Integrity and civility are two important concepts that can influence one’s dealings with human-kind. They are of particularly vast importance when it comes to our communication with others. Together they encompass both having good intentions and showing them.
One way to have civility, or to be civil, is to condition our thoughts and feelings in order to give them an appropriate outward appearance. For example, in the course of a conversation between two people, one person may find that they disagree most emphatically with nearly all that the other says, and are slowly losing their respect for them. Rather than say to their co-conversant, “You are wrong,” or even, “I don’t agree,” they may instead repeatedly nod their head as though in affirmation, or occasionally say something like, “I’m not sure I understand.” They are being civil, and despite their opposing views and declining opinion of the other person, they feign understanding and good-will towards this person with whom they most firmly disagree. There is, however, another way to be civil.
This method of civility involves legitimately understanding and feeling good-will towards someone with whom you disagree. This kind of civility involves integrity. It means being pleasant to others as an outward manifestation of the good feelings toward them that exist inside.
This crucial relationship between integrity and civility is perhaps overlooked in the common discourse on the pro’s and con’s of communication by text-messaging. Understanding this relationship is an important way to recognize and avoid possible pitfalls that can result from careless indulgence in communicating via text. These may be pitfalls for communication and even for personal integrity.
One ought to be civil when texting, much as with any other form of communication. This isn’t all too difficult. In fact, it is very easy. When receiving a text message, a person only sees the few-hundred characters sent, but cannot be sure of the intent behind them. Unlike speaking with a person directly, or even over the phone, there is no inflection, no facial expressions, and no body-language to hint at the subtle, though important deeper meaning behind the words. It is easy to send something to a friend, but mean something else entirely. It is easy for someone to say they think something when really they don’t. No-one can tell the difference.
This lends itself excellently to the first way of being civil, mentioned above. How simple it is to appear to be pleasant to someone when their only representation of your feelings toward them are the words on their phone that you decided for them to see. It is more difficult, however, through text-message communication to incorporate civility in its other mode.
The language of texting does not lend itself to integrity, but rather to incompleteness, dishonesty, and general miscommunication. Unlike in writing a letter or an email, text-messages must be kept brief. Often they are difficult to input into a device, requiring multiple tiny key-strokes per character before they can be sent. This is just one more reason people will try keep them as short as possible. Such consistent brevity lends itself to poor and incomplete explanation of thoughts and therefore continually opens up opportunities for miscommunication.
This is also problematic in the heavy use of “texting lingo,” involving the repeated use of shortened words and phrases, and the expression of canned emotional responses such as “lol” or “:)”. Heavy use of “texting lingo,” removes much of the possibility of individual expression in communication with others. When using this language, people limit their self-expression to words, phrases and emotions that are pre-defined in the mind of the recipient. This greatly diminishes the capacity for variety of speech, and even thought, that is present in a normal, face-to-face conversation. Such language makes it difficult for people to understand what one-another are truly saying, and opens up many opportunities for miscommunication.
From the exchange of incomplete and ambiguous ideas to misleading and lying to one another in conversation, texting-messaging provides many potential pitfalls both to effective communication and to personal integrity.
These pitfalls must be carefully considered and safely avoided to ensure effective and moral use of text-messaging technologies. Through sparing and appropriate use of text messaging, and especially “texting lingo,” those in a conversation are able to more fully understand one another, and so better display good-will and understanding toward each other. Likewise, while warily avoiding opportunities to lie and mislead one another, our texting communication is brought to a higher level. In doing these things we communicate with both civility and integrity, as we not only have good intentions toward one another, but are able to show them.
