Textisms and the textese: A systematic review.

Páginas: 305-317 Recibido: 2023-01-18 Revisado: 2023-05-18 Aceptado: 2023-05-26 Preprint: 2023-07-31 Publicación Final: 2023-09-01 www.revistascientificas.us.es/index.php/fuentes/index DOI: https://doi.org/10.12795/revistafuentes.2023.23011 Textisms and the textese: A systematic review Los textismos y la norma digital: Una revisión sistemática Olga Fernández-Juliá Universidad de Sevilla (España) Alejandro Gómez-Camacho Universidad de Sevilla (España) Abstract The aim of this article is to find out what scientific production exists on digital communication and the use of textisms between 2009 and 2022, which will allow us to identify which are the lines of research most worked on in this field, as well as to find the current state of the question. To this end, the systematic review methodology PRISMA (2021) has been used. After conducting the search and applying the exclusion criteria, a total of 62 articles were finally obtained from two databases: Web of Science and Scopus, after which the results were analysed. First, a quantitative analysis was carried out to find out how the published works were distributed in the selected years, in which journals they appeared the most frequently and to which countries and universities the authors with the most publications on the subject belonged. Second, a qualitative analysis has been carried out on the thematic lines they deal with and possible future lines of research. The results show a great disparity between the different articles, especially those dealing with the relationship between literacy and the use of textisms, which in turn show discrepancies in their conclusions on the relationship between the two variables. Resumen El objetivo de este estudio es conocer la producción científica que existe entre los años 2009 y 2022 sobre el uso de textismos en la comunicación digital, lo que permitirá la identificación de cuáles son las líneas de investigación más trabajadas en este ámbito, así como el conocimiento sobre el estado actual de la cuestión. Para ello se ha optado utilizar la metodología de revisiones sistemáticas PRISMA (2021). Tras realizar la búsqueda y aplicar los criterios de exclusión, se ha obtenido una muestra final de 62 artículos a partir de dos bases de datos: Web of Science y Scopus. Posteriormente se ha realizado un análisis de los resultados. En primer lugar, un análisis cuantitativo para conocer cómo se han distribuido estas publicaciones encontradas en los años seleccionados, en qué revistas aparecen con mayor asiduidad y a qué países y universidades pertenecen los autores con más publicaciones sobre la temática. En segundo lugar, se ha realizado un análisis cualitativo sobre las líneas temáticas de las que tratan y posibles futuras líneas de investigación. Los resultados evidencian una gran disparidad entre los distintos artículos destacando los que se ocupan de la relación entre la alfabetización y el uso de textismos, que a su vez muestran discrepancias en sus conclusiones sobre la relación entre ambas variables. Keywords / Palabras clave Interpersonal communication, Mobile communication, Writing, Telephone, Bibliographic databases, Electronic media, literacy, handwriting instruction. Comunicación interpersonal, comunicación móvil, escritura, teléfono, base de datos bibliográfica, medios electrónicos, alfabetización, enseñanza de la escritura 306 REVISTA FUENTES, 25(3); Páginas 305-317 www.revistascientificas.us.es/index.php/fuentes/index 1. Introduction Mobile phones are part of the daily lives of a significant part of the world's population. According to Statista (2021) 6.259 billion people are smartphone subscribers and this number is expected to continue to rise in the coming years. Consequently, the number of active participants in major social networks is growing, according to the latest data published by Statista (2022). Facebook currently has 2.91 billion active participants, YouTube with 2562 million, WhatsApp with 2000 million and Instagram with 1478 million, being the social networks with the largest number of users worldwide. Although the number of mobile phone users continues to grow every year, mobile phones started to become a very useful accessory in people's daily lives more than two decades ago. Around 1993, SMS (short messaging service) appeared and became very popular since then and is still popular today in many countries (Yus, 2021, 7). Since the beginning of the 21st century, a very rapid increase of SMS (Short Messaging Service) users started to be observed in the younger generation that did not follow conventional spelling and grammatical rules (Verheijen, 2013, 583). It is clear that the Internet and the use of mobile phones have affected the way adults and young people communicate (Drouin, 2014, 265). This computer-mediated communication (CMC) language, with its own characteristics, has been referred to as ‘Digitalk’ (Chalak, 2017, 67), ‘textspeak’ or ‘textese’ (Verheijen, 2013, 583). ‘Digitalk’ or ‘textese’ is primarily characterised by the use of textisms (Burrell and Beard, 2022, 7), which are defined as intentional discrepancies in the spelling of words and abbreviations used in text messages (Bernicot et al., 2014). Also considered textisms are emoticons that are introduced into speech and the repetition of letters, both of which are resources that function as forms of