A linguistically informed look at how our digital world is transforming the English language.
Language is humanity's most spectacular open-source project, and the internet is making our language change faster and in more interesting ways than ever before. Internet conversations are structured by the shape of our apps and platforms, from the grammar of status updates to the protocols of comments and @replies. Linguistically inventive online communities spread new slang and jargon with dizzying speed. What's more, social media is a vast laboratory of unedited, unfiltered words where we can watch language evolve in real time.
Even the most absurd-looking slang has genuine patterns behind it. Internet linguist Gretchen McCulloch explores the deep forces that shape human language and influence the way we communicate with one another. She explains how your first social internet experience influences whether you prefer "LOL" or "lol," why ~sparkly tildes~ succeeded where centuries of proposals …
A linguistically informed look at how our digital world is transforming the English language.
Language is humanity's most spectacular open-source project, and the internet is making our language change faster and in more interesting ways than ever before. Internet conversations are structured by the shape of our apps and platforms, from the grammar of status updates to the protocols of comments and @replies. Linguistically inventive online communities spread new slang and jargon with dizzying speed. What's more, social media is a vast laboratory of unedited, unfiltered words where we can watch language evolve in real time.
Even the most absurd-looking slang has genuine patterns behind it. Internet linguist Gretchen McCulloch explores the deep forces that shape human language and influence the way we communicate with one another. She explains how your first social internet experience influences whether you prefer "LOL" or "lol," why ~sparkly tildes~ succeeded where centuries of proposals for irony punctuation had failed, what emoji have in common with physical gestures, and how the artfully disarrayed language of animal memes like lolcats and doggo made them more likely to spread.
Because Internet is essential reading for anyone who's ever puzzled over how to punctuate a text message or wondered where memes come from. It's the perfect book for understanding how the internet is changing the English language, why that's a good thing, and what our online interactions reveal about who we are.
I can see why for many this is a beloved book, but it didn't capture me in the same way.
The writing style often felt plodding and overwrought, instead of evocative and touching. And this novel is all scene and style and very little story, so there was not very much else to go on.
I found myself wishing this had been a short story instead of a novel.
Review of 'Because Internet : Understanding the New Rules of Language' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language discusses how we express ourselves on the internet, how we got here and where we're going from the perspective of a linguist.
I’m always been in love with words but, somehow, I’ve gone through most of my life without studying linguistics at all.
(ノಠ益ಠ)ノ彡┻━┻
(┛◉Д◉)┛彡┻━┻
(┛ಠ_ಠ)┛彡┻━┻
┏━┓┏━┓┏━┓ ︵ /(^.^/)
I started listening to the Lingthusiasm podcast in early 2021. It took me a while (until early 2022) to read the book written by one of the hosts (Gretchen McCulloch), but here we are.
Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language is a book that discusses how we express ourselves on the internet, how we got here and where we’re going from the perspective of a linguist.
I am what the book refers to as a Full Internet Person having gotten online in the early 2000s, chatting with friends using MSN Messenger, …
Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language discusses how we express ourselves on the internet, how we got here and where we're going from the perspective of a linguist.
I’m always been in love with words but, somehow, I’ve gone through most of my life without studying linguistics at all.
(ノಠ益ಠ)ノ彡┻━┻
(┛◉Д◉)┛彡┻━┻
(┛ಠ_ಠ)┛彡┻━┻
┏━┓┏━┓┏━┓ ︵ /(^.^/)
I started listening to the Lingthusiasm podcast in early 2021. It took me a while (until early 2022) to read the book written by one of the hosts (Gretchen McCulloch), but here we are.
Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language is a book that discusses how we express ourselves on the internet, how we got here and where we’re going from the perspective of a linguist.
I am what the book refers to as a Full Internet Person having gotten online in the early 2000s, chatting with friends using MSN Messenger, then later Facebook and, eventually, I started writing super cringe blog posts on Tumblr (some might say that I never stopped).
One topic covered in the book is how the use of linguistic gestures/emblems online (like emoticons and emoji) has changed over the past few decades.
Gestures are an integral part of human nature and communication. They’re instinctual and they’re deeply ingrained in us.
Two people who are blind at birth, when speaking to each other, will make gestures despite neither of them being able to see the gestures.
Words are great, but by limiting ourselves to words and only words, we’re missing out on a wide range of tools we can use to express ourselves.
Especially in informal contexts, where expressing how you feel quickly and easily, without having to be a genius writer, is useful.
In the letters that people used to write to each other (in a pre-internet world), it was quite common to see words mixed in with doodles of hearts and smiley faces.
We’ve been doing this for a long time, it’s just that the way we imbue gestures into our writing has changed as the technologies we use to communicate with each other have evolved.
In the West, we started off with emoticons like :-P, :(, ;) (the nose was dropped sometime in the 2000s).
In Asia, kaomoji were used in similar ways.
^^
o_O
¯_(ツ)/¯
Sidenote: You’ll notice that emoticons tend to have similar eyes and different mouths whereas the opposite can be said for kaomoji. This is because in Asia, it’s more common for people to look at someone’s eyes when trying to figure out that person’s emotional state. Whereas people in the West tend to look at mouths instead.
This might explain why anime characters usually have gigantic eyes…
We have the Japanese to thank for many things, emoji is just one of them.1 In 1999, Shigetaka Kurita was inspired by the use of symbolic representations in manga, like a water drop on someone’s face to represent nervousness or confusion, and created one of the first emoji sets for cellphones.
In the late 2000s, Apple decided that they wanted their iPhones to support emojis specifically for the Japanese market. They did the work to make that happen and, finally, decided to add support for emojis across the globe.
Emojis caught on in a big way all over the world and, eventually, they became ubiquitous (if you’re chatting with someone on the internet in 2022, no matter what application you’re using, you probably have access to emojis and you likely use them quite a bit).
Because Internet also talks about the various ways in which people have tried to imbue tone of voice into their internet writing (with varying degrees of success).
hey you listen
Short utterances without punctuation like this might have been popular with the zoomers on Tumblr/Twitter?
I’m ~very~ excited about this ~new~ sarcasm marker.
But no, actually, I am. I’m probably going to be using the ~ quite a bit.
Entertaining, fun, sprinkled with factoids and insights to pocket for, uh, sometime? Seems aimed at an audience somewhat more casual about research and more reluctant to move away from traditional ideas of language and spelling and etc. Not a fan of generational analyses myself—but this doesn’t keep the book from being worthwhile.