Forms and functions of SMS messages: A study of

variations in a corpus written by adolescents

Josie Bernicot, Olga Volckaert-Legrier, Antonine Goumi, Alain Bert-Erboul

To cite this version:

Josie Bernicot, Olga Volckaert-Legrier, Antonine Goumi, Alain Bert-Erboul. Forms and functions of
SMS messages: A study of variations in a corpus written by adolescents. Journal of Pragmatics, 2012,
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Bernicot, J., Volckaert-Legrier, O., Goumi, A. & Bert-Erboul, A. & (2012). Forms and functions
of SMS messages: A study of variations in a corpus written by adolescents, Journal of
Pragmatics, 44, 1701-1715. 10.1016/j.pragma.2012.07.009

Forms and Functions of SMS Messages:

A Study of Variations in a Corpus Written by Adolescents

Josie Bernicot1, Olga Volckaert-Legrier2, Antonine Goumi1, and Alain Bert-Erboul 1

This research was supported by the French National Research Agency project ANR-08-
COMM-011-01 entitled "Adolescents and Computer-Mediated Writing: Prerequisites, Uses,
and Learning".

Address for correspondence:

1 Université de Poitiers-CNRS, Centre de Recherches sur l'Apprentissage et la Cognition

(CeRCA - MSHS, Batiment A5 - 5 rue Theodore Lefebvre, F-86000 Poitiers, France

[email protected]; Phone: +33 (0)5.49.45.46.10 - Fax: +33 (0)5.49.45.46.16

[email protected]; [email protected]

2 Université Toulouse 2 - Laboratoire PDPS Axe 4 - Psychologie des acquisitions et des

apprentissages, 5 allées Antonio Machado, 31058 Toulouse Cedex 9, France

[email protected]
 2

Abstract

The purpose of this research was to gain insights into SMS communication among
French-speaking adolescents. We analyzed the effects of the writers' characteristics (age,
gender, and SMS-messaging experience) on message length (number of characters and
number of words), dialogue structure (with or without an opening and a closing), and
message function (informative vs. relational). The SMS messages were produced in a real-
world situation. We found differences across writers’ characteristics for all the dependant
variables. The commonly reported distinctions between girls and boys were mitigated.
Moreover, for dialogical structure, the messages differed from those found in traditional oral
and written interactions since 73% of them did not have the conventional opening-message-
closing format (the opening and/or the closing was missing). The results are discussed in
terms of the specific characteristics that define the SMS register, and potentially relevant
approaches to be taken in future research are addressed.

Keywords: text-messaging, register, adolescents, French language, writing, gender

 3

Forms and Functions of SMS Messages:

A Study of Variations in a Corpus Written by Adolescents

1. Introduction

Within only a few years, written communication via SMS1 has become an increasingly

frequent part of our daily lives. This readily accessible technology enables asynchronous

remote communication between individuals. Indeed, up until the mid-nineteenth century,

letter-based communication between persons was reserved to an aristocratic or literate

elite. It later became available to a larger number of individuals when compulsory education

was instituted in Western countries. In 1950, oral communication by telephone became the

predominant mode of interpersonal communication and remained so until text-messaging

emerged as a serious competitor. The use of SMS messaging as one of the various kinds of

written computer-mediated communication such as email, instant messaging, discussion

forums or online help forums, and written communication on social networks has soared

since the year 2000 (e.g., Facebook, Twitter) (Crystal, 2008; Danet & Herring, 2007; Ellison,

Steinfield & Lampe, 2007; Fernandez & Yuldashev, 2011; Herring, 1996a; Puustinen, Bernicot

& Bert-Erboul, 2011 ; Puustinen, Volckaert-Legrier, Coquin, & Bernicot, 2009; Savas, 2011;

Valkenburg & Peter, 2009; Volckaert-Legrier, Bernicot, & Bert-Erboul, 2009). These new

modes of communication arouse both fear and fascination (Thurlow, 2006), as was the case

over previous centuries upon the invention of printing, the telegraph or the telephone

(Crystal, 2008). Their written forms, and particularly those of SMSes, diverge from those of

traditional forms of writing. However, these phenomena are not entirely new: for example,

1
SMS is the abbreviation for Short Message Service. Some synonymous terms are text-messaging and texting.
 4

abbreviations or rebus writing have been used since the very origins of writing (Crystal,

1996; Vignaux, 2003). In 2001, Crystal's presentation of text-messaging took up two pages of

his book Language and the Internet, whereas he devoted an entire book to the topic in 2008.

From the scientific viewpoint, research on SMS messaging has provided new data for

answering a number of questions about language acquisition and language use. The novel

linguistic material found in SMSes is particularly useful in pragmatic studies, which attempt

to relate linguistic productions to the communicative situation in which they are produced

(Austin, 1962; Bernicot, 1994; Bernicot & Mahrokhian, 1989; Bernicot, Comeau & Feider,

1994; Bernicot, Laval & Chaminaud, 2007; Grice, 1975; Herring, 2004; Noveck & Sperber,

2004; Searle, 1969; Verschueren, 1999). The goal in the new studies is to determine the

linguistic specificities of SMSing, seen as constituting a written-communication register of its

own (Ravid & Tolchinski, 2002). In this vein, Crystal (2001) stressed the importance of the

concept of "language variety", which applies to oral and written language, legal and scientific

language, regional particularities of a given language, literature, and also computer-

mediated writing, including SMSing. Variations between language registers are systematic,

predictable, and conventional. A university professor giving a lecture will probably not talk

like a sports commentator reporting a football game. Working specifically in the area of

computer-mediated communication (CMC), Herring (2004) defined the framework of

Computer-Mediated Discourse Analysis (CMDA). This approach uses methods stemming

from other language-focused disciplines (particularly linguistics). At the heart of CMDA is the

analysis of the elements of interaction (characters, words, utterances, messages, exchanges,

threads, archives, etc.). For aspects of language studied, it is important to answer the
 5

following questions: how do they vary depending on the context, how are they learned, and

how do they change over time? A faceted classification scheme for CMDA (Herring, 2007),

based upon both medium and situation factors, enables the placement of SMSes with

respect to other types of computer-mediated communication. As far as medium factors are

concerned, using an SMS one can send 160-character messages from a mobile phone to

another computer or mobile phone located anywhere in the world, in a matter of seconds.

