| View Larger Image | Txtng: The Gr8 Db8 | Paperbackby David Crystal (Author)
| List Price: | $12.95 | | Price: | $9.32 | | You Save: | $3.63 (28%) | | | Available: | Usually ships in 24 hours |
| | Binding: | Paperback | | Publisher: | Oxford University Press, USA | | Page Count: | 256 Pages | | Publication Date: | October 18, 2009 | | Sales Rank: | 136,658th |
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EDITORIAL REVIEWS |
Product Description
Text messaging has spread like wildfire. Indeed texting is so widespread that many parents, teachers, and media pundits have been outspoken in their criticism of it. Does texting spell the end of western civilization? In this humorous, level-headed and insightful book, David Crystal argues that the panic over texting is misplaced. Crystal, a world renowned linguist and prolific author on the uses and abuses of English, here looks at every aspect of the phenomenon of text-messaging and considers its effects on literacy, language, and society. He explains how texting began, how it works, who uses it, and how much it is used, and he shows how to interpret the mixture of pictograms, logograms, abbreviations, symbols, and wordplay typically used in texting. He finds that the texting system of conveying sounds and concepts goes back a long way--to the very origins of writing. And far from hindering children's literacy, texting turns out to help it. Illustrated with original art by Ed MacLachlan, a popular cartoonist whose work has appeared in Punch, Private Eye, New Statesman, and many other publications, Txting: The Gr8 Db8 is entertaining and instructive--reassuring for worried parents and teachers, illuminating for teenagers, and fascinating for everyone interested in what's currently happening to language and communication. |
CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.0 based on 53 reviews)
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Thorough and balanced overview by pm444 (Okemos, MI USA)  5 Stars
August 20, 2009
David Crystal is a well-known and highly respected expert in linguistics, who has written many books covering a wide variety of topics. His credentials are beyond question. This book reflects his expertise as well as his realization that all living languages are in a constant state of change. He focuses on the innovations that texting has brought to written language and does a thorough job of presenting the information he has collected. He helps the reader to put texting in context, and the book may allay the fears that some adults have about the supposed negative influence that texting may have on written language. The book is a fast but comprehensive read, written for the layperson, and includes a variety of helpful appendices. Highly recommended.
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txtng4evr by Vince Leo (minneapolis, mn USA) 5 Stars
July 04, 2009
Not exactly your typical digerati, David Crystal is honorary professor of linguistics at the University of Wales. Which makes sense, because "txtng: the gr8 db8" isn't your typical hip its-a-wonderful-new-digital-world send-up. Instead, Crystal parses texting in true academic fashion: locating antecedents (pictogramatic writing systems, rebuses, etc), examining technological limitations, and judging various examples of texting as literature (yup). There is also a glossary of terms, an appendix of various texting abbreviations, AND an appendix of abbreviations in ELEVEN OTHER LANGUAGES. Just in case I haven't been convincing, David Crystal has done his homework.
As impressive as the book is as analysis, "txtng" is not simply breakdown and description. Its core is a passionate argument delivered against an academic establishment (yours, mine, everyone's) that decries texting as impoverished English, a sign of mental laziness and short attention spans, and a catalyst for poor reading and writing skills. As you can imagine, Crystal demolishes these arguments with a variety of facts and an entertaining lack of grace. In place of the high-brow hand wringing, Crystal proposes a developmental theory of texting (and language) based on a principle of ludic (playful) activity. Basically, texting is a game that transforms normal letters and other keyboard characters into coy experiments with meaning. Rather than dulling literacy, Crystal believes that playing the game of texting REQUIRES a high level of literacy combined with other cognitive skills. Countering shortsighted, goal-based dogma with an expanded notion of human creativity as goal-free innovation is difficult under the best of circumstances. In this case, at this time, Crystal's argument stands as a deeply subversive act of imagination. tx Dvd, way 2 t+.
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Nice to have a sane voice in the debate by Gary M. Olson (Laguna Niguel, California USA) 5 Stars
May 29, 2009
David Crystal, an extensively published linguist, has written a sane, balanced account of the txtng phenomenon. He cites data, both contemporary and historical, to place txtng in a realistic context. His linguistic sophistication and extensive knowledge of language enables him to provide an insightful analysis. I am so glad he has brought his expert perspective to this most fascinating activity.
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A good read, a dense read by James Patrick Graham (Rocket City, USA) 5 Stars
March 17, 2009
In txtng Crystal gives a freshly objective and analytical look at the phenomena and practice of text messaging. Through impressive research, case studies, and comparison, he argues that "All the popular beliefs about texting are wrong, or at least debatable." (9) Like Lynn Truss's successful Eats, Shoots, and Leaves (2004) and Talk to the Hand (2005), Crystal's work tackles an esoteric socio-linguistic topic in a conversational tone, each of its eight chapters fronted by a cartoon and devoted to an easily definable facet of the issue like "What makes texting distinctive?" His terse chapter headings are generally answered with equal brevity in the first few lines of the next page, with the following twenty to thirty pages of the chapter providing myriad examples to illustrate, support, or refute the conventional wisdom as needed. Txtng is a slim book, its 239 footnoted pages include 64 pages of glossary, appendices, and an index, but it remains a quick and enjoyable read despite the denseness of its prose.
