Textese and use of texting by children with typical language development and Specific Language Impairment

The purpose of this study was to investigate texting and textese, which is the special register used for sending brief text messages, across children with typical development (TD) and children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI). Using elicitation techniques, texting and spoken language messages were collected from 55 children with TD and 15 children with SLI between 10 and 13 years old. The results show that text messages in the two groups were of equal length, but the children with TD used more textisms (alternative ways of spelling words) than the children with SLI. Both groups omitted words in their texting messages with similar frequencies, but while the SLI group omitted words equally frequently in texting messages and spoken language messages, omissions in the TD group were more specific to texting. This suggests that TD children omit words in texting because it is a register-specific convention, whereas children with SLI omit words regardless of the register. Socio-emotional reasons to use texting were found to be relatively important for children with SLI. This may be related to their higher level of shyness.