SMS messages are used in a nearly synchronous way like traditional oral communication,

while still being asynchronous like traditional writing. Among the situation factors, we

generally consider the characteristics of the SMS users (for example, their gender or their

experience communicating through a given medium) and the purpose—the social function,

the goal of the interaction or, in other words, what the individual participants hope to

accomplish through any given interaction.

Research in this area has dealt extensively with the most conspicuous feature of text

messages, i.e., their peculiar orthographic forms not found in traditional writing. Most of the

neographic forms inventoried so far are novel spellings resulting from puzzlegrams based on

homophonic letters and numbers, phonological reductions, symbols, and acronyms (Crystal,

2008; Frehner, 2008, in French: Anis, 2007; Panckhurst, 2009; Rivière & Licoppe, 2005).

Recent studies have also looked into the relationship between SMS-specific forms, and

spelling in traditional writing, during the learning period (Kemp, 2011; Wood, Jackson, Hart,

Plester, & Wilde, 2011) or in young adults (Drouin, 2011; Rosen, Chang, Erwin, Carrier &

Cheever, 2010).
 6

The main aim of our study was to look at several variables other than spelling, which

might be just as important in characterizing SMSes written by adolescents: the length of the

SMS messages, their structure, and their social function. In the following, we will present a

literature review with regard to these three variables. We will then present the research

questions which this study aims to answer.

2. Literature review

Most studies on SMS messaging have looked mainly at their orthographic content. A

few studies have also analyzed measures such as SMS message length, structure, and

functions.

2.1. Message length

SMS messages contain at most 160 characters. How do adolescents use this space?

Does age have an effect? Are there differences between girls and boys? Does SMSing

experience or frequency play a role?

The first studies were carried out in English, Norwegian, Swedish, German and

isiXhossa in adolescents and young adults between the ages of 13 and 27. The results varied

according to the method used. In small groups of participants who were known to the

researchers, message length varied between 65 and 133 characters and 14 and 22 words

(Deumert & Masinyana, 2008; Döring, Hellwig & Klimsa, 2005; Grinter & Eldrige, 2001; Hård

af Segerstad, 2005; Thurlow & Brown 2003). As part of a phone survey carried out with a

large number of participants, message length was shorter: 29 letters and 6 words (Ling,
 7

2005a, 2005b). With regard to the 13- to 19-year-old age group, Ling (2005a, 2005b)

emphasized that the girls produced longer messages than the boys (30 and 20 letters,

respectively).

2.2. Message structure

When describing the traditional rules of oral interaction between two people, Goffman

(1967) insisted upon the importance of greetings and leave-taking. These rituals are

described as obligations which allow individuals to keep face (a positive social value) in a

given situation. To define the interactive outline of written language, Herring (1996b) offered

a basic three-part structure in which the “contentful message” is preceded by an “opening

epistolary convention” and followed by a

“closing epistolary convention”. Openings and closings are addressed directly to the

interlocutor; they are discursive markers indicating how the speaker situates him or herself

with respect to the addressee. Do we find this same structure in SMS interactions: the

opening (greeting one another)—the message (saying what one has to say)—the closing

(taking leave)? As seen by Rettie (2009) this three-phase structure is pertinent for

synchronous, but not asynchronous, communication. The structure of technically

asynchronous SMS messages with a quasi-synchronous functioning holds a specific study

interest.

In a study carried out by Ling (2005b), only 10% of the messages contained an opening

or a closing. Using an interesting method of photographing the messages on cell phones

Spagnolli and Gamberini (2007) showed that, in young adults, 13% of messages had an

opening while 35% had a closing. A study focused on adolescents showed the same type of
 8

results. Indeed, Laursen (2005) showed that the complete opening-message-closing

sequence was only very rarely used by 14-year-old adolescents (even when taking into

account interactions with a succession of 2 or 3 SMSes). In the research of Spilioti (2011),

Greek-language participants transferred the messages stored in their cell phones (and

exchanged among themselves over a period of several weeks) to a laptop computer.

Information about the participants’ SMS use was also collected. Overall, 30% of the

messages included a closing. The analysis showed that closings are more present in the

following circumstances: as a sign of social distance between interlocutors, as a sign of

disengagement from the daily frame of contact between close friends, and as a mark of

politeness in “unpleasant” situations (such closings are employed in an attempt to mitigate

the potentially face-threatening act of refusing a specific request). Furthermore, closings are

rare in messages which initiate interaction (in only 15% of cases).

The available studies are scarce and not analytic enough to draw any definite

conclusions at this point. However, contrary to what is observed in traditional oral or written

interactions, there are SMS interactions without an opening and/or a closing. This could be a

specificity of SMSes as compared to other types of technically-mediated communication. It

should be noted that in electronic mail, even if they are not systematic, openings and closing

are much more frequent (50% to 100% of emails have an opening or a closing) (Bou-Franch,

2011; Volckaert-Legrier, 2007; Waldvogel, 2007).

2.3. Message functions

What is the purpose of SMS messages? The question of a message’s purpose is linked

to that of its addressee. With Japanese and French participants, Rivière and Licoppe (2005)
 9

showed that SMSes are mainly sent by close friends of all ages. The authors also stressed the

frequency of within-family use between parents and their children, and the more limited use

of texting in formal or professional situations. The majority of the exchanges studied had

emotional or affective content. In cases where the SMS's function was to keep a relationship

going, it did not replace the telephone call. A new mode of communication does not take the

place of another, but rather fulfills different social functions (Harper, 2005). The research of

Reid and Reid (2005) and de Ischii (2006) carried out in the United Kingdom and Japan,

respectively, showed analogous results.

