The Study on Language Variation of Mobile Phone Short Messages (SMS) of University Students in Wuhan District

Language variation study is the major subject in sociolinguistic discipline. Since language is a living thing, it contacts with language varieties and changes. Language variation grows fast and diversely because of the popularization of internet and mobile phones. Since university students have a strong ability to create novel words and accept language variation, there is a survey on mobile phone short messages of university students'. The paper takes a sociolinguistic view and combines quantitative analysis to discuss three topics: (1) language features of SMS, such as brevity and shortness, having meaningful punctuation, and using numbers and symbols instead of words and so forth; (2) four types of language variation in SMS and the influence of dialect; and (3) some approaches of social factors in SMS, as well.