Whatsapp, Textese, and Moral Panics: Discourse Features and Habits Across Two Generations

This essay sets out to compare discourse features and communicative practices in the use of textese in Whatsapp across two different generations. Textese, and other ways of online writing, has been associated with plenty of voices expressing a concern for the way young people adopted this practice (Humphrys, 2007; Sutherland, 2002). This prompted a “moral panics”, stating that textese triggers a failure in young people's ability to communicate using the standard variety of a language. Contrary to these voices, this paper defends the idea that online writing should not always be linked to the failure mentioned above. Results from this article prove that using textese and failing to communicate using the standard variety of a language cannot be systematically associated with teenagers’ literacy/communicative practices. They also provide evidence to support those voices arguing that the use of textese is intentionally adopted according to the circumstances surrounding a particular communicative situation.