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

Mobile telephony along with the Internet has enabled and enhanced new forms of human interaction by providing users with easy ways of reaching, and communicating with their loved ones regardless of distance or geographical locations. The medium has also not only become very essential to the society, but indispensable to individuals, families and social groups (Hoffman, et al, 2004). 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. Applying the appraisal framework and discourse analysis, the study shows that texting is culturally motivated and provides some of the emotional support needed in personal relationships; texting is also used to express romantic feelings both within and outside of marriage. Especially among dating and married couples, texting is sometimes used in an attempt to resolving conflicts.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 identify the specific essential roles of texting in their relationships as they form and develop, and the tendency of such roles to continue across the couples‟ life span