Texting and its relatives

The first recorded occurrence of text as a verb in English is traced back by the OED to 1599. The afforded meaning is “To write in capital or large letters”.
The popular meaning nowadays is the well-known “to write/send someone a text message”, eventually through a mobile phone (from thence texting)”.

In both senses a peculiar focus may be observed on the idea of writing as a material performance.
The conveyed purport hints at the practice of assembling characters on a concrete support, a kind of printer’s work at the beginning, in any case a spelling play.

This is quite an enriching point of view facing the common semantics assigned to text as a substantive.

Yesterday and today, the verb succeeds in conveying the image of a clever and patient composer, a handicraftsman in writing. The finished product will be a handicraft work, a smart composition.

Texting of all times deals with Scritture Brevi. Texting is Scritture Brevi.

Francesca Chiusaroli, Scritture Brevi
Tuesday, 21st May 2013

P.S. From now on some posts of the blog will be occasionally in English. This is the first one. Dedicated to Professor David Crystal who encouraged our idea of this new step. About “texting” and “language”, look at this:

txtng

crystal

Francesca Chiusaroli

About Francesca Chiusaroli

Sono nata a Recanati, dove vivo. Mi sono laureata a Macerata, dove oggi insegno linguistica. Tra allora e ora, altre sedi.

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