Text messaging is just the most recent focus of people's anxiety; what people are really worried about is a new generation gaining control of what they see as their language.

Language itself changes slowly but the internet has speeded up the process of those changes so you notice them more quickly.

It took three years to put Shakespeare's words together, there were a lot of words to be studied and a lot of words to be sorted out, and it proved to be a major project.

The internet is an amazing medium for languages.

Although many texters enjoy breaking linguistic rules, they also know they need to be understood.

Academics don't normally manage to alter people's way of thinking through their strength of argument.

Several of us linguists at that time would record our own kids, just to get some data. There was some literature on it then, but no day-by-day, blow-by-blow examples. I recorded all my children over the years in some shape or form. It's what linguists do. You don't talk to a linguist without having what you say taken down and used in evidence against you at some point in time.