An Exploratory Study to the Characteristics of Textisms in Text Messaging

Text messaging (SMS) has become a part of daily life of many people. It occurs easy, fast and effective. This study attempts to reveal the characteristics of texting based on textisms used in texting messages. In order to achieve the aim of the research, the method adopted is the descriptive research method, analyzed quantitatively and content analysis technique is used to finalize the data. The participants are seven students of postgraduate studies and they are asked to snap-shot their text messages while chatting with people. The tool to collect the data is a social media called WhatsApp. The finding of this study revealed that textisms are available in the text messaging and the people used only some of textisms such as contractions, emoticon, acronym and initialism; they shortened the words and even sentences to the minimum syllable length by removing vowels. Further, Texting was based on their personal style than nonstandard form. Therefore, textism showed that texting is a new methods of communicating, using words innovatively which hold vary semantically and pragmatically. The result showed peoples' vocabulary, phonological awareness and language performance.