 | |
| Author | Gretchen McCulloch |
|---|---|
| Subject | Linguistics of online communication |
| Published | 2019 |
| Publisher | Riverhead Books |
Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language is a 2019 book by linguist Gretchen McCulloch about the linguistics of online communication.
Because Internet describes emergent patterns in language use on the internet. She frequently discusses the offline precedents of online language patterns. [1] She told The Guardian , "I had a feeling that people tend to sort of exoticise the internet and think of it as a place where all of the old rules don’t apply, but in many respects people are still people, and we still bring ourselves and our cultures with us when we go on the internet." [1]
Because of the large volume of public informal writing that is online, linguistics researchers can analyze day-to-day communication of the 21st century more easily than previous writing, which required transcription.” [2]
She also discusses specific phrases, words, and punctuation, including the “sarcasm tilde" and “expressive lengthening” (noooo). The acronym LOL has changed since it emerged in the 1980s, possibly coined by a Canadian man named Wayne Pearson. McCullogh writes that LOL no longer conveys physical laughter but instead indicates irony or goodwill. [3] She cites research from linguist Michelle McSweeney, who analyzed text messages and concluded that "lol" indicates a new layer of meaning. [4] It allows plausible deniability, and McCulloch uses the example “you look good in red lol.” [4] Periods at the end of text messages feel passive-aggressive because they introduce formality into a typically informal context. [3] McCulloch observes that keysmash, which tends to contain home row letters like "asdfjklasjgd;lkafdj" when written on a computer, contains different letters when written on smartphone. [4] Additionally, spell checkers have entrenched the British English and American English difference in -ise endings, like publicize and romanticize. [4] McCullogh writes that some internet slang predates the internet. Starting in 1975, early programmers maintained a digital file of “hacker slang” called the Jargon File. As early as 1976, the Jargon File contained computer slang including “feature,” “bug,” and “glitch.” In 1977, social terms entered the file including still-common abbreviations like “BTW” and “FYI.” [4] McCulloch suggests that elderly people use ellipsis because they were a space-saving thought separator appropriate for paper communication, where line breaks wasted space. [4] She writes that emoji convey the same information in digital communication that gesturing conveys in spoken conversation. [4] [5]
"McCulloch is such a disarming writer — lucid, friendly, unequivocally excited about her subject — that I began to marvel at the flexibility of the online language she describes, with its numerous shades of subtlety," wrote Jennifer Szalai in The New York Times . [6]
Internet slang is a non-standard or unofficial form of language used by people on the Internet to communicate to one another. An example of Internet slang is "lol" meaning "laugh out loud." Since Internet slang is constantly changing, it is difficult to provide a standardized definition. However, it can be understood to be any type of slang that Internet users have popularized, and in many cases, have coined. Such terms often originate with the purpose of saving keystrokes or to compensate for small character limits. Many people use the same abbreviations in texting, instant messaging, and social networking websites. Acronyms, keyboard symbols, and abbreviations are common types of Internet slang. New dialects of slang, such as leet or Lolspeak, develop as ingroup Internet memes rather than time savers. Many people also use Internet slang in face-to-face, real life communication.
A slang is a vocabulary of an informal register, common in everyday conversation but avoided in formal writing. It also often refers to the language exclusively used by the members of particular in-groups in order to establish group identity, exclude outsiders, or both. The word itself came about in the 18th century and has been defined in multiple ways since its conception, with no single technical usage in linguistics.
Jargon or technical language is the specialized terminology associated with a particular field or area of activity. Jargon is normally employed in a particular communicative context and may not be well understood outside that context. The context is usually a particular occupation, but any ingroup can have jargon. The key characteristic that distinguishes jargon from the rest of a language is its specialized vocabulary, which includes terms and definitions of words that are unique to the context, and terms used in a narrower and more exact sense than when used in colloquial language. This can lead outgroups to misunderstand communication attempts. Jargon is sometimes understood as a form of technical slang and then distinguished from the official terminology used in a particular field of activity.
Colloquialism is the linguistic style used for casual (informal) communication. It is the most common functional style of speech, the idiom normally employed in conversation and other informal contexts. Colloquialism is characterized by wide usage of interjections and other expressive devices; it makes use of non-specialist terminology, and has a rapidly changing lexicon. It can also be distinguished by its usage of formulations with incomplete logical and syntactic ordering.
Chinook Jargon is a language originating as a pidgin trade language in the Pacific Northwest. It spread during the 19th century from the lower Columbia River, first to other areas in modern Oregon and Washington, then to British Columbia and parts of Alaska, Northern California, Idaho and Montana. It sometimes took on the characteristics of a creole language. It is partly descended from the Chinook language, upon which much of its vocabulary is based.
Taglish or Englog is code-switching and/or code-mixing in the use of Tagalog and English, the most common languages of the Philippines. The words Taglish and Englog are portmanteaus of the words Tagalog and English. The earliest use of the word Taglish dates back to 1973, while the less common form Tanglish is recorded from 1999.
