Tilman Baumgaertel
<00131.2223@csi.com>">100131.2223@csi.com> to nettime-l
More options Nov 23 (4 days ago)

Txt-ing in the Philippines

By Tilman Baumgaertel

The Philippines call themselves proudly "the SMS capital of the world".
According to studies, more than 150 Million text messages are exchanged
daily, which makes it the country with the highest per-capita number of
text messages in the world. Even if you do not believe in statistics, a
walk through any busy streets or shopping mall will prove the passion that
Philippinos have developed for what is here known as "txt-ing". People
continuously punch away with ardour on the keyboards of their cell phones,
and the sound of in-coming messages has become part of the soundtrack of
everyday life. Voice calls on mobile phones are much less frequent. Text
messages have become one of the most important means of communications,
and if you do not participate in it, you exclude yourself from social
life.

When president Estrada was ousted by mass demonstration on EDSA road in
Manila in 2002, the media held the wide-spread use of text messages as one
important factor in the coordination of the protest actions. Estrada
himself spoke about a "coup d B4 text" in an interview after he was forced
to resign.

One reason for the popularity of txt-ing is the high number of "Overseas
Foreign Workers", whose income makes up for a hefty part of the national
GNP. The "OFW", as they are called here, who work as maids in Singapore or
as drivers in the Middle East, use text messages to communicate with their
families at home. A recent ad from a mobile service provider shows a
Filipino with a helmet on his head and a derrick in the back ground as he
smiles cheerfully after receiving a message from his son, who thanked him
for a new set of clothes.

Since I am currently living in the Philippines, I wanted to find out more
about the reasons for the popularity of txt-ing and interviewed three
people who have tackled the issue on different levels: the sociologist
Raul Pertierra, who has studied the txt-ing habits of his compatriots in a
thorough study, Milagros Carreon-Laurel, who did research on the lingo
that has evolved in text messages, and Niel de Mesa, a writer, whose has
made txt-ing the subject of his comic play "Subtext". Since they are
rather long, I will send them in two separate Emails.

****

Interview with Raul Pertierra

Raul Pertierra, PhD, was a professor for anthropology at the University of
New South Wales, and is now teaching in the graduate programs at the
University of the Philippines, De La Salle University and Ateneo de
Manila. The book "Txt-ing selves: Cellphones and Philippine modernity"
(Manila: De La Salle University Press, 2002), that he published with a
team of other researchers, is available online:
<http://www.finlandembassy.ph/texting1.htm>">http://www.finlandembassy.ph/texting1.htm>http://www.finlandembassy.ph/texting1.htm>

?: The Philippines call themselves "the capital of texting" and in fact
the practise is omnipresent everywhere. Yet, most people do not use their
cell phones for voice calls, but for SMS messages - or the texting as it
is called here. What is your explanation for this?

Raul Pertierra: Well, it is cheaper than making voice calls. There are
other practical reasons, like you do not need to have an uninterrupted
signal, but the main reason in the Philippines is obviously the cost.
Initially, when cell phones were introduced here in the early 90ies, it
was a free service, because the phone companies thought nobody was going
to use it. When they found out that everybody was using it, they obviously
wanted to make money out of it.

What is very important is the nature of the message. What characterized
text messages as well as voice calls on the mobile was the banality of the
message. It is things like "Where are you?", "I am here", "What are you
doing now". But somehow this banality has its own importance. We would ask
our informants, which were mostly students: "Why and who do you text?".

First and foremost they would text family and friends. It is not the case
that they are using Txt-ing to expand their networks. The network is
there, and they are using texting to consolidate it.

When we looked at the text messages that people send, there were three
characteristics. One is the prevalence of religious messages: "Good is
always with you" and stuff like that. Then there is another variation,
which are stock phrases with an inspirational character. There are
actually

books or websites from which you can copy them. And then the third
characteristics were sex jokes, from mildly sexual to explicitly sexual.
That amounted to roughly a third of the messages we looked at.
Interestingly, these sex jokes were passed on to parents, people you would
never to tell jokes like that personally. That was when we realized that
texting was a different mode of communication, that you could say things
in texting that you could not say face to face. That really intrigued us.

