Have you heard that texting is ruining the English language? Well, it’s true. Just like every other small innovation that comes along and gives us a new way to communicate. All those kids with their LOLs and their WTFs (that last one stands for “Why the Face,” by the way. I love you, Phil).
And you’ve heard of sexting, of course. That’s the word “sex” mashed together with “texting.” An example of the degradation of our language, indeed! A word created in this manner, by smooshing two other words together, is called a “portmanteau.” That last word comes to us from the French, who themselves have been ruining the English language since the Norman invasion in 1066. Portmanteau itself was coined in 1871 by Lewis Carroll, which itself, as examples go, a demonstration of how insidious and long-running this ruination exactly has been occurring is. (And if you think that last sentence was horrible, blame the Germans.)
But that’s not what I want to talk about today. I want to talk about sleep-texting. According to an article I read today in the Seattle Times, there are teens and college students texting in their sleep. Sometimes gibberish, sometimes legible sentences. And of course, when they wake up, they don’t remember doing it. I am neither a teen nor a college student, but this has happened to me too:
I got your text last night, asshole.
What?
The one where you said “I’m drunk. Die in a fire.”
Uh, I don’t remember that. I must have been sleep-texting!
According to the article, this could have serious consequences for the sleep-texter, because it could be embarrassing for them. You wouldn’t want to accidentally sleep-text your boss! Because we all know how important it is to keep a good job for a long time when you’re a teen!
It seems we live in a digital world, and we text all the time, and teens and college students don’t get enough sleep anyway, so nearby cell-phones too easily keep them from sleeping well. The automatic part of our brains, the parts where we pick up cell phones and press buttons, wakes us up more easily than the parts of our brains responsible for judgment. (So says the article.) Take that, evolution!
But I think the real issue at hand here is what we’re going to call sleep-texting. Slexting is the obvious choice, and I think we should start getting into the habit of hashtagging the word whenever we text, just so people know what’s going on:
Just ate a truly gigantic marshallow. Now I can’t find my pillow. #slexting.
And if person finds him or herself sleep-sexting, maybe we should call that slepsexting. And if you text someone in your sleep about having sex with them seven times on the stairs while wearing glasses, that would be slepseptstepspecsexting. And what’s great about that is if it really does happen to you, the English language is honestly the least of your worries.
Jason Edwards has never slexted, but has been known to flibberdeetweet on occasion.