The oral and written interface in SMS: technologically mediated communication in Kenya

Abstract

"The focus of this paper is on the effect of language on literacy in the wake of new technological communication media like the mobile phone and SMS. We show how both oral and written language functioned in the early community followed by the sudden transition into the technological communication age. We then illustrate how the SMS as a type of new technological communication has brought with it a different form of language use, which breaks away from the norm or standard language as we know it and has led to a form of new orthography. We exemplify this by focusing on one SMS practice that we refer to as pronounceable spelling (words written in the way they would be pronounced) and investigate whether this orthography is influenced by the syllabic make-up, and the orthography used to write Swahili"