?: Texting is also more discreet than voice calls. Do you think that this
plays a part in the Filipino passion for texting?

Pertierra: Texting is more discreet. But one thing that is very important
is that we have not evolved rules for the public use of mobile phones.
People are using mobile phones in churches, in the cinema, everywhere in
public space, unlike in United States, where people are getting very
aggressive, if people are using their mobile phones on the bus. In a
country like the Philippines, the rules haven't been established yet,
because public life isn't that evolved.

The Philippines are still very much a village society. Even Manila is like
a huge village, despite the fact that it has 13 million inhabitants.
People behave in public like they would in small groups of known people.
Here people can appear to be quite rude when they do not know you. Then
again, they might offer you food on the bus.

?: What does it say about the Filipino national character that texting has
become so prevalent?

Pertierra: What is interesting in texting and mobile phones between
Filipino behaviour and, say, Finnish behavior. These two cultures are so
different cultures, yet when it comes to mobile phones, they behave very
similarly. So clearly the technology encourages behaviour along certain
lines.

?: That is a different point of view from that of Sadie Plant, who argues
in her study "On the Mobile"
(<http://www.motorola.com/m">http://www.motorola.com/mot/doc/0/234_MotDoc.pdf>http://www.motorola.com/m
ot/doc/0/234_MotDoc.pdf), that there are localized ways of interacting
with mobile technologies that actually differ very much between Japan and
Saudi Arabia, Finland and Malaysia 85

Pertierra: Well, there is the issue of texting and class. Economic
resources determine certain uses of mobile phones. Obviously people with
more money are more likely to make voice calls than poor people. One
things that is very interesting for me is the extent to which it can be
used to broaden ones networks and contact. What I found so far, is that
upper class people are not interested in broaden their contacts, because
you never know who these people are. They don B4t use technologies as the
internet or mobile phones to make new friends, whereas member of the loser
classes are much more interested in make new contacts. That might just be
for instrumental reasons, because they might be looking for work. That B4s
something I am exploring now.

?: How would making new friends work with mobile phones?

Pertierra: One thing you could do is just punch a number, send a text, and
see who you get in touch with. Then there are advertisements in the
papers, like the old pen pals, but it is much more extensive now. Then you
have these channels on television, that have messages from mobile phones.
Or you could pass the number of friends on to other friends.

?: Cell phones seem to play an important part in globalisation. That
should be a factor in the success for txt-ing in a country like the
Philippines where so many people went abroad to find work.

Pertierra: Philippinos now have the largest number of seamen. Not
surprisingly, ten years ago they were also the largest owners of satellite
phones, which they used mainly to stay in touch with their families at
home. Since then the number of domestic workers in places like Hong Kong
has risen to 180.000. We are seeing how the mobile phone is used to
maintain not just relationships in the village, but what we call the
"absent present". That means that people who are absent still play a
crucial role in their village. So you have mothers who work in Saudi
Arabia, but still make everyday decisions like should the family buy a new
pair of shoes for the oldest son or a shirt for the second child.

?: How can they make sure that people at home actually follow their
directives?

Pertierra: We are doing ethnographic work in the village, so we know the
messages that come in and if they are put into practise. Very often the
wife in Hong Kong sends the money not to her husband, but to her mother.
And then the mother gives the husband an allowance, and spends the rest on
the kids. The women have a good deal of control over the funds. And now,
just very recently, you can actually send money through texting. We
haven't really observed that in the field, but that would give the wife
even more control over how the money is being spend. So they can actually
send 100 pesos today, 100 tomorrow, and so on. It wasn't so controllable
in the past. The absent present can actually check whether the money has
been spent in the way they indicated. They can also check on the
whereabouts of the husband and the children etcetera. Most of these
families wouldn't have checking accounts. Rural Filipinos are
uncomfortable using banks. More commonly money is send by Western Union.
And what is even more common and much more preferred is to send money
through friends. Every time a Phillipina from Hong Kong goes back to
Ilocos, she carries 50.000 or 100.00 in little envelopes. It is very
informal and it works perfectly well. I would imagine that half of the
remittances are transferred in this underground economy. That does not
appear in the official figures, but I assume that texting will facilitate
the exchange.

