txt abrvs in speech?

[Gordon, Matthew J.]

Funny, I just heard "BF" (=boyfriend) used on some TV show.

I suspect your student has already checked, but if not, I'd recommend David Crystal's book _Txtng: The gr8 db8_ which has many citations to scholarly studies in the footnotes, though I don't recall any discussion of the particular question your student is interested in.

-Matt Gordon
________________________________________
From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of Laurence Horn [laurence.horn at YALE.EDU]
Sent: Monday, March 29, 2010 8:01 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: txt abrvs in speech?

A student in our freshman seminar in Varieties of English (Raffaella
Zanuttini and I are co-instructors) is interested in tracking down
any previous research on the incorporation of texting abbreviations
(or, less commonly, acronyms) in speech.  Classic constructed
examples appear in the Cingular/AT&T commercials viewable at

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nIUcRJX9-o&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySR3hpieiQc&feature=related

The student has already collected material in response to a
questionnaire he posted via Facebook but doesn't want to ignore
previous empirical investigations when he writes up his results.
Thanks for any pointers anyone can provide.

LH

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