it can be affected in communicative situations where the accents do not be expressed in an exuberant way. Tough the phonetic features continue in a particular way. They identify the geographic zone where speaker comes from.

The norm helps to stop segregation of the language even thoughthe geographic distances of speakers. There is no a single norm for each language. Normally, there is a sub norm for each dialectal variety for instance the use of “le” instead of “lo” as personal pronoun singular, male of direct object. This result is a accepted by the Spanish norm but it is no accepted in other zones in the spoken Spanish.

The norm changes for instance some terms thatwere not accepted by the Spanish norm before, their use had been generalized and become standard language.

Speakers usually detour form the norm in spoken language, however in the written language must predominate the use of standard language.

VULGARISM
The lack of knowledge of the norm provokes some mistakes which are perceived as vulgarisms. They affect the following aspects oflanguage:
* Pronunciation (almario for armario)
* Ortography ( jeriatrico for geriatrico)
* Vocabulary (infester for infectar)
* Idioms use ( yo pienso de que for yo pienso que)

This research focuses on the use of SMS and its impact on the transformation of formal language in the Ecuadorian context. In particular, it discusses:
a) Patterns of SMS usage among teenagers;b) Factors contributing to the transformation of language due to SMS usage.

A sample of 10 teenagers responded to a written text message. The results reveal that teenagers are significantly affected by current trend of SMS communication. The teenagers practice code-switching, and code-mixing; break grammatical rules; use abbreviations and short forms, symbols and emoticons, and useabusive words; and form new slang words.

GENERAL FEATURES OF THE WRITTEN MESSAGES


According to the professor Gómez Camacho (2007: 159) we can observe 16 different ways how teenagers communicate through text messages.

* Stress is omitted in text messages; however some of them are used in a systematic way.
* Reduction of double letters: x for ch, k for qu, Also sh for ch.
*Phonetic ortography tendency: b for v, j for g, y for ll, s for c. there is no h.
* Default absolute of the accents, although there are occasions in which young people use
* the tildes in a non-systematic way.
* Simplification of double letters; x ch, qu( k ). Sh ch.
* Tendency to a phonetic spelling; b v; j g; and ll; s by c; omission of h.
* Tendency to suppression of vowelsand consonants apheresis.
* Some letters are read by name or by its context; Thus k, d, t go to
* represent syllables when reading the letter name and not its value in the orthographic system Spanish.
* Substitution of u by w in the diphthongs and omission, normally by Apheresis, of the initial consonant of the syllable: wapa, weno.
* Use of foreign words, spelling neologisms andonomatopoeias.
* Non-normative use of abbreviations and acronyms, tendency to shortening of words.
* New non-normative values in the use of capital letters and signs of (punctuation, use of emoticons: : D, XD,;/).
* Use of numbers and mathematical signs with phonological value: xq, salu2, +.
* Reduction of characters to gather more information.
* Omission of certain connectors...