Abstract
The present study investigated the influence of the use of textisms, a form of written language used in phone-mediated conversations, on the cognitive cost of French participants in an online conversation. Basing our thinking on the relevance theory of Sperber and Wilson, we tried to assess whether knowing the context and topic of a conversation can produce a significant decrease in the cognitive cost required to read messages written in textism by giving additional clues to help infer the meaning of these messages. In order to do so, participants played the judges in a Turing test between a normal conversation (written with the traditional writing style) and a conversation in which the experimenter was conversing with textisms, in a random order. The results indicated that participants answered messages written in textism faster when they were in the second conversation. We concluded that prior knowledge about the conversation can help interpret the messages written in textisms by decreasing the cognitive cost required to infer their meaning.
Highlights
We could argue that words have specific meanings set in stone, or rather written in dictionaries
Started the spread of an alternative form of written language referred to as “textism” [6]. Even though this specific form of writing gradually decreased with the ability to write longer messages and automatic spell-checkers” have instead been spreading [7,8]), it is an interesting example of an alternative form of written language worth investigating for two main reasons
We explored whether accessing the semantic content of messages written in textism requires a higher cognitive cost for people who are not versed in using it and, more importantly, if context can offer pragmatic clues helping with retrieving the meaning of messages
Summary
We could argue that words have specific meanings set in stone, or rather written in dictionaries. With the development of mobile phones a couple of decades ago followed by the rise of instant text conversations came alternative forms of written language meant to optimize the content that could be inserted into messages with a limited number of characters. Shortened words such as “Kdo” for “cadeau” (French for “gift”) started being used by young people to the dismay of older people for whom deciphering messages sent by their own children became a task of its own. The second reason is that intensive use of textism (messages written solely in textisms) has decreased, many symbols and practices that have been developed in it are still widely used to this day
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