?: There has been a lot of discussions about how texting and the strange
argot of acronyms and short cuts that has developed is influencing
everyday language. Many educators see it as a corruption of proper
English. How do you feel about that?

Pertierra: There have been a number of studies on how texting is affecting
the way people speak, but I am not at all interested. I think, Language is
essentially usage, especially for Filipinos, because they often are
working in two or three languages. So they are not very concerned with
grammatical formalities. It is common for Filipinos, who speak in Tagalog,
to add two or three English words in a sentence. So the language that is
spoken is already a hybrid language anyway. Therefore to worry about
spelling or a grammar seems like a silly idea to me. The medium encourages
intimacy and informality, and that includes certain grammatical
structures. Filipino culture is a very oral culture. Oral means face to
face. And what is interesting about texting is that it is a face-to-face
exchange that is happening over long distances. In its shift from oral to
literal, the west has developed an obsession with grammar, but that really
operates only in the written form of language. In the Philippines the
written word does not have this status. That makes it very difficult for
foreigners to try to correspond with Filipinos, and I mean officially,
even in the university. Filipinos do not answer letters. They see no need
to, whereas in the West you feel compelled to reply. It is an illiterate
culture in that sense. So, interestingly now, you have an oral culture,
that can technically take place only in writing. So people are using what
is an oral form in a non-oral context.

?: In the last couple of weeks there has been a public debate on a tax on
texting. There has even been a huge demonstration against that in Manila.
How do feel about that?

Pertierra: Here you do have the capacities for political mobilization with
texting. The country is in a fiscal crisis, and as a reasonable socialist,
I believe in taxation. On the other hand, since Filipino taxpayers get so
little out of their tax, it is hard to convince them to pay tax for
something they are so passionately involved with. But for once Filipinos
can actually mobilize against the government, which was much more
difficult in the past because of the lack of means of communication. I am
fairly doubtful, if you can mobilize crowds for any old reason with
txt-ing, but for some things, yes. And for a tax on texting, they might
respond. But I doubt that the government is willing to take that risk,
especially since there are so many other gaps in the tax system.

?: Do you see any new economic consequences of texting?

Pertierra: Well, the service providers Smart and Globe are just printing
money. That is the only area where the economy is really moving. But I
doubt that texting will in any other way help the economy. I am not an
economist to start with, but as far as I know there is no evidence to
support that claim, which in part has to do with the banality of the
communication. Having said that, we know that in the villages, people are
texting each other things like the prices of pork and chicken. But it is
one thing to send each other prizes, but yet another thing to act on it
for effective gain.

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Txting culture in the Philippines, pt 2 Inbox nettime

Tilman Baumgaertel
<00131.2223@csi.com>">100131.2223@csi.com> to nettime-l
More options Nov 23 (4 days ago)
Interview with Prof. Milagros Carreon-Laurel, University of the Philippines

Milagros Carreon-Laurel is Professor for English at the University of the
Philippines and is currently doing research on the development of
English(es) in SMS-exchanges among Filippinos

?: Please point out some instances in which the use of cell phones in the
Philippines is different from other countries.