To address this topic of what SMS messages are used to say (or do), we can consider

the point of view advocated in pragmatic theories, which consists of determining the writer's

intention (the illocutionary goal of the message) (e.g., Searle and Vanderveken's taxonomy of

speech acts, 1985). Prior studies have taken an approach consisting of defining categories of

social functions that appear useful for describing the practices of users.

Past research has proposed a variety of categories for analyzing the functions of SMS

messages. The only study that reported an inter-coder agreement rate (Faulkner & Culvin,

2005) obtained a very low figure (15%), which highlighted potential problems regarding the

relevance of their categories and definitions. However, all of the studies agree on one

important point: the importance of the social-relations function in text-messaging. Messages

revolving around friendship maintenance are highly frequent (Deumert & Masinyana 2008;

Faulkner & Culvin, 2005; Grinter & Eldridge, 2001; Ling, 2005b) and for some authors, are

particularly so among female adolescents (Döring et al., 2005; Kasesniemi, 2003). Thurlow

and Brown's (2003) proposal to classify the functions on an axis ranging from "more

informative-transactional" to "more relational and intimate" is certainly an interesting route

 10

for progressing on this issue. The informative-transactional category contains practical

information, practical arrangements and chain letters. The relational category includes social

arrangements, salutory, friendship maintenance and love- or sex-related messages. Among

collected messages, 31% fell into the first category and 61% fell into the second.

3. Research questions

All of the studies mentioned above (except for those of Spagnolli and Gamberini in

2007, and Spilioti in 2011, described above in section 2.2.) ran across the same

methodological problem: it is technically impossible to directly collect SMS messages in

computer file format, which means that the participants have to copy a transient text. This

situation poses the general problem of corpus reliability (the original messages are not

available) and message representativeness (short, easy-to-copy messages are likely to be

over-represented). So as to move past these methodological issues, we worked with a

corpus containing a great number of messages created in real-life situations by a large

number of writers. Furthermore, the collection method was direct and automatic, thereby

avoiding all the errors and bias introduced by the manual copying of messages. Responding

to an advertising campaign in the media calling them to “give your SMSes to help science”,

the participants sent messages stored on their cell phones to a free number which enabled

the researchers to receive the messages in their original form and to organize them by

participant and by date. Within this new framework, our study attempts to respond to the

following questions regarding SMSes.

 11

1. What are the characteristics of text messages with regard to length (an index

linked to the medium factors of SMSes)?

2. What are the structure and social functions of text messages (two indexes

linked to the situation factors of SMSes)? In terms of the structure of the message, we were

particularly interested in the linguistic markers indicating how the writer situates him or

herself with respect to the addressee: the presence or absence of a salutation as a message

opening and the presence or absence of leave-taking as a message closing. For the social

function, we focused on the informative or relational nature of the message. We used the

principle of classification from Thurlow & Brown (2003) and adapted it to our data2.

3. How do SMSes vary (in length, structure and function) according to the

message writer’s sociolinguistic characteristics such as age, gender and SMS experience (in

terms of how long and how frequently the person has been texting3)?

In order to provide answers to these questions, we chose to focus on adolescence

(ages 15 to 18), a period for which the little developmental information available is imprecise

or contradictory, despite the fact that this is the age range during which text-messaging is

used the most (Höflich & Gebhardt, 2005). SMS messages are both inexpensive and more

discreet than phone calls. It is also important to consider that the conventional written-

language register develops between ages 9 and 17 (Berman, 2005), and all aspects of written

language use evolve during this period (Jisa, Reilly, Verhoeven, Baruch, & Rosado, 2002;

Strömqvist, Johansson, Kriz, Ragnarsdóttir, Aisenman, & Ravid, 2002).

2
The details of our coding can be found in section 4 (4.3.3. Function indexes).
3
Section 4 (4.1. Participants; 4.2. Procedure) and Appendix A provide a more detailed definition.
 12

We also took the gender of the participants into consideration. Like the original studies

on oral language from the early 1900s (McCarthy, 1954), the studies in the area of computer-

mediated writing (cf. Baron, 2004) have also pointed out differences between males and

females: girls appear to use SMS messaging more often than boys, writing longer and more

complex messages with more "emotional" content (Thurlow & Poff, in press). Helsper (2010)

improves this idea with a model proposing that generation determines the level of Internet

use and life stage determines gender differences in Internet use. Herring (2000) has

emphasized that CMC reproduces the same dominant male/female rapport which has been

observed in traditional interactions: men control public discourse (such as forums, for

example) while women tend to interact within the private sphere in smaller groups.

Additionally, it was important to consider SMSing experience. The experience (or

practice) of CMC in general, or of another specific medium, has an influence on what the

writers produce. Beach and Lundell (1998) have shown how CMC experience among 12- and

13-year-old middle school students actively engaged them in reading and writing, seen as

social communication strategies. For Androutsopoulos (2006), the distinction between

“novice” and “advanced” users in a variety of online communities can be made using

structural characteristics or discourse pragmatics. The use of a certain medium enables the

creation (in a virtual space) of an identity as well as of linguistically marked social relations.

Currently, there is very little data concerning the French language, so the results of our

study will enlarge the available knowledge in this field by adding data from a new language.

Surveys on French-speaking populations have pointed out the massive use of SMSes by

adolescents. A study by Leo and Wolf4 (2004), and another by Samsung (2006) in Belgium,

showed that 75% of the Belgian population has a mobile phone. Furthermore, 90% of the 15-

4
Leo and Wolf is a company specializing in mobile marketing.
 13

to 35-year-olds use the text-messaging function. According to the CREDOC survey conducted

in France (Bigot & Croutte, 2010), the proportion of mobile-phone users rose from 24% in

1999 to 83% in 2010 (84% of the 12- to 17-year-olds). In 2003, 57% of the mobile-phone

owners used the SMS function; in 2010 this figure reached 73% (97% of the 12- to 17-year-

olds). The average weekly number of SMS messages was 57 (182 for the 12- to 17-year-olds).

