Madam, - George Orwell's vision in his prophetic 1984 never ceases to amaze me. The report in your edition of March 5th on the decline of English literacy in favour of "text talk" brought this to the forefront of my mind.
In 1984, thousands of civil servants work on ways of shortening words and simplifying terms to produce a new language called "Newspeak". The purpose is to limit people's vocabulary, thus limiting their capacity for independent thought and making them more submissive to Big Brother, leader of the totalitarian state in which the book is set.
Text talk is our version of Newspeak. It is not imposed by a totalitarian dictator, but by faceless corporate "dictators" and society is willing to accept it. If we let text talk pervade our everyday life, our capacity for independent thought will be limited, leaving us like putty in the hands of powerful media moguls who will easily be able to influence us through clever propaganda. Food for thought. - Yours, etc.,
DAVID TRAYNOR, Pottery Road, Dún Laoghaire, Co Dublin.