Laurel: I have read that in some foreign countries people make more voice
calls on their mobile phones than here. In countries where the writing
system requires a different script or character which the phone probably
does not provide for, for example, the message must first be encoded in
the Roman alphabet. This would require more time than just simply making a
voice call. Filipino phone users do not have a problem with this. In
countries where voice calls are not so expensive, people do not mind
paying a little more for the convenience. In the Philippines, texting
became popular because of economic reasons. It costs only one peso to send
a message, while a voice call can cost 6 pesos and more. The overseas
workers, I understand, do spend a regular part of their income to buy
pre-paid cards to be able to get in touch with their family through
texting. Then they don't have to make expensive long-distance calls. A
lot of our young kids use their cell phones in very noisy places too, like
at parties or on the bus, and by texting they can continue to talk with
their friends via the mobile. And nobody else would hear what they are
talking about. So apart from the fact that text messaging is cheaper, it
also allows for private communication in public places. Even the person
next to you won't have hear the "conversation" taking place on the phone.

?: So apart from the fact that it is cheaper you would also say that it
caters to a need for privacy?

Laurel: Yes. Some people have been able to tell other people things that
they might not be able to tell them face to face. Not with their voices,
because texting "hides" the message sender. I read from a magazine article
that in some instances cell phones have been used to fire people. They are
being used for break ups or make ups. Another thing that attracts people
to texting is that they can use language in a creative way. Text messages
come between oral and written discourse. And because you can only type 160
characters on most phones, you have to use abbreviations and shortcuts.
And since only eight letters of the alphabet appear on the screen with
just one stroke on the keypad, everything that saves you time writing is
welcome. People see these limitations as a challenge. It allows for
creativity and playfulness and it gives people the opportunity to say
ordinary things in new ways. My own children first took to the cell phone,
when they discovered the fancy graphics, such as this (shows some
ASCII-art-style text-images on her phone). These are mostly forwarded
messages. They are interesting. The phone companies themselves must have
produced a number of these in order to make more money. And there are
dozens of books that publish just these types of messages. Many of them do
not work on the new phones though, because they have a different screen.
The ones on my phone were made for the good old 3210, but they are not the
same on the screens of the new phones.

?: In a paper you wrote on texting in the Philippines you remarked that
this playful way of using language in texting is a way of "colonizing" the
English language. Could you elaborate on that?

Laurel: I was quoting from a colleague who said that during a forum at the
De La Salle University. There are several Englishes existing side by side.
There are Asian Englishes - Hongkong English, Singapore English, Indian
English, Philippine English. Even without text messaging, we use the
language the way we see fit. Even the native speakers of English would be
quick to say, that "ours is no longer the only English." For example, in
the Philippines the word "salvage" is often used in tabloids not to mean
that somebody was saved, as in Standard English. In the Philippines it
means that somebody was killed, exactly the opposite of its original
dictionary meaning. But the Filipinos understand each other.

We are expressing ourselves in the language the way we see fit and in a
way we find convenient. In text messaging we are not very conscious about
grammar and spelling and things like that. In this way, text messaging is
almost like oral communication, because it is so spontaneous. I mean, how
many text senders actually edit their messages? Do you bother to go
through the message again to correct a mistake?

?: So do you think that "texting English" will sooner or later influence
the spoken English in the Philippines?

Laurel: I teach a course on the history of the English language.
Considering all the changes that English had gone through from 449 we
wouldn't even recognize many of the words they used then, which at that
time was THE English. Modern English continues to change, in the same way
that some of the words that were informal usage then have become standard
usage. It is not impossible that terms that we now classify as just "text
message words" might show up in more formal use later.

?: Do you see any signs of that already?

Laurel: Yesterday I looked at a new "Cambridge Dictionary" at the
bookstore, and I found three interesting new entries. First there was
"CU", and it said "Internet abbreviation for 'See you', a way of saying
good-bye in email and text messages." It also contained "BTW" which means
"by the way" and "FYI," "for your information". What is curious about
this, is that the University Press Syndicate of Cambridge is the publisher
of this dictionary. The entries have therefore been, in a way,
legitimized.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------=
----------------------------------------------------------------------------=
-----------------

Interview with Niel de Mesa

Niel de Mesa is the author of the play "SubText", which has been running
at the Koine Theater for more than two years. The play, that deals with
the way people interact with each other in texting and face-to-face, won
the Don Carlos Palanca Award for Literature, an important price for
writers in the Philippines

?: Why is texting so popular in the Philippines?

