Rupal Sinha
Independent Researcher
Bihar, India
Abstract
Since its inception, Short Message Service (SMS) has radically transformed daily communication by enabling instantaneous, concise text exchanges. In multilingual societies such as India, SMS served not only as a rapid messaging tool but also as a canvas for creative linguistic interplay—particularly code-mixing, the embedding of elements from multiple languages within a single message. While much research has examined code-mixing in Roman-script SMS (e.g., Hinglish written in Latin letters), the practices and patterns of code-mixing in native scripts (Devanagari, Bengali, Tamil, Telugu) remain insufficiently explored. This study investigates a corpus of 10,000 anonymized SMS messages sent between 2000 and 2010 in four major Indian scripts, complemented by in-depth interviews with 40 frequent SMS users. Through a convergent mixed-methods design, quantitative analyses reveal not only high prevalence of English insertions—particularly nouns serving lexical-gap functions—but also script-specific affordances influencing the form and frequency of mixing. Qualitative insights illuminate users’ motivations: filling lexical gaps for technical or modern concepts, projecting cosmopolitan identities, optimizing brevity under character constraints, and leveraging visual distinctiveness of English segments embedded within native script contexts. Findings underscore that regional-script code-mixing is shaped by orthographic conventions, input-method limitations, and sociocultural factors—highlighting the interplay between script affordances and multilingual practice. By extending code-mixing theory into digital, script-diverse contexts, this research offers actionable guidance for developers of script-aware input tools and predictive-text systems, and deepens understanding of digital multilingualism’s evolution.
Keywords
SMS, Code-Mixing, Regional Scripts, Mobile Communication, Digital Multilingualism
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