Typed out feverishly with a calloused thumb in the most inhospitable of places, SMSs may appear to be a garbled, lazy substitute for Real English, but one study seems to show that those compressed blocks of seemingly random letters may be the beginnings of a new kind of language.

The study was conducted by Dr Pamela Takayoshi, associate professor of English at the Kent State University in the US, along with fellow associate professor Dr Christina Haas and a group of graduate and undergraduate researchers.

The team collected student instant-messaging (IM) conversations over a period of two years, then analysed the differences between those conversations and Standard Written English.

They discovered that the areas in which IM chatter differed from the norms of the Standard weren't mere deviations, but actually conformed to a written standard local to the IM phenomenon.

"IM is not just bad grammar or a bunch of mistakes. IM is a separate language form from formal English and has a common set of language features and standards," says Takayoshi.

The study found that the structure of an instant message has little regard for appearance (no surprise), opting instead to concentrate on meaning - and in terms of meaning, foremost is the expression of social relationships.

Separate to the study, Dr Nicola Döring, professor of Media Design and Media Psychology at the Ilmenau University of Technology, says that IM language has developed into its current abbreviated state due to limited character space and the small size of cellphone screens.

On the subject of IM and the expression of relationships, she says that teenagers tend to find it easier to tackle flirting and intimate conversations via the technology, which renders the sometimes uncomfortable aspect of direct conversation unnecessary. IM also allows fledgling couples to "map out common areas of interest and the contours of the relationship at a slower pace", according to Döring.

The team at Kent is now casting a thorough glance at the social website, Facebook, in order to determine possible similarities between IM speak and other forms of electronic language.

Says Christina Haas: "When we look at the kinds of technology young people are using today, we see that many of those technologies - IM, blogs and Facebook - are writing technologies. Even the phone is used for writing now."

So next time you have your eyes clawed out by the alien glyphs on the screen of your phone, take heart in the knowledge that language isn't being degraded; it's merely being squashed.

IOL