non-verbal communication in digital communication (Nixon and Guajardo, 2022) since, as López (2013, 89) states, this language is characterised by being very close to oral language. Textisms in English, according to Verheijen (2013), are the use of abbreviations or contractions, phonological abbreviations, acronyms, clippings, or omission of punctuation marks, apostrophes, and capital letters among others.Some examples of textisms in Spanish could be the shortening of words, the omission of punctuation marks, the non-normative use of letters such as k, x, w, or z, the emphatic use of capital letters, the creation of new words or the use of foreign words (Gómez Camacho and Gómez del Castillo, 2017). These textisms can be classified into three main groups: phonetic-phonological textisms, lexical-semantic textisms and finally multimodal textisms (Núñez Román et al., 2022). As Drouin (2014, 251) argues, as texting and this new form of writing gained popularity, the media began to instil a certain fear in society about the impact it could have on communication and language in general. This idea has also reached the field of education, with many parents and teachers fearing that their children or students might somehow forget the norms of the standard language as taught at school (Verheijen, 2018, 112; Totanes and Lintao, 2019, 16). Consequently, there is frequent research that not only attempts to describe the new language (Tragant et al., 2020), but also asks about the relationship between literacy and the use of textisms in younger speakers (Gómez-Camacho y Gómez del Castillo, 2017; van Dijk et al. 2016; Wood et al., 2014) and enquires into the perceptions and attitudes towards textisms of various age groups. (Wray, 2015) Consequently, a literature review of the literature published so far that provides an overview of how the scientific production on digital communication and textisms is evolving is highly relevant for the field of education, as it offers a representation of the use of textisms and their relation to spelling, writing and other literacy skills, among other aspects. 1.1. Objective The aim of this systematic review is to analyse the worldwide scientific production on textisms and digital standards (textese), in Spanish and English. The aim is to determine in which countries, which authors, and in which journals the most is written on this subject, as well as the lines that have been developed in recent years. This general objective is specified as follows: • To analyse how the volume of scientific production is distributed in the years between 2009 and 2022. • To identify the scientific journals with the highest number of articles published on the subject. • To find out the most relevant authors who have written on this subject in the last twelve years, as well as the countries and universities they come from, and the impact of their publications. 307 REVISTA FUENTES, 25(3); Páginas 305-317 DOI: 10.12795/revistafuentes.2023.23011 • To compare the lines of research that have been put forward in the analysis of textisms and the digital norm (textese) and to analyse their evolution over time. 2. Method A systematic review has been carried out following the guidelines of the PRISMA Declaration (Page et al. 2022) with the main objective of finding out how many scientific publications deal with the use of textisms and the digital standard and what their main characteristics are. First, the eligibility criteria of the publications were determined, and then the information was searched using the Web of Science and Scopus databases as sources. Finally, the search and selection of publications was carried out (González Moreno and Molero Jurado, 2022; López-Meneses et al., 2015). Given the nature of the data to be processed, it was decided to carry out a quantitative and qualitative analysis (Colás-Bravo and Quintero-Rodríguez, 2023). Specifically, a quantitative analysis of the data has been carried out in order to be able to respond to the objectives set out on the years of publication of articles on the subject, journals with the highest number of publications on the subject, authors, universities, and countries with the highest production. On the other hand, to determine the main trends in scientific production on the subject and its evolution, we opted for a qualitative analysis carried out with the VOSviewer software tool, which allows us to construct and visualise bibliometric networks, obtain the analysis of the concurrence of keywords and their graphical representation, as well as the connection between them and the year of publication. 2.1. Eligibility Criteria • Exclusion criteria It was decided to exclude all articles published prior to 2009, as this is the year in which the WhatsApp instant messaging application was created. Another criterion for exclusion was the language of the publication, omitting all publications that were not written in Spanish or English. All conference papers, book chapters, etc. were also excluded. These two criteria were decided on the basis of the reference articles cited in the introduction. Finally, the fourth exclusion criterion was to eliminate those publications that used students with specific educational support needs or language disorders as a sample. All duplicates have also been excluded. • Inclusion criteria Only articles that have been written from 2009 to the present have been selected. Second, only publications written exclusively in English or Spanish were selected. Journal articles have been included. 