SMS IN LANGUAGE TEACHING: CONTEXTUALIZED LINGUISTIC MICROCONTENTS

Abstract

Electronic writing lies within the fabric of relationships between the levels of communicative competence, digital literacy, or technological skills of the participants, and the features of the particular platform used. The theoretical perspective of language in use seeks to address the contextualized school contents, and SMS fulfill this function and work as microcontents. The evaluation of attitudes, linguistic resources and uses associated to electronic writing promotes a critical insight by students about their communicative strategies and skills, especially as regards facework elaboration. By conducting social habits tests, we explored the speakers’ use of and perceptions about digital writing in mobile phones. It was evident that students identify certain linguistic features as sociolinguistic markers, and that the use of normative writing promotes both positive self-perception and positive facework.