Textagrams

All of the words in any person's vocabulary can be divided up and placed into one of two categories: closed class or open class. Words that fit into the former category include prepositions such as 'to,' and articles such as 'the.' Such words exist for purely grammatical reasons; they do not have very concrete definitions of their own, but they contribute to the overall agreement of a sentence or phrase. The reason this class is referred to as being "closed" is because there are only so many grammatical words needed by any particular language; for example, Standard English has only room for one definite article (the). (More inflected languages, such as most languages in Europe, may have more definite articles than Standard English, but nevertheless there is a finite number of such words required, so that none are ever lost or gained.) Further, the semantics of "closed class" words can be difficult or impossible to define, and thus their dictionary definitions are not truly representative of the words' actual meanings.

The other class, the "open" class of words, takes up the vast majority of any person's vocabulary. These are "dictionary" words; that is, a good lexicographer can detail the exact meaning of a given word (in a given setting). So, if I use the word "dog" to you, you can be sure of what I am talking about without much context (on the other hand, imagine if the word were "of"; you would have no idea what its meaning could be without any context, even though it is a word entirely familiar to you). A "dog" has several semantic features: organic, animate, mammalian, canine, domestic, etc. Any word in the "open" class can be broken down in this sort of way.

The reason this class is referred to as "open" is that there is no limit to how many of such words can be in the lexicon of any particular language. New words are constantly being added to the open class, and are easily incorporated into anyone's vocabulary. Think of all the words and new definitions the internet has given us: blog, n00b, pwn, tweet, wall, etc.

So to my point: I've discovered and coined a concept for which there is, as far as I know, no word. Mark it: I would like to submit a word to be considered for candidacy to be a member of the open class: Textagrams.

The concept is this: When you send a text message with predictive text, oftentimes your phone will "predict" the wrong word. For example, if you type "beer," the word displayed on the screen might be "adds." This occurs because most of us don't type using keys that are each assigned to a particular letter of the alphabet; instead, each key could be any of three or four letters, on top of a single digit. So hitting 2-3-3-7 could be either "beer" or "adds"; likewise, 2-6-6-5 can be "book" or "cool."

This is doing interesting things to our language, I believe. Words are taking on new meanings because of the technological phenomenon of "textagrams" (I'm calling them this because of their similarity to anagrams). For example, some people have started using the word "book" to mean "cool" and "adds" to mean "beer." This creates a "code"; in order to speak the language, you have to know the rules, and the rules are arbitrary (as opposed to natural). Only speakers who have the key to the gate, the rules, are capable of speaking and understanding Textagrams; otherwise, it's nonsense.

Thus, the technology of cell phones is not only serving to expand the English vocabulary, the way past technologies have done. It is actually being taken a step further; a new sub-dialect is taking shape, a system of words with rules known only to an exclusive group of speakers, similar to Cockney Back and Rhyming Slang. Take a look at these Textagrams I've found (there are surely many, many more) and you'll see just how impossible it would be to decipher such a code without being privy to the rules.

Textagrams:
2-3-3-7: Beer, adds
2-6-6-5: Cool, Book
7-3-6-4-7: Penis, Semis
3-3-2-3: Dead, deaf
2-2-7: Cap, bar