Concerned parents and disgusted Internet elitists often criticize teenagers for their use of abbreviated speech and shorthand online, frequently arguing that it is ruining their language skills. It turns out that's not the case, however, according to new research from the University of Toronto to be published in the spring 2008 issue of American Speech. In fact, not only is "IM speak" not destroying anyone's language skills, it is actually being characterized as "an expansive new linguistic renaissance."

Researchers Sali Tagliamonte and Derek Denis studied over a million words from IM communications and compared it to more than 250,000 spoken words of those between the ages of 15 and 20. The two found that, while written and spoken speech share some similarities, IM communications actually leaned toward the formal side. Teens were more likely to say "She was like, 'oh no you didn't!'" when speaking to one another, but write "She said, 'oh yes I did!'" when IMing. (And then I was like "nuh uh!")

Teenage IMers don't abbreviate nearly as much as some might think, either, Tagliamonte and Denis found. Only 2.4 percent of IM speak vocabulary consisted of things like "LOL" and "OMG," which the researchers described as "infinitesimally small." (Your experience on the Ars Technica IRC channels may vary.) Additionally, teens seemed to prefer "you" over "u" a whopping 90 percent of the time, with younger users being more likely to use the shortened language.

"Everybody thinks kids are ruining their language by using instant messaging, but these teens' messaging shows them expressing themselves flexibly through all registers," Tagliamonte said in 2006 after completing the research for the paper. "They actually show an extremely lucid command of the language. We shouldn't worry."

The finding fits with earlier research by University of Maryland Baltimore County's Jeffrey Campbell, which found that people using IM don't lose their ability to spell. IM users apparently recognize and often correct errors in their messages, although their self-correction was less accurate than correction by an independent proofreader.

IM speak isn't without its critics, however. Ireland's State Examination Commission believes that IM speak does hurt kids' use of phonetic spelling and punctuation (or lack thereof), although it appears as if the examiner's complaints are merely based off of observation and some loose correlation between the quality of the students' work and the rise in text messaging's popularity. The truth could, in fact, fall somewhere in the middle.

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