The influence of textese as a paralanguage practice on digital literacy skills among Mandarin-speaking young adults

Abstract

Mobile phone technology has fundamentally transformed communication practices. Existing research on “textese” and literacy has predominantly con centrated on its negative impacts within English-dominant contexts. This study addresses this research gap by investigating online literacy within a Mandarin speaking context, with particular attention to the hybridisation of languages, scripts, and codes in young adults’ use of textese. Adopting paralanguage as the primary theoretical framework, this research foregrounds how non-verbal and extralinguistic features, including tone, emoji use, punctuation, and cre ative visual manipulation, contribute to meaning-making processes in digital text interactions. Complementarily, insights from New Literacy Studies (NLS) are employed to contextualise these practices within broader social and cultural contexts. The study analysed data derived from Facebook messages exchanged by twelve 20-year-old participants, exploring how they leverage the multimodal affordances of textese. Additionally, a questionnaire, vocabulary task, and semi structured interviews were employed to evaluate the extent to which frequent use of textese influences literacy skills. The findings reveal that phonetic manipulation plays a pivotal role in young adults’ digital communication practices, with levels of engagement impacting fluency more profoundly than accuracy. Through paralanguage-driven practices, participants demonstrate versatile and creative communicative styles, actively shaping their literacy experiences within digital environments.