Oh Warnie, Warnie, Warnie...what nxt?

"Warne caught cheating by text, says wife" (The Age, Melbourne, Sept 24, 2007)

What next for Shane Warne, famous Australian cricket spin-king, and infamous mobile phone text addict? His wife/ex-wife Simone, accuses him of ending their marriage reconciliation by having yet another SMS-maintained affair, brought to light by a miss-sent text message. Of course, today's news reveals his side of the story - of course he is not denying the text message, but instead saying that their marriage was not in a period of reconciliation at the time, but over.

But the content of the text message was interesting in itself, revealing that someone whom we would expect to be quite competent in the use of SMS, made a slip-up, or a typo, or an error.

• "Hey beautiful, I'm just talking to my kids, the back door's open." - Shane sent
• "You loser, you sent the message to the wrong person." - Simone replied

I must admit, my first reaction was to laugh. Apart from the fact that popular news media discourse plays up the drama of Shane Warne's private life to the level of soap opera, I was entertained by the literacy event that had occurred.

When I first entertained the concept of 'mobile literacy', the generative thoughts arose from SMS language as a linguistic form of communication. I had seen far too many uses of 'txt' language emerging in formal English essays and exams, where they didn't belong. However, the New Literacy Studies approach - drawing on such researchers as the New London Group (1996; 2000), Gunther Kress (2003), James Paul Gee (2000; 2001; 2003), Victoria Carrington (2004; 2005) - opened up the nature of multimodal literacy to me, and a connection to the social life of individuals using mobile technologies. The connection between mobile technologies and multimodal literacy (or design) forms the core relationship for a concept of mobile literacies.

In terms of Shane and Simones' SMS conversation, how might we talk of the 'mobile literacies involved there?

First I suppose I should begin at the traditional concept of literacy as related to linguistic communication. In terms of grammar, language use, syntax, the messages are surprisingly traditional. There is no evidence of 'squeezetext', 'txt', 'acronymy', 'emoticonymy', etc (Carrington, 2004; 2005; Bodomo & Lee, 2002). This is not the language of digital natives, but rather, the traditional grammar of 'digital immigrants', imported into SMS as part of their immigrant accent (Prensky, 2001a). What was the purpose in this conversation for using full and expressive language, or is this they way they use language in txts all of the time? If the latter, then they may be an example like Larissa Hjorth (2005) uncovered in a Melbourne study, where a student indicated that there were different rules and expectations for the use of language in SMS conversations: long and expressive writing was a sign that the person writing it did not have full control of expected conventions of SMS language. Either way, at the level of linguistic literacy, both Shane and Simone seem to conform to traditionalist conventions.
What other literacy practices are involved then?

Gestural design? (New London Group, 2000, 25). Well there was an extent to which Shane's gestures in pressing the buttons on his phone were involved in the error of selecting the correct recipient for his message. Despite his dexterity as the 'king-of-spin' in cricket, did his fingers make an error in this instance? Then again, amid all the other SMS that this self-confessed text addict probably sends, what is just one mistake? Well, it did result in his wife/ex-wife finding out about a new indiscretion. The thumb-pads of mobile phones are not really designed for writing alphabetically based messages. Still, some young people seem amazingly adept at it, resulting in the development of such terms as 'thumb cultures' (Glotz, Bertschi & Locke, 2005).

There are however, specific features to mobile technologies which I do not believe that mutiliteracies approaches have yet adequately dealt with, and therefore I need to move further afield, into discussions of specific technological, digital, ICT, information and cultural literacy realms.

There has been a good deal written on the literacy practices involved in the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). Since the mid-1990s, the Internet has formed a point of focus for a literacy researchers and educators, seeking to understand how this technologies are, and can be best used. From Gilster's concept of 'digital literacy' (1997) to research into the literacy practices involved with hypertext reading and writing, and the whole raft of other communication and entertainment mediums that this makes available. (Snyder, 1996; 1997; 2002; Snyder & Beavis, 2004).