Crystal begins by outlining the primary arguments against text messaging, chiefly that it is corrupting our already degenerate youth, that it is eroding our language (regardless of the language family the speaker belongs to), and is harmful to literacy. Aside from explaining the technological history and constraints of text messaging, Crystal does little in his introduction to combat the popular hysteria concerning texting, instead leaving that task to his subsequent chapters.
The first third of txting is where Crystal demonstrates that his chosen topic is actually worth rational discussion. Here he examines the texting phenomenon and asserts what linguistic and cultural features define the practice. Crystal shows that, like nonstandard dialects, text messaging has clearly discernable attributes that actual practitioners are unlikely to abuse, but that the media exaggerate inaccurately in their depictions of the practice. His discussions incorporate statistical data to review who in the world are texting and what they talk about when they do. He further lists the many reasons why texting is a tedious and often uncomfortable activity, but suggests that the speed of communication, the utility of short text messages, and "fun" factor outweigh the negatives for the worldwide millions who routinely text message.
The latter section Crystal devotes to an analysis of texting's impact on English-speaking and foreign cultures and language groups. While his research and examples are solid, he frequently acknowledges the difficulties in collecting data and transcripts of personal electronic communication and how those problems are multiplied when attempting to build a corpus of foreign examples with which to make comparisons. Nevertheless, Crystal supplies tables of samples to show the linguistic characteristics of texting that do and do not carry over from English to other languages' use of the technology. He expresses intrigue and frustration at the blending of language groups to create the logographic "textspeak" of foreign text message memes.
Crystal concludes, predictably, with his refutation of the negative hype he explained, contextualized, and catalogued in his first chapter. Having systematically shown why texting is worthy of scholarly analysis, he deconstructs the cultural pundits' arguments and reasserts his plea for further research into a practice that he predicts will remain popular and of increasing dominance, at least until the next technological breakthrough renders it obsolete.
All in all, txtng: the gr8 db8 is a fun read. It is a light book on a heavy topic, but is astoundingly thick with citations, case studies, and reviews of the pertinent scholarly literature. It whets the appetite for the sort of lengthy, in depth study of texting that Crystal calls for. Only in his closing chapters does Crystal's thoroughness begin to cloy, as though he had become desperate to justify the importance his topic as more than one linguist's quixotic pursuit. To all but the most ardent linguist some of the tables of foreign examples may begin to feel redundant, an unnecessary padding of his point. I confess my eyes began to cross by the tenth page of such stuff. But Crystal's argument is amply made by the end of that chapter, so that the reader, like the author, is prepared to ask the question "Why all the fuss?"
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I appreciate the effort, but the book is less than enlightening... by Roy Speed (Bethel, CT United States)  3 Stars
February 26, 2009
Let me start by saying that I deeply appreciate the work of David Crystal:
1) His books on English grammar -- e.g., Making Sense of Grammar, Discovering Grammar, etc. -- offer both insight and instruction in sentence mechanics and punctuation. His approach is descriptive rather than prescriptive.
2) His book The Fight for English is an engaging rebuttal of the Lynn Truss bestseller Eats, Shoots and Leaves.
3) Pronouncing Shakespeare is a really engaging look at what's known as OP -- original pronunciation -- i.e., how Shakespeare's language was actually pronounced in his day, the 1590s or early 1600s.
4) His book Shakespeare's Words is a thick dictionary-like compilation of words used by Shakespeare, along with their various meanings and where they're used. It includes dozens of other useful items -- tables, charts, etc. -- all incredibly useful to anyone reading Shakespeare.
Bottom line: I really appreciate this guy's work.
That said, his book Txtng is chock-full of information, yet unenlightening. He seems to have read every study yet conducted on the subject, so that in chapter after chapter he documents for us things like:
-- how texting is done (word shortenings, abbreviations, initials, etc.)
-- why people do it (speed, convenience, fashion)
-- who does it (the young more than the old; women text slightly differently than men, differences among various nationalities & cultures, etc.)
Why, Crystal has even given us tables in the back with texting abbreviations in different languages...
The whole enterprise, however, has a rush-to-print feel about it: this torrent of well-organized data feels somehow undigested. I guess I would have appreciated his taking another year or two, if necessary, to mull it over, sift through it, and decide whether there's yet anything really important to be said about texting.
There may not be. Yet.
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