Texting and Relationship: Examining Discourse Strategies in Negotiating and Sustaining Relationships Using Mobile Phone

• In Event: Using Affordances of Mobile Communication to Build Relationships and to Negotiate Social Actions

Abstract

Mobile telephony along with the Internet has enabled and enhanced new forms of human
interactions by providing users with easy ways of reaching and communicating with their
loved ones regardless of distance or geographical locations. Thus, texting has shown a great deal of promise to remain indispensable to people’s communication needs across their life span. This paper examines how mobile phones support intimate personal and romantic relationships in digitally emergent places, particularly Nigeria and argues that texting is an active and effective medium of interpersonal communication for enabling and sustaining social and romantic relationships. Data for this study comprise 217 text messages obtained from texters at different levels of heterosexual relationships namely, formal personal friendship, courtship/dating and marriage relationships. Fifty couples were interviewed to find out specific essential roles of texting in their relationships and the tendency of such roles to continue across their life span.

Author

• Innocent Chiluwa, Covenant U