Whatsapp Use for Communication Among Graduates

Abstract

In this research, we consider the linguistic use of WhatsApp made by people with university studies, and to study the possibilities of incorporating this type of writing in schools. We worked with a sample of 38 people with higher education, analyzing 529 conversations and 3,872 WhatsApp interventions. The results allow us to affirm that communication by instant messaging is no longer exclusively textual, and it is becoming more expressive and varied with images, videos, audios, stickers or references to websites. This multimedia messaging usage has also been imposed on speakers with high levels of study. We see how younger users engage in longer conversations than older ones, and women, in longer conversations than men, but no significant difference has been found between subjects from different academic degrees. The use of dissonances with the cultured writing norms occurs more frequently among the younger subjectsand / or withlower level of studies than in the graduates. The same happens with the use of files interspersed in the conversation and with the use of emoticons. We also see that the incorporation of smartphones into the processes of teaching and learning (m-learning) is becoming increasingly important.