The next stage of language: Textspeak?

The following are two different theories that explain how textspeak has shaped language in a new way.

David Crystal:

• Because telephones used to have a word limit per text message, people came up with ways to abbreviate what they were saying.
• People who text use consonants in unconventional ways, recognizing that they have a greater communicative value than most vowels, so they are likely to leave out more vowels than consonants. (E.g.: "b" to say be, "msg" to say message)
• Punctuation is often ignored and instead punctuation marks are used for other purposes, such as expressing emotions (E.g.: :D, :(, @__@, etc)
• Capital letters are ignored at the beginning of sentences and are instead used to express emotion and to emphasize on messages.
• Abbreviations and acronyms can be very vague and so they can sometimes en up communicating the wrong message (E.g.: an "lol" right after an affectionate message)
• There is more than one way to abbreviate things, which adds to the ambiguity (E.g.: TTYL, TTUL, TTUL8TR, T2UL, TTYL8TR, etc; which all mean "talk to you later").
• There is no universal convention to the way words are abbreviated in texts.
• Textspeak is unlikely to have an effect on a language as a whole.

John McWhorter

• Texspeak is more similar to speaking than it is to writing. People text how they speak, not how they write. This is why they tend to leave out things like capital letters and punctuation marks because you don't think about those when you speak.
• Pragmatic particles have appeared. These are words that don't really mean what they technically mean, but are more used to mark emotion and empathy. (E.g.: "lol gmail is being so slow" reply: "lol ikr") In the example the lol's aren't actually being used to say "laughing out loud" or "lots of love."
• "Information markers" have also appeared. For example the word "slash" being used to change the topic to make up for the fact that one can't use physical actions in a texting conversation.
• Texting has nothing to do with young people's language deficiency. This "language deficiency" has existed since ancient times.
• Bilingualism is good for the brain. So is "bidialectalism," and this applies to writing as well, and since textspeak can be considered as a different dialect, it is beneficial for the mind because that "balancing act" between common speech and textspeak is the same as speaking two different dialects.
• Language changes in extremely fast ways, to the point that a 20 year-old now would not be able to fully understand the text messages of 15 year-olds.
• Language will always be evolving.

Both theories agree that textspeak is not detrimental to language.

Crystal says that textspeak is unlikely to have an effect on language as a whole, while McWhorter says that language is always changing according to the conditions.

They both offer different views regarding how textspeak has changed the language. They both show different examples, but Crystal's are probably more outdated.