Crystal (2008) and Thurlow and Poff (in press) found comparable figures for various

languages (Roman alphabet-based or otherwise) and countries including the United States,

the United Kingdom, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Germany, Italy, South Africa, Nigeria, New

Zealand, Kuwait, Malaysia, Japan, Korea, China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong.

4. Method

Two research centers at the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium, the CENTAL

(Center for Automatic Language Processing) and the CELEXROM (Center for Studies on

Romance Lexicons), implemented a French-speaking research project entitled "Donate Your

SMS Messages to Science"5 aimed at compiling a corpus of SMS messages for research in

linguistics and applied linguistics. To participate in the project, potential informants had to

fill in a sociolinguistic questionnaire providing information about their characteristics. A

corpus containing 30,000 SMS messages from 2,436 informants (between the ages of 12 and

73) was compiled for the project (Fairon et al., 2006). The data was collected between

October and December 2004.

4.1. Participants

5
http://www.sms4science.org/
 14

From the entire "Donate Your SMS Messages to Science" corpus, we selected 91

participants on the basis of the three following criteria: language (participants had to be

French-speaking only), age (participants had to be between 15 and 18 years of age) and SMS

experience (participants were either experienced or inexperienced participants). This sample

was studied using three variables. Gender was used, together with age, to establish 8

subgroups6. (cf. Table 1):

a) Age, two groups: 15-16 years (n = 41) and 17-18 years (n = 50)

b) Gender, two groups, male (n = 42) and female (n = 49)

c) SMS experience, in terms of the number of years and frequency of SMSing. We set

up two contrasting experience-level groups: "experienced" (n = 60) and

"inexperienced" (n = 31) based upon the sociolinguistic questionnaire which had

been filled out by the participants (cf. section 3.2. concerning procedure and table

2 for further details).

Insert Table 1

4.2. Procedure

To participate in the project "Donate Your SMS Messages to Science", people had to

forward SMS messages of their choice to a free phone number. It must be stressed that,

particularly for an adolescent population, no matter the payment plan of the phone, the SMS

donation was free of charge. The individuals were also asked to fill in a sociolinguistic

6
We included in our sample all participants that satisfied our criteria except for some of the 17- to 18-year-olds
who were experienced SMS users: in order to balance the group sizes, only the first 35 of these 49 experienced
participants were included in the sample. The number of SMSes collected per participant varied between 1 and
59.
 15

questionnaire (cf. Appendix A) providing information about the informant's characteristics

(language, age, gender, etc.) and experience in text-messaging. The questionnaire was

addressed to a very large audience (informants between the ages of 12 and 73), did not ask

questions about the type of payment plan (i.e., limited, unlimited), its price, or the person

paying it. However, with regard to the adolescents we retained within our sample, we

deducted, without great risk of error, that the payment plan was not unlimited (due to the

date of the collection—2004), that the parents were paying for the phone service, and that

the low cost, as compared to making phone calls, was one of the motivations behind the use

of SMSes. As for the “experience in text-messaging” variable in our sample, the experienced

participants had more than three years of text-messaging practice and claimed to send over

10 SMS messages per week (between 10 and 100). The inexperienced group had less than 3

years of text-messaging practice and claimed to send less than 10 SMS messages per week

(between 0 and 10). The experience variable was therefore defined by the two items

originating from the questionnaire: the length and the frequency of SMS use. Table 2 gives

the number of participants in each experience group, by the number of SMS messages the

participants claimed to send.

Insert Table 2

For each participant, we retained all SMSes submitted. Table 3 indicates the number of

messages7 each, for age, gender, and SMS experience level (864 messages in total).

7
For the participants of both experience levels, the number of messages actually turned in was independent of
the number they claimed they sent per week.
 16

Insert Table 3

4.3. Coding

We examined three types of message indexes: quantity indexes, structure indexes, and

function indexes.

4.3.1. Quantity indexes

For each original message, we used the automatic counting formulas in Excel® to tally

the number of characters (including spaces; the value of this index varied by definition

between 1 and 160) and the number of words (defined as a letter string with a space on

either side). Two examples of original messages are presented below.

(1) Example 1: 83 characters and 14 words

Original message: Euh d'accord c'est gentil! Je serai vers 7h55 devant chez toi! Bisous bonne

soirée! (Uh ok, cool. I’ll be outside ur place @ 7:55! Bye hava good 1).

(2) Example 2: 48 characters and 8 words

Original message: Tit mess pour savoir comment tvas depuis ltemps! (a quick message t'find

out how u'v been all this time)

4.3.2. Structure indexes

Each message was broken down into three segments: the opening (O), the message

itself (M), and the closing (C). These three segments correspond to the structure defined by

Herring (1996b) regarding written language and used to study the Usenet and LISTSERV

messages. Our objective was to determine whether SMS users respect this three-phase
 17

structure: they greet each other (O), they say what they have to say (M), and they take leave

(C). In interactions taking place via SMS, unlike traditional oral (Goffman, 1967) or written

exchanges (Adam, 1998; Herring, 1996b), there are messages with no opening, no closing, or

neither of the two. We defined four types of messages (see below with examples).

Message alone (M). M: Ya aussi p34 et 56. Tu dois aller chercher tt ce ki ya sur moodle

en anglais. (There are pages 34 and 56 too. You have to go look for everything there is

about Moodle in English.)

Opening and message (O+M). O: Salut tu vas bien? (Hi, how're you doing?) + M: G

pRdu livr d1 pot. Il è pa ché toi? 7 1 sur mart1 lutR king. (I lost a friend of mine's book.

Could it be at your house? It's about Martin Luther King.)

Message and closing (M+C). M: Ben tanto oui mai po mtn jai ecol bizoux (Well, this

afternoon yes, but not now. I have school.)+ C: a tanto jtad (See you this afternoon.