De Massa: The first reason is of course because it is much cheaper than
making voice calls. The second reasons is that we Filipinos love to stay
in touch with everybody that we know almost constantly. That goes for
people in Manila, but even more for those who are in the provinces or
abroad. A lot of people are working overseas, and for them texting is the
cheapest way to communicate with their families at home. And thirdly, we
Filipinos love to meet new people and texting gives us the opportunity to
do so.

?: How does that work?

De Massa: Well, very much like on the Internet, you don't have to give
away too much information about yourself at first. You can just chat away
with total strangers, and if you do not like the way the conversation
goes, you can just get rid of them with one push of a button. I think that
is really sad because it allows for very superficial relations and a lot
of subtext is lost in these exchanges, which is very important in
communication among Filipinos.

?: I have the impression that here it is very important to be introduced
to other people. Filipinos are not used to get in contact with total
strangers, they prefer to get to know them via common friends. What role
does texting play in that?

De Massa: Texting is a way to get in touch with people, that you do not
know. It is called text mates. We consider it to be rude if somebody who
you do not know just addresses you like that in public. Filipinos also
prefer indirect messages in conversations. If you want to invite somebody
to have dinner for example, you have to invite him thrice! If you ask for
the first and second time, people assume that you are just being polite.
Only if you ask for the third time, they take the invitation serious. If
you ask a friend, if he wants to come to your party, and he cannot come,
he will not say "No." He will say: "I'll try." That is a way of
being considerate. You show that you at least will make an attempt to
come, even though if they say "I'll try", it is 99 percent safe that
they will not come. That makes the communication here sometimes very
difficult for foreigners, because they cannot read the subtle hints. If
you ask an American, for instance: "How are you doing?", he might just
say: "Well, I feel bad." Filipinos would not say something like
that

?: Your play "Subtext" is about the way people understand and
misunderstand each other on the cell phone.

De Massa: We do not like to be frank. We use what anthropologist would
call "the soft approach". You have to be able to read what a person is
saying, because they are not telling you directly into your face, what
they are thinking. Especially on the cell phone and with texting, that can
create a lot of problems. Because even though we do not say directly what
we think, we are quick to react and go off on something that we hear. Some
people do not even bother to ask if what we said is really what we meant
and that can create a lot of miscommunication. That is what my play is
about. I think a lot of Filipinos are really artists and poets at heart,
and the only reason, why they do not make a profession out of it, is
because they cannot make a living out of it. But we love to use metaphors
and say things in a poetic way.

?: But with text messages, you only have 160 characters to say what you
want to say. That makes it a little hard to be poetic.

De Massa: Well, you have to be creative. There are a lot of abbreviations.
I am also a professor at De La Salle university, and I notice that
students increasingly use these abbreviations in their papers. "B4" is
"before= " etcetera. The way we write on the cell phone is also influenced
by the way we speak. We say "tenk your" instead of "Thank you", because we
do not have the "th" in Tagalog. So if people want to abbreviate "thanks",
they might write "tenks" instead of "thx".

You might have noticed that we use the Umlaut U (=DC) a lot in our texting
communications. We call it the "Smiling face". It is a way of making the
messages a little softer, a little less in your face. Then again this can
also lead to misunderstandings. So you have to be very careful with what
you write, because it can make people upset without you even noticing it.

?: Well, I hope, I haven't offended too many people with my text messages.
Do you think that Filipino culture is an oral or a literal culture?

De Massa: I would think it is primarily oral. People do not read a lot,
and word of mouth is very important. But texting is somewhere in between
speaking and literature. Because of the storage capacity of the cell
phones, people also like to keep important messages. We are nostalgic
people, we like to keep stuff. So the inbox of the cell phone has become
like this little file cabinet, where people keep their most private
conversations. It can also serve to remind people of what they said: "Here
look, you wrote this to me." Looking at the inbox of your partner is one
of the worst intrusions into his or her private life.

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