“Come, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.” — Genesis 11:7

text messaging

Stroll across any campus in America and you can’t help but notice young people intently gazing at mobile phones, thumbs a fury. For Dr. Robert Shuter, professor of communication studies, the text-messaging phenomenon has not gone unnoticed. To older generations, text messaging is often viewed as a nuisance or the degradation of interpersonal communication. But as someone who has researched communication patterns for four decades, Shuter views things differently.

Shuter recognized an obvious cultural divide between the 18- to 23-year-olds who most commonly use text messaging, and those in Generation X and older who have shied away from the technology.

“For the uninitiated, it looks like the electronic Tower of Babel,” Shuter says. “To those in the older generation, it appears confusing, as if there are no rules that guide text message communication.” He added that the uninitiated are even appalled at what they perceive to be an absence of face-to-face communication in favor of numbing electronic encounters.

“There really was no research into how people are using this technology,” Shuter says. “Existing research was predominantly business focused. I was interested in the behavior; the etiquette.”

Using a text-messaging log he developed, Shuter set out to collect data on text message usage among young adults. He distributed the booklets to a statistically significant sample of Marquette students; over a week, each student answered questions about their messaging.

The findings have been counterintuitive. “Contrary to existing perceptions, there’s a developing logic to texting,” Shuter says. Young people will use texting for short, quick messages — such as “Where r u?” — instead of more personal conversations. “There’s a clear etiquette emerging,” he says.

Further, this group unequivocally prefers face-to-face communication. Shuter’s data show text messaging dead last among preferred media, behind face-to-face conversations, phone calls and e-mails. Now Shuter, a pioneer and leader in the fields of international and co-cultural communication, is conducting a comparison study in India.


While at first glance this emergent technology seems akin to that great tower in ancient Babylon, Shuter’s research has shown that text messaging is not as confounding as it might appear.


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ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

Quick Facts About Marquette

Identity: Catholic, Jesuit, private
Established: 1881
Location: Milwaukee, Wisconsin
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Postgraduate: 3,500
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