2.2. Sources of information The sources of information used for this study were two databases: Web Of Science and Scopus, two of the most relevant databases in the field of social sciences. The last time they were consulted to identify the resources was in December 2022. 2.3. Search strategy In order to answer the objective of this article, three searches were carried out. In the first one, the term "textism" was searched, then "textisms", and finally the term "textese" was searched. 2.4. Publication selection process To determine whether a study met the inclusion criteria for this review, which had been previously designed, two mechanisms were established depending on the nature of each of the criteria. Firstly, the filtering tools offered by the Web of Science and Scopus databases were used to eliminate publications prior to 2009, those written in a language other than English or Spanish, and finally those that were not articles. Secondly, to identify articles that deal with specific educational support needs or language disorders, as well as topics outside the fields of education or linguistics, the researchers read and reviewed the articles. 308 REVISTA FUENTES, 25(3); Páginas 305-317 www.revistascientificas.us.es/index.php/fuentes/index 3. Findings 3.1. Selection of studies After searching for the terms ‘textism’, ‘textisms’, and ‘textese’, 69 publications were found on Web of Science and 84 on Scopus (n=153). In the screening phase, 26 publications were eliminated, 5 of them because they were published before 2009, 4 because they were written in a language other than English or Spanish and 17 because they were not articles. Once this screening was completed, 50 duplicate records were eliminated. In the eligibility phase, after an in-depth reading of each article, 7 were eliminated because they focused on how digital communication affects people with language disorders or difficulties, as well as other pathologies, and 8 because they were not sufficiently related to the subject of this study, focussing on areas such as computer science or medicine, among others. The articles were selected and assessed according to the eligibility criteria that were previously designed. Two different methods were used to decide whether an article met the inclusion criteria of the review. Firstly, for the inclusion criteria referring to years, languages, and types of publication, the filters provided by the databases themselves (Web of Science and Scopus) were used. With this first screening, a total of 26 articles were eliminated, leaving 108 to continue the selection process. Secondly, the 50 duplicate records were eliminated. Thirdly, to identify the articles that dealt with specific educational support needs or language disorders and those whose subject matter differed greatly from that of this review (textisms and the digital norm), the 77 articles that remained after all the screening and elimination of duplicates were read in full. After this complete reading, 15 articles were eliminated. Finally, 62 articles were selected and identified for systematic review. This whole process is reflected in Figure 1. Figure 1. Flow diagram of study selection 309 REVISTA FUENTES, 25(3); Páginas 305-317 DOI: 10.12795/revistafuentes.2023.23011 3.2. Characteristics of the studies and results of the synthesis 3.2.1. Quantitative data analysis The scientific production on textisms and the digital norm since 2009 has been distributed as shown in Figure 2. The number of articles published annually is particularly noteworthy in 2011 (n=7), 2014 (n=8) and 2017 (n=7). However, in the last four years: 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022 we observe a slight decrease in scientific production on this topic. Between 2013 and 2018, more than half of the publications analysed in this review are concentrated (61.29%). Figure 2. Articles published by year in Web of Science and Scopus on textism and textese Of the 62 articles that make up the total, 58 were written in English and only 4 in Spanish. This fact should not be confused with the language in which textisms are studied in each of the articles since, although only the articles written in two languages have been selected, these articles deal with digital communication and the use of textisms in a total of thirteen different languages. 61.29% of the articles analysed focus on digital communication and textisms in the English language (Kemp et al., 2010; Houghton et al., 2018; Al-Kadi and Ahmed, 2018). Second, we find 6 articles, i.e., 9.68% of the total that focus on the study in the Spanish language (Hunt-Gómez et al., 2022; Gómez-Camacho et al., 2018) and another 6 articles that focus on French (Jacquet et al., 2021; Goumi and Besançon, 2019; Lanchantin et al., 2015). Third, we find 3 articles that work on the Dutch language (Verheijen and van Hout, 2022; Van Dijk et al., 2016) and 2 that do not focus on any language as they review the use of textisms in general. Finally, we find one article focusing on Singapore English and Singlish (Ong, 2017), one on Afrikaans, English and Isixhosa (Bock, 2013), one on English and Basque (Cenoz and Bereziartua, 2016), one on english and malay (Marzuki, 2013), one on Nigerian (Onanuga, 2017), one on Kerala