Questão de Língua Inglesa

01. Txting: frNd or foe? 02. If I ........ a pound for every time I heard 03. someone predicting a language disaster 04. because of a new technological development, 05. I would be a very rich man. If I were a time 06. traveller, my bank balance would have started 07. to grow with the arrival in the Middle Ages of 08. printing, thought by many to be the invention 09. of the devil. It would have increased with the 10. telegraph, telephone and broadcasting. And I 11. would have been able to retire on the profits 12. from text messaging. 13. All the popular beliefs about texting are 14. wrong. It isn’t just used by the young 15. generation: the vast majority of texts 16. circulating in cyberspace are among adults, 17. especially by and to institutions. 18. Only ........ very tiny part of text messaging 19. uses a distinctive orthography. The 20. abbreviations are not a totally new 21. phenomenon. Young people don’t use them in 22. essays, nor in exam scripts. And research is 23. piling up that text messaging helps rather 24. than hinders literacy. Texting has, indeed, 25. added a new dimension to language use, but 26. its long-term impact on existing varieties of 27. language is negligible. It is not a disaster. 28. The popular impression is quite the 29. opposite. People think that the written 30. language seen on mobile phone screens is 31. new and alien. It has been labelled “textese”, 32. “slanguage”, and a “digital virus”. It has been 33. described as foreign and “outlandish”. 34. However, ........ most striking characteristic 35. of text messages is the combination of 36. standard and non-standard features. Although 37. many texters like to be different and enjoy 38. breaking linguistic rules, they also know they 39. need to be understood. There is no point in 40. paying for a message if it breaks so many 41. rules that it ceases to be intelligible. There is 42. always ........ unconscious pressure to use the 43. standard orthography. Adapted from: CRYSTAL, David. Txting: frNd or foe? The Linguist, v. 47, n. 06, Dec. 2008/Jan 2009. Available at: <http://www.davidcrystal.com/DC_articles/ Internet16.pdf>. Access on: Sept 09, 2012. 28