Love you)

Opening, message, and closing (O+M+C). O: Salut (Hi) + M: keske tfé c soir?11srevoi

kan (What are you doing tonight? When are we going to see each other again?) + C:

CIAO (BYE)

A coder-agreement index for structures was defined as being equal to the number of

structures coded in the same way, divided by the total number of messages coded. In all, 101

messages (chosen randomly) were coded by two coders. The mean coder-agreement index

was 94%.
 18

4.3.3. Function indexes

As Thurlow and Brown (2003) noted for SMSes written in English, text messages have

various functions that can be classified according to two orientations: informative-

transactional and relational. This was the classification we chose, by adapting it to our data.

In the informative-transactional category, messages dealt with a) the exchange of practical

details or requests for information or b) solidary information exchanges or requests for

personal favors. During the coding process, for the sub-categories a) and b), the inter-coder

agreement rate was less than 50%: In fact, an exchange of practical details can also be

interpreted as a solidary information exchange, while a request for information can be

interpreted as a request for a personal favor. For this reason, we chose not to have a sub-

category for the informative-transactional function. From the relational function category,

we created four sub-categories: ritualized interpersonal exchanges, social arrangements,

friendly relations, and love relations. One and the same message could fall into several

categories or sub-categories, e.g., informative-transactional function and relational function

(sub-category: love relations) or relational function (sub-category: social arrangements) and

relational function (sub-category: friendly relations). The coder-agreement index for

functions was calculated in the same way as the coder-agreement index for structures: the

mean coder-agreement index here was 88.3%. As Thurlow and Brown (2003) emphasize:

“Even though, theoretically speaking, it is impossible to separate “doing sociability” from

information exchange for analytical convenience, it can be revealing to compare the relative

weighting of “relational” and “informational” dimensions of communication in participant

responses” (p. 10). The coding was carried out in terms of the main orientation of the

message.
 19

Informative-transactional function

Exchange of practical details but also solidary information exchange: It is clearly a

favor done for the interlocutor. jtapporte le livr dmain (I’ll bring you the book

tomorrow).

Requests for personal favors but also resquest for information. si t as 1 2ème

calculette tu pe la prendre?g oublié la mienne (If you have another calculator could you

bring it? I forgot mine.)

Relational function

Ritualized interpersonal exchanges. coment ale vous koi d9 (how are you what's

new)

Social arrangements. 2m1, rdv place keym a 8h. (tomorrow, meet at Place Keym at 8

a.m.)

Friendly relations. jsuis 2 tt coeur heureuse pr toi! Jte souhaite tt le bonheur que

qq1 d'aussi exceptionnel que toi (I'm truly happy for you! I wish you all the happiness

that someone as exceptional as you deserves)

Love relations. j'ai pas eu mon petit bonne nuit hier mais c'est pas grave!Tu peux

pas imaginer comme tu es importante pour moi mon tit bébé!! (I didn't get my little

good night last night but it's ok! You can't imagine how important you are for me my

little baby!)

In the findings presented here, we did not analyze in great detail the different sub-

categories of each relational function category. We focused on the analysis of our study
 20

objective: to compare, as did Thurlow and Brown in 2003, the proportion of messages

possessing an informative-transactional function with the proportion of messages possessing

a relational function.

4.4. Experimental design

Table 4 provides a synthesis of the factors and dependent variables which we used to

analyze our results. With the SMSes as the random variable, ANOVAs were performed upon

the data. Results were considered significant at .05.

Insert Table 4

5. Results

We examined three types of message indexes: quantity indexes, structure indexes, and

function indexes.

5.1. Quantity indexes

The data was processed in an ANOVA with three factors: age (15-16 and 17-18 years),

gender (male and female), and experience (old/frequent and recent/rare).

Number of characters (including spaces): Table 5 gives the mean number of characters

as a function of age and gender. The effect of gender was significant (F(1,856) = 51.11,

p < .00001, ² = .06), as was the age-by-gender interaction (F(1,856) = 24.38, p < .00001, ² =

.03). As a whole, girls produced more characters than boys did. The difference between girls
 21

and boys was significant among the 15- to 16-year-olds (F(1,856) = 56.71, p < .00001; 129

characters for girls and 82 for boys) and nonsignificant among the 17- to 18-year-olds (about

107 characters per message).

Insert Table 5

Number of words: Table 5 also gives the mean number of words as a function of age

and gender. The effect of gender was significant (F(1,856) = 28.91, p < .00001, ² = .03), as

was the age-by-gender interaction (F(1,856) = 29.86, p < .00001, ² = .03). As a whole, girls

wrote more words than boys did. The difference between girls and boys was significant

among the 15- to 16-year-olds (F(1,856) = 45.62, p < .00001; 24 words for girls and 16 for

boys) and nonsignificant among the 17- to 18-year-olds (about 21 words per message).

5.2. Structure Indexes

Four message structures were considered: message alone (M), opening and message

(O+M), message and closing (M+C), and opening, message, and closing (O+M+C). In all, 73%

(N = 630) of the total number of messages (N = 864) did not have the traditional O+M+C

structure, which means that a mere 27% (N = 234) of the messages did have this structure.

In cases where the structure was not traditional: structure M, where the message

stood alone without an opening or closing, represented 23.4% (N = 202) of the messages,

structure M+C represented almost 47% (N = 406) of the messages, and structure O+M had a

very low frequency (2.6%, N = 22). Overall, 30% of the messages had an opening, 74% had a

closing, and 77% had an opening and/or a closing.

 22

The structure indexes were processed in the same way as the quantity indexes. For the

three most frequent structures (M, M+C, and O+M+C), we used an ANOVA to analyze the

number of occurrences per message as a function of age, gender, and experience. For type

M+C, no factor was significant. For type M (see Table 6), the effects of gender

(F(1,856) = 7.08, p < .01, ² = .008) and experience (F(1,856) = 6.52, p < .01 , ² = .007) were

significant, as were the age-by-gender interaction (F(1,856) = 5.56, p < .01 , ² = .006) and

the age-by-gender-by-experience interaction (F(1,856) = 12.48, p < .0004 , ² = .01). As a

whole, type M was produced more often by boys than by girls, and more often by

experienced participants than by inexperienced ones. There was a marked difference in

favor of the boys, more so at the age of 15-16 than at 17-18. Moreover, this age-by-gender

interaction was present only for the experienced participants.

