Standard English and the Distortion Introduced by Social Media Short Messages

Abstract

This study assesses the negative effect of social media text messaging on the Standard Written English of Nigerian undergraduates. Data is elicited from the written English of undergraduates from the three most popularly used social media websites in Nigeria; namely, Facebook, Whatsapp and Instagram. The data is analyzed using a simple percentage. The results are presented in tabular form. The study reveals that the use of social media text messaging prevalent on social media platforms has impacted negatively, the Standard of written English of Nigerian university undergraduates. The study further observes that the major areas of deviation found in the written English language of the undergraduates include: wrong punctuation, wrong spelling, breaking of concord/agreement rules, code-mixing and code-switching, etc. The study shows that to a large extent, the use of text messages has affected adherence to Standard written English of undergraduates in Nigeria. The study, therefore, recommends that urgent pragmatic measures are needed to curb the problem. Specifically, the study recommends the following measures as checks: to awaken the consciousness of the undergraduates to the importance of the use of the Standard English language in their communication; to urge the media to use its functions as a watchdog of society to sensitize the public and condemn the profuse use of social media text at the expense of the use of Standard English and to enlighten undergraduates to use Standard English in all forms of their formal communication to uphold the continued development of Standard English usage in the universities and society at large.