Text messaging is closer to speaking then writing as it tries to incorporate nuance and idiolect to a piece of text, a good example is the use of emoticons or ‘smileys’ to convey emotion to a conversation, the reason this had developed is because the nuance of emotion is vital to conveying context, for example ‘ I’m sure you are’ and ‘ I’m sure you are 😉 ‘ would mean two different things, the use of emoticons also suggests that the people texting each other are comfortable with each other as unclear emoticons wouldn’t be understood by some groups as they aren’t obvious and are specific to a group such as ‘ :& ‘ this would be understood as a sick face from younger groups but because it doesn’t look like an actual emotion it would be unclear to other groups. Written language does not have this nuance because they are usually written way before they are actually read so the emotions of the writer are not as necessary.
Another way text messaging is closer to spoken language then written language is that text messaging uses makes use of gestures by adding asterisks around the ‘gesture’ to suggest it is a movement not just another piece of text, for example ‘ points ‘ would suggest that the person is pointing at something, this has been derived from spoken language to add emphasis or depth to a conversation that would otherwise would just be block text.
These feature have both been derived from spoken language to text language to enhance conversations and make the messages interesting to read to keep the conversation going as a boring conversation would cause the participants to lose interest. Written language doesn’t have the ability to portray these paralinguistic features in the same way as they are in spoken language, although it does have its own language devices they are not the same as spoken language.
React!