Insert Table 6

For structure O+M+C (see Table 6), the experience effect was significant

(F(1,856) = 4.59, p < .03, ² = .005), as was the age-by-gender-by-experience interaction

(F(1,856) = 5.57, p < .01, ² = .008). As a whole, type O+M+C was produced more often by

inexperienced participants than by experienced ones. This difference in favor of

inexperienced participants was present only for 15- to 16-year-old boys (F(1,856) = 4.99,

p < .02), and 17- to 18-year-old girls (F(1,856) = 6.07, p < .01).
 23

5.3. Function indexes

We compared the proportion of messages that had an informative-transactional

function with those that had a relational function. The data were processed in a four-factor

ANOVA: three between-group factors (age, gender, and experience) and one within-group

factor (message function: informative-transactional vs. relational), with the SMSes as the

random variable. We concentrated on the function effect and its interactions with other

factors (see Table 6). The function effect was significant (F(1,856) = 6.15, p < .01, ² = .007),

as were the function-by-age interaction (F(1,856) = 4.34, p < .03, ² = .005), the function-by-

gender interaction (F(1,856) = 5.29, p < .02, ² = .006). On the whole, the proportion of

relational messages was greater than the proportion of informative-transactional messages;

the sum of the two proportions was greater than one since the same message could have

both functions. The interactions showed that the difference between the two functions was

more pronounced for the 15- to 16-year-olds than for the 17- to 18-year-olds and for the

girls than for the boys. Like Thurlow and Brown (2003), we calculated the percentages of

each function out of the total number of function occurrences. We obtained 43.57% for the

informative-transactional function (430 out of 987) and 56.43% for the relational function

(557 out of 987).

6. Discussion

We studied a corpus of 864 SMS messages, written by 91 participants in real-world

situations. The SMSes were collected using a reliable methodology that avoided transcription
 24

errors and over-representation of short messages. The resulting data provides answers to

our research questions.

What were the characteristics of text messages from the point of view of length? How

did this index vary according to the message writer's sociolinguistic characteristics?

In terms of SMS length, our results (on average, 100 characters and 20 words) are

closer to those which were obtained from a small group of participants known to the

researchers (Deumert & Masinyana, 2008; Grinter & Eldridge, 2001; Thurlow & Brown, 2003)

than to those obtained via a phone survey with a large number of participants (Ling, 2005a,

2005b). An ecological collection demonstrates that between the ages of 15 and 18,

adolescents use between half and slightly more than three-fourths of the 160 characters

permitted by this form of technology. Moreover, our findings provide the first evidence of

changes according to age and gender: the girls' messages were indeed longer than the boys',

but only among 15- and 16-year-olds. The girls and the boys seemed to have different

developmental paths: between the ages of 15-16 and 17-18, the girls' message length

(already high) stayed the same, whereas the boys’ message length increased to become

equivalent to that of the girls. These findings offer a different slant on Ling's study (2005a,

2005b) showing that messages produced by females were longer and more complex than

those of males (between 13 and 34 years of age). However, it is difficult to compare our data

with that of Ling (2005a, 2005b) due to the different method of ecological collection/survey

which was used and the scale of the variations: in our study, the difference between boys

and girls ranged from 80 to 130 characters, while those of Ling (2005a, 2005b) only ranged

from 20 to 30. As Berko-Gleason stressed, “Most of the gender differences that do exist in

boys’ and girls’ language are more likely to be the product of socialization and context than
 25

the result of innate biological differences.” (p. 416). From a social point of view, the

precociousness of girls may be explained by the fact that with CMC, just as in traditional

interactions, the female gender tends to put a priority on the private sphere and smaller

groups (Herring, 2000). This corresponds to the reality of SMS messages which are

essentially meant for close friends or family members (Ischii, 2006; Reid & Reid, 2005;

Rivière & Licoppe, 2005). It should be mentioned that, while the differences between girls

and boys disappeared around 17-18 years of age in our corpus of French-language SMSes

collected in 2004, these differences still exist in other online environments (Kapidzic &

Herring, in press: popular English-language teen chat sites, collected in 2010).

What were the characteristics of text messages from the structural point of view? How

did this index vary with the message writer's sociolinguistic characteristics?

Regarding the structure indexes, 73% of the messages did not follow the mandatory

opening-message-closing structure of traditional oral and written exchanges. Overall, 30% of

the messages had an opening, 74% had a closing. Our results are consistent with those which

have already been presented by Ling (2005b), Spagnolli and Gamberini (2007) and Laursen

(2005): contrary to what is observed in traditional oral or written interactions, a sizeable

proportion of SMS messages exist without an opening and/or a closing. This proportion is

greater than that found for another type of technically-mediated communication: the email

(Bou-Franch 2011; Volckaert-Legrier, 2007; Waldvogel 2007). However, it should be pointed

out that the proportion of SMS messages considered “non-canonic” varies from one study to

the next. The very high proportion (90%) which resulted from Ling’s (2005b) phone survey

method (where messages were dictated) is likely to cause an over-representation of short

messages and thus, of messages without an opening and/or a closing. In addition, Spagnolli
 26

and Gamberini (2007) made a remark worth investigating—that messages without an

opening or closing may be part of a conversational exchange involving several speaking

turns, with an opening on the first message and a closing on the last. However, this

phenomenon cannot explain why, in our study, 74% of the messages had a closing while only

30% had an opening. If Spagnolli and Gamberini's (2007) hypothesis were correct, the

opening and closing percentages would be below 100%, but equal. These authors

emphasized that with SMSes, salutations are made using other non-verbal methods (the

arrival of the message is announced by various alerts, the identity of the sender is displayed

by the device) and are therefore not necessary. As the end of the exchange is not signaled by

technical means, it is more often shown by a form of closing. Spilioti (2011) offers an

interesting explanation regarding the presence or absence of a closing in terms of politeness.

