S. Imtiaz Hasnain’s scientific contributions

The main objective of the present study is to explore the linguistic features which characterize English used by texters. It also aims to investigate if texting follows any specific pattern. As this study aimed to investigate the linguistic features of texting and their impact on the structure of Standard English, the data of the study were collected from a sample of ninety students. The morphosyntactic elements, phonological elements and code mixing elements were linguistically analyzed separately, providing some examples from the data collected for the study. Although punctuation has been discussed under both morphosyntax and phonology, its significant presence in the data prompted us to look into the pragma-semantic elements in the use of punctuation by the texters. Five sent emails, five sent SMS and five sent Facebook chats from each of the respondents were collected to test the linguistic features of texting. SMS are more deviated from Standard English than Facebook chat texts in some cases such as deletion of subject and deletion of punctuation. It is found out that email texts were less deviated from Standard English than SMS and Facebook chat texts. It was found out that the respondents deviated from the Standard English in all the aspects which were examined, i.e. in morphosyntactic and phonological structures, which indicated that it could be a threat to Standard English. This study proved that texting followed some patterns in some cases but it was randomly used in other cases and it is difficult to control and find fixed patterns followed.

Overindulgence in social networking, in general, and texting, in particular, is much in practice. It is cutting across various population boundaries and has almost assumed an endemic proportion. Its consequential impact on the standard language has acquired greater importance. This paper aims to determine the perceptions and attitudes of English Second Language (ESL) learners at Aligarh Muslim University towards the consequences of texting on Standard English. The data were collected through a five-point scale questionnaire from ninety students who were enrolled at Aligarh Muslim University during the academic year 2010-2011. The respondents completed a 16-item questionnaire. The students from which the data were collected were grouped according to their levels. The results indicate the negative impact of this new usage of the language in breaking the rules of English language and influencing their literacy. Moreover, the questionnaire results from respondents' point of view show that regardless of their heavy use of texting, most respondents have a negative attitude towards texting and they viewed it as a threat to Standard English.

This paper presents a study of the effects of texting on English language comprehension. The authors believe that English used in texting causes a lack of comprehension for English speakers, learners, and texters. Wei, Xian-hai and Jiang (2008:3) declare “In Netspeak, there are some newly-created vocabularies, which people cannot comprehend them either from their partial pronunciation or from their figures.” Crystal (2007:23) claims; “variation causes problems of comprehension and acceptability. If you speak or write differently from the way I do, we may fail to understand each other.” In this paper, the authors conducted a questionnaire at Aligarh Muslim University to ninety respondents from five different Faculties and four different levels. To measure respondents’ comprehension of English texting, the authors gave the respondents abbreviations used by texters and asked them to write the full forms of the abbreviations. The authors found that many abbreviations were not understood, which suggested that most of the respondents did not understand and did not use these abbreviations. © 2015, Australian International Academic Centre PTY LTD. All rights reserved.

It is known that handwriting is a very important skill as it is part of our identity and losing handwriting means losing a part of our identity. In this paper, we discussed “handwriting endangerment” to refer to the situations where parents who are handwriters and users of pens and pencils deliberately choose not to teach the art of handwriting to their children and instead adopt electronic tools at their homes. In this paper, we repeatedly used the term “electronic tools” to refer to keyboards, keypads, and voice recognition software. This paper discussed how electronic tools affect the art of handwriting and the consequences on literacy.

This paper presents a study of the effect of texting on the English language structure. The authors believe that texting has a passive impact on Standard English. In this paper the authors deal with the characteristics of texting, how it started, why we text, and the dangers of this language. The authors of this paper believe that texting can be a threat to Standard English, to learning skills, to literacy and even to our past. Texting can create confusion amongst learners. Its effects may not be visible today, but we may soon see them in tomorrow’s generations. Therefore, the authors propose in this paper some suggestions that may be followed to minimize the ‘killing’ effects of texting.