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Article published In:
Lingvisticæ Investigationes
Vol. 41:2 (2018) ► pp.161–178

Instant messaging, digital writing and spelling production quality in French

A cognitive approach

| Université de Toulouse Jean Jaurès
| Université de Toulouse Jean Jaurès
| Université de Toulouse Jean Jaurès
| Université de Toulouse Jean Jaurès

The increased use of digital writing led to the appearance of written content that may differ from the standards of spelling. Writing instant messages leads to the production of two different types of written forms that differ from standard spelling: (a) those that can be confused with misspellings and (b) those that cannot. We showed that the production of the second type of modifications has no effect on spelling production. Our research protocol allowed comparing two corpora (written in 1974 and 2012). These results showed that when a modification has no orthographic equivalent, its use cannot damage the quality of spelling production. When it does, the effect on spelling may be negative.

Keywords: standard writing, instant messaging, adolescent, spelling, digital writing
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • 1.Writing using digital media: Between standard and digital writing
    • 1.1How do we produce written content?
    • 1.2How do we produce written content in French when we have to write a dictation?
  • 2.The use of digital writing: What kind of effect on spelling?
  • 3.Method
    • 3.1Participants
    • 3.2Ethical clearance and conflict-of-interest disclosure
    • 3.3Material and procedure
    • 3.4Results
  • 4.Discussion
  • Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • References
Published online: 4 February 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/li.00018.sim
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