Of course, an SMS exchange is a kind of interaction that allows for the absence of a closing

since it is not necessarily expected by the interlocutors. However, the presence of a closing

denotes a special social situation where politeness (in terms of respecting a ritual) is

necessary for the interlocutors to save face, such as in the case of social distance,

disengagement from an interaction, or the refusal of a request.

With respect to prior studies, our data provides new information about the role played

by the writer's characteristics: experienced 15- to 16-year-old boys generally wrote

messages alone (without an opening or closing), whereas inexperienced ones wrote

messages in the traditional format (opening-message-closing). The role of experience

appeared in 15- to 16-year-old boys, the group which, in terms of development, took on SMS

messaging the slowest. Only long-term, frequent practice enabled these boys to enter into a

new dialogical structure without expressions of greeting or leave-taking, certainly linked to

 27

conversations involving several speaking turns (Spagnolli & Gamberini, 2007). In sum, our

data confirm that a difference does indeed exist between boys and girls. But our results

indicate that this difference is mitigated on the one hand by age, and, on the other hand, by

experience.

What were the characteristics of text messages from the point of view of the function?

How did this index vary with the message writer's sociolinguistic characteristics?

Regarding the functions of text messages, our results are consistent with Thurlow and

Brown's (2003) and with all earlier studies showing the importance of the relational function

of SMSes. Moreover, for both the informative and relational functions, we validated a coding

grid that gave us a high between-coder agreement rate, something that had not been done

in past research. In line with our quantity indexes and structure indexes, we showed here

that the informative/relational distribution varied according to the writers' characteristics:

relational functions only prevailed for 15- to 16-year-olds, and for girls.

7. Conclusion and limitations of the study

Our study enabled us to show that the SMS writers' characteristics (age, gender, and

SMS experience) played a role in the length, structure, and function of the text messages

they wrote. Long messages were mainly produced by 15- to 16-year-old girls, whose

messages were also largely relational. The experienced 15- to 16-year-old boys generally

wrote messages without an opening or a closing and produced few traditional messages with

an opening-message-closing structure. To draw an accurate developmental curve, future

 28

data collection should be extended to include both younger adolescents (ages 11-12 and 13-

14) and adults.

A next step could be to compare the distribution of informative (44%) and relational

(56%) functions in SMS messages, with the distribution observed for other types of

technically-mediated communication such as oral communication over the phone (land lines

or cell phones), oral communication via video chatting, written communication via instant

messaging, online help forums, and written communication on social networks (e.g.,

Facebook, Twitter).

In the long run, relating the functions of SMS messages to their linguistic

characteristics (length and dialogical structure, but also orthographic forms) is likely to be

that which will provide the greatest amount of insight into the SMS register.

We only analyzed a portion of the French-language corpus (Fairon et al., 2006)

containing 30,000 SMS messages from 2,436 informants (between the ages of 12 and 73). A

future analysis will enable us to compare the characteristics of SMSes produced by

adolescents with SMSes produced by adults. A comparison between the French language

and others languages will require the completion of studies in different countries using the

same methodologies.

Additional research is needed to further our knowledge of the SMS register,

particularly studies that take the speaking-turn sequence of the two writers into account,

and ones that look at the relationship between the functions and linguistic forms of text

messages. Our data bring out the complexity of the SMS register. They argue in favor of

Crystal's (2001) idea of considering computer-mediated writing not as a register located

somewhere between the oral and written registers, but as a register of its own that differs
 29

from traditional oral communication, traditional written communication, and sign language.

Unlike these other three major registers, computer-mediated writing does not remain stable

over time8 and currently, its extremely rapid rate of change poses a true challenge to

researchers in this field.

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by the French National Research Agency project ANR-08-

COMM-011-01 entitled "Adolescents and Computer-Mediated Writing: Prerequisites, Uses,

and Learning". Special thanks are extended to Vivian Waltz and Martha Randy for translating

this paper.

8
The first analyses of the francophone corpus collected as part of the sms4science project between 2004 and
2010 showed diachronic differences: e.g., the messages seemed to be shorter and shorter (Fairon, 2011).
 30

Appendix A. Questionnaire filled in by the participants

Questionnaire SMS4Science
AUTHORS’ PERSONAL PROFILE
(Closed-choice questions)
 What is your age?
 What is your gender?
 What is your field of work (travel agent, librarian, salesperson, teacher, engineer, soldier,
secretary, etc.)?
 What is your current level of study or highest diploma if you have finished your studies
(primary, general secondary, technical secondary, superior professional secondary, etc.)?
 What is your native language (German, English, Arabic, Italian, Luxembourgish, etc.)?
 What other languages do you speak fluently (German, English, Arabic, Italian,
Luxembourgish, etc.)?
 What is the postal code of your residence?
 What is your country of residence (Belgium, France, Luxembourg, etc.)?
 How many keys does your mobile phone have (min./max.)?
 Does it have a dictionary (yes/no)?

AUTHORS’ PRACTICE AND USE:

(Closed-choice questions)
 How long have you been using SMS messaging?
Less than 1 year 1 - 3 years 3 - 5 years; more than 5 years
 How may SMSes do you send on average per week?
Less than 5 5 - 10 10 - 20 20 - 50 100 +
 Do you use predictive texting?
Yes No
 Do you understand the SMSes that you receive?
Yes, without a problem
Yes, but sometimes I have to “decode” them
Yes, but with difficulty; no, they are illegible.
 Why do you use SMS messaging?
To communicate instead of making a phone call
As a mixture of fun and communication
Just for fun
 How do you write your SMSes?
Exclusively in normal French
Mostly normal French with some SMS code
A mixture of normal French and SMS language
Exclusively SMS language
 31

 Rank the addressees of your SMSes by order of preference (never, rarely, regularly, almost
daily):
Never Rarely Regularly Almost daily
Family
Friends
Colleagues
Contests/games
 What other modes or systems of communication on the Internet do you use? (never, rarely,
regularly, almost daily)?
Never Rarely Regularly Almost daily
SMS from a website
Internet chat
Internet forums
Email
 32

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Table 1.

