Short Message Service (SMS) as a Variety of Written English

Abstract

SMS (Short Message Services) has become one of the most frequently used means of communication in Nigeria; which is an e-mediated form of communication inherent in mobile phones. It has gained currency, for quite some time in linguistic fabric of English in Nigeria. And has a kind of simple sentence structure marked with shortening of words. These shortenings overlook the orthographic forms of words and lay emphasis on the written sounds for its lexical and syntactic variants (2 for to, too and two). These variants are the unique linguistic elements that make SMS a peculiar lect or variety of English.