Abstract
One of the features of a living language is that it constantly changes with new words finding their way into the vocabulary of the language. Languages’ vocabularies grow from time to time as a result of new innovations that continuously spring up in different sectors of life and human endeavour; one of which is the Global System for Mobile Communication (GSM), in the recent century. This study, therefore, explores the various processes employed by Nigerian Short-Message Service (SMS) writers in generating new words, by critically sampling and analysing some of these new words to see the processes employed by these GSM users. It is discovered in this paper that these GSM users have the capability of reducing any form of expression to the starkest abbreviation. Generally, the new words analysed are in one way or the other in their reduced forms and this may not be far from the characteristic SMS requirement of limited number of characters.
Index Terms—word formation, GSM, SMS, clipping, alphanumeric and coinages
I. INTRODUCTION
The current computer literacy level in the society has made text-based communication, which comes in various forms; assume a vital position among many people. These text-based communication techniques include chat on-line, text messaging, e-mail, among others. This form of communication (text-based communication) comes with its peculiar style of writing, creating and re-creating new ways of writing. This paper is an attempt in analysing the various word formation processes employed by Nigerians using the Global System for Mobile Communication (GSM) in text messaging.
GSM, which is an abbreviation for Global System for Mobile Communication, is a communication system that does not use wires and cables. It rather uses radio waves according to Homby (2001), and as such, it can be carried about and be used anywhere. Though GSM can be used for many purposes, it is majorly used for call making and text-messaging. However, this paper focuses on text massages.
Temple (2013) observes that technical ideas (with respect to GSM) from various numbers of sources are gathered over the period from 1982-1985. According to him, Europe produced the very first GSM Technical Specification in 1987, which marks the birth or the pivotal year of GSM. However, GSM was introduced in Nigeria in 2001following the January 2001 auction for GSM which attracted mobile phone operators like MTN Nigeria, Econet Wireless Nigeria (now Airtel), MTEL, Globacom and Etisalat to operate digital mobile service in the country. Econet Wireless Nigeria and MTN Nigeria launched their GSM on 7th and 8th of August 2001 respectively. Obviously, GSM subscription rate and phone calls were extremely expensive at inception. However, with the advent of days, they have become relatively affordable that an average household in the country can afford to own as many GSM phones as the number of persons in the household. This makes it possible for young people (even children) to have access to GSM. Consequently, from observation there are innovative ways/styles of writing that accompany the use of GSM to compose text messages, especially by the younger generation in order to reflect local colouration and to, save time, space and cost. In this paper, we look at these innovative styles to find out the word-formation processes employed by Nigerian users of this information technology gadget in their text messages.