Number of Participants by Age, Gender, and SMS Experience Level

Age in years 15-16 17-18 Total

Experienced group Male 13 15 28

Female 12 20 32

Total Experienced 25 35 60

Inexperienced group Male 7 7 14

Female 9 8 17

Total Inexperienced 16 15 31

Total 41 50 91
 42

Table 2.

Number of Participants, Experienced and Inexperienced in SMSing

Experienced participants

11 to 20 21 to 50 51 to over 100
messages per messages per messages per
week week week
Number of experienced
33 18 9
participants

Inexperienced participants

Less than 5
messages per 5 to 10 messages per week
week

Number of inexperienced
10 21
participants

Note: The experienced participants had more than 3 years of text-messaging practice and claimed to send over 10 SMS
messages per week (between 11 and 100). The inexperienced group had less than 3 years of text-messaging practice and
claimed to send 10 or fewer SMS messages per week (between 0 to 10).
 43

Table 3.

Number of Messages by Age, Gender, and SMS Experience Level

Age in years 15-16 17-18 Total

Experienced group Male 105 224 329

Female 150 178 328

Total Experienced 255 402 657

Inexperienced Male 22 41 63
group
Female 50 94 144

Total Inexperienced 72 135 207

Total 327 537 864

 44

Table 4.

Factors and Dependent Variables Used to Analyze Data

Factors

Levels

Age in years 15-16/17-18

Factors Gender Male/female

Experience Experienced/Inexperienced

Dependent variables

Values

QUANTITY INDEXES

Number of characters 1 to 160 (practical maximum)

including spaces
Dependent

variables Number of words 1 to 42 (observed maximum)

STRUCTURE INDEXES M/O+M/M+C/O+M+C

FUNCTION INDEXES Informative-transactional/Relational

Note: Opening: O, Message itself (body of message): M, Closing: C.

 45

Table 5.

Mean Number of Characters per SMS Message and Mean Number of Words per SMS

Message, by Participant Age and Gender

MEAN NUMBER OF CHARACTERS PER SMS MESSAGE

Total 15-16 17-18

Male 92.23 (3.17) 81.75 (5.15) 102.71 (3.73)

Female 120.18 (2.27) 129.01 (3.58) 111.36 (2.80)

MEAN NUMBER OF WORDS PER SMS MESSAGE

Total 15-16 17-18

Male 18.51 (0.61) 16.32 (.99) 20.70 (0.71)

Female 22.55 (0.44) 24.47 (0.69) 20.64 (0.54)

Note: Standard deviations are shown in parentheses.

 46

Table 6.

Proportion of Messages for Structures Indexes and Function Indexes

STRUCTURE INDEXES

Proportion of messages with a message-alone structure (M), by participant age, gender, and SMS experience

Male 0.27 (0.03) Experienced group 0.27 (0.02)

Female 0.17 (0.02) Inexperienced group 0.17 (0.03)

15-16 17-18
Male Experienced group 0.44 (0.04) 0.21 (0.03)
Inexperienced group 0.14 (0.09) 0.29 (0.06)
Total Male 0.29 (0.05) 0.25 (0.03)
Female Experienced group 0.11 (0.03) 0.31 (0.03)
Inexperienced group 0.10 (0.06) 0.17 (0.04)
Total Female 0.10 (0.03) 0.24 (0.03)

Proportion of messages with an "opening-message-closing" structure (O+M+C), by participant age, gender and
SMS experience

Experienced group 0.25 (0.02)

Inexperienced group 0.33 (0.03)

15-16 17-18
Male Experienced group 0.13 (0.04) 0.28 (0.03)
Inexperienced group 0.36 (0.09) 0.24 (0.07)
Female Experienced group 0.36 (0.03) 0.20 (0.03)
Inexperienced group 0.36 (0.06) 0.34 (0.04)

FUNCTION INDEXES

Proportion of messages with each function (informative-transactional or relational) in the body of the message,
by participant age, gender, and SMS experience.

Informative-transactional 0.54 (0.02)

Relational 0.64 (0.02)

15-16 17-18
Informative-transactional 0.52 (0.03) 0.56 (0.02)
Relational 0.71 (0.03) 0.57 (0.02)

Male Female
Informative-transactional 0.58 (0.03) 0.50 (0.02)
Relational 0.59 (0.03) 0.69 (0.02)
Note: Standard deviations are shown in parentheses, and the highest significant values are indicated in bold print.
 47

Josie Bernicot is a professor at the University of Poitiers (France). Her research deals with

children’s language acquisition. In addition to typical and atypical oral language in children,

her studies also focus on the use of new communication technologies by adolescents. In

France, she has contributed to the development of the pragmatic perspective and the study

of the social uses of language. She is the leader of a focus team on this subject at the

Cognition and Learning Research Center (CeRCA-CNRS), as well as a member of both the

International Pragmatics Association (IPrA) office and the European Journal of

Developmental Psychology (EJDP) editorial office.

Olga Vockaert-Legrier received her Ph.D. from the University of Poitiers (France). Currently,

she is a lecturer at the University of Toulouse Le Mirail (France) in the department of

developmental psychology. Her research focuses on computer mediated communication and

its linguistic features, especially email and SMS messages as a new register of written

language.

Antonine Goumi received her PhD in cognitive psychology from the University of Poitiers

(France). She began her work as a researcher at the Cognition and Learning Research Center

(CeRCA-CNRS) and now works at the National Center for Pedagogical Documentation, under

the supervision of the French Ministry of Education. Her research interests are related to

technologies for education, the role they play in teaching at school and in the evaluation and

improvement of learning.

Alain Bert-Erboul is a researcher at the CNRS (French National Research Agency) and works

at the Cognition and Learning Research Center (CeRCA) at the University of Poitiers (France).

He collaborates with Josie Bernicot on language developmental research.