and finally one focusing on Portuguese (Núñez-Román et al., 2022). The 62 articles finally analysed are spread over a total of 50 journals. In first place, we find the Journal of computer assisted learning, which accounts for six of the articles. It is worth noting that, as can be seen in Table 1, the four journals with the highest number of articles on textism and textese are from the United Kingdom. Table 1 Analysis of the main journals publishing articles on textism and textese Name of the journal No. Of public ations Country of origin H- Inde x Scopus Quartile JCR Quartile Areas Journal of computer assisted learning 6 United Kingdom 98 Q1 Q1 Education Writing Systems Research 4 United Kingdom 16 Q1 Linguistics and language Language Matters 3 United Kingdom 12 Q2 Q4 Linguistics 310 REVISTA FUENTES, 25(3); Páginas 305-317 www.revistascientificas.us.es/index.php/fuentes/index Journal of Research in Reading 2 United Kingdom 53 Q1 Q2 Education British Journal of developmental psychology 2 United States 82 Q2 Q3 Psychology PsychNology journal 2 Italy 26 Reading and Writing 2 Netherlands 80 Q1 Q1 Education Although scientific production on this subject is very divided between years and journals, in the case of the authors, we find that 69.35% of the articles reviewed were written by nine authors. This shows that there are a number of authors who are highly specialised in these subjects, as shown in Table 2: Table 2 Analysis of the main authors publishing articles on textism and textese Author Number of publications University H-Index Nenagh Kemp 12 University of Tasmania 25 Abbie Grace 5 University of Tasmania Alejandro Gómez-Camacho 5 Universidad de Sevilla 11 Lieke Verheijen 4 Radboud University 10 Clare Wood 4 Nothingham Trent University 33 Frances H. Martin 4 Newcastle University Antonine Goumi 3 Université Paris Nanterre 6 Rauno Parrila 3 Macquarie University 53 Beverly Plester 3 Coventry University In terms of universities, we find scientific production on this subject in a total of 72 universities. As with the authors, we find a number of universities, specifically 8, which account for the production of 54.17% of the universities in total. The university with the greatest presence in this review is that of Tasmania (Australia) with a total of 13 articles, followed by Radboud University and the University of Seville with 5 articles each. Finally, we find Covertry University, The University of Newcastle (Australia), Universite de Toulouse, Université Paris Nanterre and Université Toulouse- Jean Jaurés with three articles with a member of this university. As can be seen in Figure 3, Australia (n=12) and the United States (n=11) are the countries with the highest scientific output over the last thirteen years. In third place, we find the United Kingdom (n=8) followed by the European countries Spain (n=7), France (n=6) and the Netherlands (n=5). 311 REVISTA FUENTES, 25(3); Páginas 305-317 DOI: 10.12795/revistafuentes.2023.23011 Figure 3. Countries with the highest number of publications on textism and textese This information allows us to have an international overview of how research on digital communication and the use of textisms is distributed around the world. Finally, the characteristics of the study samples and the participants were analysed. Of the 62 articles selected for this review, 55 of them had participants or samples. The mean number of participants in the studies is 294.02. The article with the fewest participants of those analysed is Bernicot et al. (2012) with 19 and the one with the highest number of participants is Parrella et al. (2021) with a total of 7734. There is a large difference in the number of participants between the different articles. On the other hand, the ages of the participants are also very varied. Most of the articles, 35 of them, focus on young people between the ages of 18 and 25 years. In second place are the 12 articles that focus on 13–17- year-olds, followed by the 10 articles that study children aged 9-12. The least numerous studies are those focussing on adults over the age of 25, with only 4 of them. 3.2.2. Qualitative data analysis The articles analysed in this systematic review can be divided into three different themes: Those that study the relationship between the use of textisms and literacy, those that approach the subject from a descriptive point of view, and finally those that focus on the attitudes and perceptions of different groups of people about the use of textisms. The articles which study the relationship between the use of textisms and literacy are the most numerous, accounting for 40.32% of the total number of articles analysed. These, in turn, can be divided into two main blocks: those which study literacy in a global way, which are a total of 12 articles, and another 13 articles which focus on specific skills within literacy, among which we can highlight spelling, which is dealt with in 6 articles, informal and formal writing, which is dealt with in 3 articles, reading (1), creativity (1) and some combine two of the aforementioned skills, for example, reading and spelling or writing and spelling. On the other hand, we find a total of 23 articles which address the question of textisms in a descriptive way, trying to characterise how textisms are used in different contexts by people of a specific age. Thirdly, we find a total of 12 articles that focus on