This release is available in French.
Montreal, November 23, 2009 – A Université de Montréal researcher has a special request for Canadian texters: "Everyone young and old, students and workers, artists and business people, no matter who you are, send me your text messages," says Patrick Drouin, a linguistics professor at the Université de Montréal who is overseeing the North-American leg of the international research project called Texto4Science.
"In recent years, texting as a means of communication has become a genuine societal phenomenon," says Drouin. "These messages, also known as SMS, are of a limited length and can be sent or received with a cell phone. This growing phenomenon is the source of great debate especially with regards to language. There is also great creativity stemming from the need to communicate succinctly and quickly, which is what my team plans to study."
The European part of the Texto4Science project was launched in 2004 as the sms4science at the Université Catholique de Louvain (UCL) in Belgium. "The objective is to build an international text message database to analyze what language is utilized – is it poorly written or a parallel code? Is the code similar and does it use the same logic from one continent to the next? From one region to the next? And how do people living in a multilingual environment communicate?" asks Drouin.
The Texto4Science project will be led by the Université de Montréal in collaboration with the University of Ottawa and Simon Fraser University. The research team hopes to collect 300,000 French text messages between November 2009 and April 30, 2010. To reach this target, participants are asked to forward text messages that they have sent to other cell phones to a short code number: 202202. Texters can then complete the online form at www.texto4science.ca.
Data collection for the Texto4Science will allow texters to actively contribute to a Canadian science project while being eligible to win prizes. Collected information will be analyzed and stored in a database. Phase two of the project, which will study English text messages, begins in 2010.
Partners in research:
This project of the Université de Montréal Observatoire de linguistique Sens-Texte will be conducted in partnership with the Université de Montréal Bell Chair in Interdisciplinary Research on Emerging Technologies, Atlas Telecom Mobile and the UCL Centre de traitement automatique du langage.
On the Web:
- About Texto4Science: www.texto4science.ca
- About the Université de Montréal Department of Linguistics and Translation: http://www.ling.umontreal.ca
Media contact:
Sylvain-Jacques Desjardins
International press attaché
Université de Montréal
Telephone: 514-343-7593
Email: sylvain-jacques.desjardins@umontreal.ca