I would like to draw from a single paper at this point, where Yoram Eshet-Alkalai (2004) reinterprets Gilster's concept of 'digital literacy' (1997) in the light of recent and continuing technological development. Eshet-Alkalai breaks digital literacy down into:

• Photo-visual literacy: the art of reading visual representations
• Reproduction literacy: the art of creative recycling of existing materials
• Branching literacy: hypermedia and non-linear thinking
• Information literacy: the art of scepticism.
• Socio-emotional literacy (1997).

The most relevant of these for this circumstance is that of branching literacy. Here I apply it to the idea of writing an email, then linking it to a chosen address from the phone's address book or entered by hand. It is clear than unless Shane intentionally sent this text to his wife/ex-wife, and then this is where his error occurred: whatever method he used to select the recipient for his message was incorrect. Whether he used a recent call or message sent/received list, selected from the address book (perhaps the name of his mistress is similar to Simone), or entered the number manually (would he really keep track of a whole lot of numbers in his head?), this is where the misstep in his branching literacy practice occurred. Why this happened? Well, the only person to know would be Shane himself. When he sent the message did he realise immediately that it had been to the wrong person, and hope to hell his wife didn't understand it or take it seriously? Or did he just go "Oh shit!" and expect consequences?

In terms of a concept of cultural literacy as developed by Shirato and Yell (2000), where one understands the cultural and social restrictions for a particular form of communication, well, we can say that Shane simply wasn't paying enough attention. Considering his professional life has been plagued with incidences of womanizing and accusations from women all over the world that he had affairs or one-night-stands with them, he still wasn't paying enough attention in this case to avoid sending the message to the wrong person. Apart from being a personal stuff-up, it may also be indicative of a social move where the use of SMS has become more normalised, more invisible, and for some people, and essential part of their communication regime. The use of SMS as a culturally confirmed communication medium - if we are to take the popular media as a measure - is confirmed in its increasing use across a range of popular media, from television, to newspapers, to advertisements, radio, websites, etc. SMS has become a typical communication tool integrated into the everyday lives of an increasing number of people in Australia - and worldwide, to differing degrees. Shane Warne's careless use of the SMS medium to conduct what the wider public may see as another example of his womanising, resulted in his 'backstage', private life, coming to fore in the public forum (thanks to his wife/ex-wife giving the story to a women's magazine) (Fortunati, 2005).

The activities of Shane Warne and his text messaging, provides a seemingly continuous source of soap opera drama for the Australian media to feed to the public. But what this incident demonstrated is it also provides an interesting insight into the ways in which social practice using mobile technologies can reveal a range of important literacy practices occurring. Competence in the use of mobile technologies for effective communication – or capable mobile literacies – requires an individual to have competence in a range of multimodal literacy or designs. The indication here is that Shane Warne slipped up in some of these.

References

Bodomo, A. & Lee, C. (2002). Changing forms of language and literacy: technobabble and mobile phone communication in Hong Kong. Literacy and Numeracy Studies, 12(1), 23-44.

Carrington, V. (2004). Texts and literacies of the Shi Jinrui. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 25(2), 215-228.

Carrington, V. (2005). Txting: the end of civilization (again)? Cambridge Journal of Education, 35(2), 161-175.

Eshet-Alkalai, Y. (2004). Digital literacy: a conceptual framework for survival skills in the digital era. Journal of Educational Multimedia and Hypermedia, 13(1), 93-107.

Fortunati, L. (2005). Mobile Telephone and the Presentation of Self. In Ling, R. & Pedersen, P. E. (Eds.). Mobile communications: re-negotiation of the social sphere. London: Springer-Verlag, 203-218.

Gee, J. P. (2000). Teenagers in new times: a new literacies studies perspective. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 43(5), 412-420.

Gee, J. P. (2001). Reading as situated language: a sociocognitive perspective. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 44(8), 714-725.

Gee, J. P. (2003). What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

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Hjorth, L. (2005). Postal presence: A case study of mobile customization and gender in Melbourne. In Glotz, P., Bertschi, S. & Locke, C. (Eds.). Thumb Culture: The Meaning of Mobile Phones for Society. London: Transaction, 55-66.

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Prensky, M. (2001a). Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants. On the horizon, 9(5), 1-2. Accessed at: www.marcprensky.com/writing/ (25 Sept, 2007).

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