attitudes and perceptions towards textisms. Finally, it is worth highlighting the existence in this list of two articles that carry out a bibliographical review of what has been published on textisms in recent years. Among the 25 selected articles that address the relationship between the use of textisms and literacy in general or specific aspects of literacy, there is a wide disparity in the conclusions reached by the different studies on the nature of this relationship. We find a number of studies that conclude that there is no negative relationship 312 REVISTA FUENTES, 25(3); Páginas 305-317 www.revistascientificas.us.es/index.php/fuentes/index between the use of textisms and literacy, i.e., they consider that after having carried out the study it cannot be said that the use of textisms harms the literacy of the participants, such as the study carried out by Wood et al. (2011). In this case, they even state that in the case of children, the use of textisms is associated with an improvement in literacy skills, especially in spelling. These results are congruent with those published by Plester et al. (2009), although they insist that these correlations need to be studied further and emphasise that a good way to do this would be through a longitudinal study. Bernicot et al. (2014) conducted such a study and concluded that the correlation between the level of traditional spelling and the density of textisms depended on the type of textism used, as well as other variables. We also found studies that not only deny a possible negative relationship, but also affirm the existence of a positive relationship between the use of textisms and spelling ability. Wood et al. (2011) found that the use of abbreviations was related to better spelling skills. In the same vein, Bushnell et al. (2011) found that the proportion of textisms correlated positively with overall spelling ability. Finally, several studies conclude that the relationship they have observed between textisms use and literacy is negative. Drouin (2011) found a negative relationship between the use of textisms in certain contexts and literacy, in particular with reading accuracy. Along the same lines, in the study by De Jonge and Kemp (2012), a negative relationship was observed between the use of textisms and reading, spelling, and morphological awareness. To be able to describe the lines of research of the total number of articles more precisely, an analysis of the connections between the keywords in each of the articles was carried out. To do this, we used VOSviewer software version 1.6.7, a tool whose main purpose is to construct and visualise bibliometric networks. Figure 4 shows the co-occurrence matrix with the criterion of two or more repetitions. This criterion was met by a total of 31 items of 143. Figure 4. Graphical representation with VOSviewer of the thematic areas associated with textism and textese To interpret the figure above, it should be taken into account that, as Colás-Bravo and Quintero Rodríguez (2023, 55) indicate, the frequency of occurrence determines the size of the terms and the label. Terms with high levels of correlation are located in the central area, while words with low levels of correlation are located at the extremes. 313 REVISTA FUENTES, 25(3); Páginas 305-317 DOI: 10.12795/revistafuentes.2023.23011 In the network obtained in the analysis, three thematic clusters can be distinguished: • Cluster 1 (red colour) In this first cluster we find 15 items. It is the most numerous group and includes the following terms: abbreviations, literacy, spelling, knowledge, mobile phones, links, children, students, teenagers, adults, sms, lol, literacy skills, texting, and text-messaging. • Cluster 2 (green colour) Secondly, in the green group there are 10 items, among which we can highlight language, digital communication, WhatsApp or instant messaging. • Cluster 3 (blue colour). Finally, in the third cluster, the smallest of all, there are six items: text messaging, textims, computer-mediated communication, linguistics, undergraduates, and literacies. The analysis of the clusters shows a strong relationship between textisms and language in general with literacy, especially in children and undergraduates, although adolescents and adults also appear to a lesser extent. On the other hand, in order to analyse the evolution of research articles between 2009 and 2022, the same concurrence analysis has been carried out, with the difference that on this occasion the colours of the graph provided (Figure 5) are determined by the year or years in which these terms begin to appear. Figure 5. Graphical representation with VOSviewer of the evolution by year of the themes associated with textism and textese. The keywords observed in the first articles analysed, approximately between 2009 and 2014, are mobile phones, SMS, and undergraduates. This indicates that since the terms ‘textisms’ and ‘textese’ began to appear in the literature, they have been associated with the use of mobile phones and specifically with SMS (Short Messaging Service). In these early years, studies focused on undergraduates. In the following years, between 2014 and 2017, terms such as language, abbreviation spelling, or language began to appear. In the most recent years, that is, from 2018 onwards, we find keywords such as WhatsApp, digital communication or computer-mediated communication.