Language Study on SMS: A Descriptive Study

Abstract

This dissertation entitled 'Language Study on SMS' is an attempt to findout and describe the characteristic features of the English Language usedin SMS. The study presents the comparative analysis of thecharacteristics of English used in SMS. The comparison is on such areasassyntactic structures, mechanics of writing, abbreviations, non-linguisticsigns, numerals, code mixing, and formality of language. This study isbeneficial to the students, teachers, syllabus designers and critical massthat are involved in teaching and learning about the communicationthrough SMS. More specifically, this study will be directly or indirectlysignificant to the person who is interested in SMS communication. The data for this study have been collected from naturallyoccurring SMS of the English Language Teachers and Non-EnglishLanguage Teachers who are teaching in the secondary level and thehigher secondary level through their cell phones using quota samplingprocedure. The SMS were in-coming and out-going used by the SMSusers in their natural communication. This study consists of four chapters. Chapter One consists ofgeneral background, review of the related literature, objectives of thestudy, significance of the study. Chapter Two deals with methodology. It encompasses the sourcesof data, population of the study, sampling procedure, tools of datacollection, process of data collection, and limitation of the study. Bothprimary and secondary sources of data were used. But only the primarydata was the source of analysis. The population of the study consisted oftwenty English Language Teachers, and twenty of Non-English LanguageTeachers. Chapter Three presents the analysis and interpretation of the data.In this section, both statistical as well as descriptive approaches havebeen used. Chapter Four consists of findings, conclusion andrecommendations. The main findings of the study aresimple sentencesare used maximally by Non-English language teachers, ELATS commitfewer mistakes than NELATS in mechanics of writing, self createdabbreviations are maximally used by ELATS in comparison to NELATS,Numerals are also used in SMS and informal language is highly used inthe SMS.