Texting and professional etiquette
I recently heard an interesting piece on NPR about international differences in texting behavior and norms among college-age users. The piece was largely an interview with Robert Shuter, who turned out to be a professor from Marquette’s Communication Studies program. Shuter has co-authored an article appearing the November 2010 issue of the Journal of Intercultural Communication Research (as described in this University News Center press release).
In the interview (which you can listen to here), Shuter was discussing what he and his co-author had found concerning the comparative texting habits of American vs. Indian college-age users, and on the differing norms of what each national culture (and groups within that culture) considered impolite texting. For example, as the press release notes:
Americans report significantly more types of impolite texting behavior than do Indians and, in particular, find impolite – more than Indians – texting in a classroom, movie theater, at dinner, loud text alerts and while conversing with others.
…though, as Shuter noted in the interview, even those who consider such behavior impolite in others do it themselves.
I found this research to be an interesting intersection of the exact same three areas of changes in professional communication that my fellow contributors to this blog discussed and presented on earlier this semester in our class — emerging technologies, intercultural communication differences, and ethical communications behavior. I’d be interested to hear how you think this research’s findings reflect or don’t reflect your own texting behaviors and norms for texting etiquette.
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I found this article to ring true, at least about American college student’s use of impolite “textiquette”. My own friends immediately start sending text no matter what public or social situation they/we are in. And the texting continues possibly even more in situations in which the texter does not know the people they are around. I do find this rude and annoying, but I am a prime example of the findings, I too sometimes display impolite texting behavior even though I do not condone it.
I find it interesting that Americans understand impolite texting etiquette yet they continue to be impolite. While ideally I would never want to be knowingly rude I have found myself texting in class or during one on one meetings, yet I look down on the girl who sits next to me in class with her phone on her desk. I believe that proper textiquette needs to be reinforced during class and meetings so that we can reverse our downward spiral towards the inability to converse politely face to face. On a different note I am happy to read a study that was conducted by Marquette University.
The texting conversation has come up a lot recently between my friends and I. While we all agree that certain behaviors are rude, I think we are all guilty. However, the conclusion that we have come to do has more to do with the effect on social behavior than it does on social etiquette. Text messaging has made our generation less honest and more superficial, and we are not as good at socializing as we used to be. I wonder then if those college students in India who reported less impolite behavior when it came to text messaging have healthier social behavior.