Expressing Meaning Through Text

Text messaging, as discussed prior relies on many things to get its point across. However what is interesting is how the text itself can be manipulated to create new meanings. There are several examples of this, creating pictures through different letters and symbols, ex: <3> back and forth (yes of course it was at work!). Somehow we started texting back and forth really lame jokes. Jokes are interesting in themselves because they do typically rely on more than just words. Here is an example of one of the jokes that my co-worker sent me (in the original format):

Bear walks into a bar, bartender says what'll u have? Bear says
gimme a....................beer. Bartender says why the big pause?

Obviously this joke is a pun, a pretty bad pun at that. However it is fascinating to see this joke written out. For one the text is manipulated in a way that shows a long pause in breath. One would assume that my c-w was breathing normally while he typed out this text, however it allows the reader to hear/grasp the concept that there should be a pause.

Plus it is quite interesting that he chose to spell out "pause" as the last word of the joke. "Paws" would have been equally funny. When we hear a pun it is never deciphered which spelling is put to use. My c-w made the decision to use the spelling of "pause" indicating the space in the text, allowing the reader the option to re-read it with "paws." Perhaps it would have been more ironic to use the spelling "paws" to go against the space in text. Either way it is a prime example of how people can manipulate text to get their message to the receiver of a text.