International Journal of Applied Linguistics & English Literature ISSN 2200-3592 (Print), ISSN 2200-3452 (Online) Vol. 3 No. 2; March 2014 Copyright © Australian International Academic Centre, Australia An Investigation into the Impact of Abbreviated Didactic Texting on Language Learning Seyyed Reza Mousavinia Department of English Language, Andimeshk Branch, Islamic Azad University, Andimeshk, Iran E-mail: Mousavini. seyyedreza@gmail.com AbdolMajid Hayati Shahid Chamran University of Ahvaz, Iran E-mail: majid_hayati@yahoo.com Saeed Khazaie (Corresponding author) Shahid Chamran University of Ahvaz, Iran E-mail: saeed.khazaie@gmail.com Received: 15-11-2013 Accepted: 01-01-2014 Published: 01-03-2014 doi:10.7575/aiac.ijalel.v.3n.2p.220 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.7575/aiac.ijalel.v.3n.2p.220 Abstract This study aimed to investigate whether application of abbreviations in instructional texting (SMS) plays any role in promoting students' performance in learning English through reducing distance and language anxiety. Parallel with examining elliptical features and abbreviations in creating SMS advertisements for addressing their special customers around the world with informal style, to borrow some of the features for the compass of language teaching, 120 participants in two groups at Isfahan university of technology were presented with the same type of content, namely, English grammar notes. They used directions with different lexemes and grammars. To compare the participants' grammar learning, t-test was run. Results indicated that the difference between the performance of learners of the groups was statistically significant. Analyses showed that the didactic SMS with abbreviations and elliptical forms was significantly more effective than the SMS without such features in reducing learners' anxiety, thereby enhancing their language learning. The findings of this study can have implications for both designing texting for advertisements and didactic SMS. Keywords: abbreviation, distance, language anxiety, SMS, style 1. Introduction Discourses are different ways in which humans integrate language with nonlanguage stuff, and the analysis of spoken and written language as it is used to enact social and cultural perspectives and identities is 'discourse analysis' as defined by Gee (1999). Individuals working in a variety of disciplines are coming to recognize the ways in which changes in language use are related to wider social and cultural development. Discourse is widely used in social theory and analysis, for example in the work of Michel Foucault, to refer to different ways of structuring areas of knowledge and social practice. Discourses in this sense are manifested in particular ways of using language and other symbolic forms such as visual images (Fairclough, 1992). For at least ten years now, 'discourse' has been a fashionable term. Investigation of discourse requires attention both to language and to action because discourse is language-in-action (Blommaert, 2005). In his study, Bloommaert considers discourse as an entity that includes all forms of meaningful semiotic human activity seen in connection with social, cultural, and historical patterns and developments of use. However, in many cases, underlying the word 'discourse' is the general idea that language is structured according to different patterns that people's utterances follow when they take part in different domains of social life, familiar examples being 'medical discourse' and 'political discourse'. 'Discourse analysis' is the analysis of these patterns. One quickly finds out that discourse analysis is not just one approach, but a series of interdisciplinary approaches that can be used to explore many different social domains in many different types of studies (Jorgensen & Phillips, 2002). However, it goes without saying that, these days, advertisement as the issue very much related to discourse has taken different forms. The creative potentiality of advertising as a discourse type which plays with the evocation of imaginative situations has recently drawn the attention of a number of authors (e.g., Carter & Nash, 1990; Semino, 1997).