LOL, or lol, is an initialism for laughing out loud, and a popular element of Internet slang, which can be used to indicate amusement, irony, or double meanings. It was first used almost exclusively on Usenet, but has since become widespread in other forms of computer-mediated communication and even face-to-face communication. It is one of many initialisms for expressing bodily reactions, in particular laughter, as text, including initialisms for more emphatic expressions of laughter such as LMAO and ROFL or ROTFL.
African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) is the variety of English natively spoken, particularly in urban communities, by most working- and middle-class African Americans and some Black Canadians. Having its own unique grammatical, vocabulary and accent features, AAVE is employed by middle-class Black Americans as the more informal and casual end of a sociolinguistic continuum. However, in formal speaking contexts, speakers tend to switch to more standard English grammar and vocabulary, usually while retaining elements of the non-standard accent. AAVE is widespread throughout the United States, but is not the native dialect of all African Americans, nor are all of its speakers African American.
Forensic linguistics, legal linguistics, or language and the law is the application of linguistic knowledge, methods, and insights to the forensic context of law, language, crime investigation, trial, and judicial procedure. It is a branch of applied linguistics.
A cant is the jargon or language of a group, often employed to exclude or mislead people outside the group. It may also be called a cryptolect, argot, pseudo-language, anti-language or secret language. Each term differs slightly in meaning; their uses are inconsistent. Richard Rorty defines cant by saying that "'Cant', in the sense in which Samuel Johnson exclaims, 'Clear your mind of cant,' means, in other words, something like that which 'people usually say without thinking, the standard thing to say, what one normally says'." In Heideggerian terms it is what "das Man" says.
In sociolinguistics, a register is a variety of language used for a particular purpose or particular communicative situation. For example, when speaking officially or in a public setting, an English speaker may be more likely to follow prescriptive norms for formal usage than in a casual setting, for example, by pronouncing words ending in -ing with a velar nasal instead of an alveolar nasal, choosing words that are considered more formal, such as father vs. dad or child vs. kid, and refraining from using words considered nonstandard, such as ain't and y'all.
Marcel Danesi is Professor of Semiotics and Linguistic Anthropology at the University of Toronto. He is known for his work in language, communications and semiotics and is Director of the program in semiotics and communication theory. He has also held positions at Rutgers University (1972), University of Rome "La Sapienza" (1988), the Catholic University of Milan (1990) and the University of Lugano.
Internet linguistics is a domain of linguistics advocated by the English linguist David Crystal. It studies new language styles and forms that have arisen under the influence of the Internet and of other new media, such as Short Message Service (SMS) text messaging. Since the beginning of human–computer interaction (HCI) leading to computer-mediated communication (CMC) and Internet-mediated communication (IMC), experts, such as Gretchen McCulloch have acknowledged that linguistics has a contributing role in it, in terms of web interface and usability. Studying the emerging language on the Internet can help improve conceptual organization, translation and web usability. Such study aims to benefit both linguists and web users combined.
Short Message Service (SMS) language, textism, or textese is the abbreviated language and slang commonly used in the late 1990s and early 2000s with mobile phone text messaging, and occasionally through Internet-based communication such as email and instant messaging.
Tony Thorne is a British author, linguist and lexicographer specialising in slang, jargon and cultural history. He is a leading authority on language change and language usage in the UK and across the English-speaking world.
DoggoLingo is an Internet language that is created from word conversion, meme lexicon, and onomatopoeia. Emerging in the 2010s, DoggoLingo is implied to be a dog's own idiom, and is presented as a canine's thought process. Elyse Graham, assistant professor at Stony Brook University, describes DoggoLingo as "upbeat, joyful, and clueless in a relentlessly friendly way".
German youth language or Youth Communication describes the linguistic patterns and characteristics used by German adolescents. Speech patterns vary by age, era, and location. According to Helmut Glück (2005), the term is not strictly defined. Heinrich Löffler refers to Jugendsprache as a transitory non-standard language with attention to the time period. In German and West European philology, Jugendsprache is considered to be both a non-standard language and a sub-form of the standard language.
Gretchen McCulloch is a Canadian linguist. On her blog, as well as her podcast Lingthusiasm she offers linguistic analysis of online communication such as internet memes, emoji and instant messaging. She writes regularly for Wired and previously did so for The Toast. In 2019, she published a book on internet linguistics, Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language.
Claire Hardaker is a British linguist. She is senior lecturer at the Department of Linguistics and English Language of Lancaster University, United Kingdom. Her research involves forensic linguistics and corpus linguistics. Her research focuses on deceptive, manipulative, and aggressive language in a range of online data. She has investigated behaviours ranging from trolling and disinformation to human trafficking and online scams. Her research typically uses corpus linguistic methods to approach forensic linguistic analyses.
A keysmash is internet slang for the typing out of a random sequence of letters on a computer keyboard or touchscreen, often to express intense emotion. Gaining popularity since 2019, the term is often used to convey intense or indescribable emotions, and it can also be used as an expression of laughter.