LOL

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Use of "lol" in response to a joke, in a 2007 conversation on IRC DalNet-Mac (cropped).jpg
Use of "lol" in response to a joke, in a 2007 conversation on IRC

LOL, or lol, is an initialism for laughing out loud [1] [2] [3] [4] and a popular element of Internet slang. 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 [5] ("laughing my ass off") and ROFL [6] [7] [8] or ROTFL [9] [10] ("rolling on the floor laughing").

Contents

The list of acronyms "grows by the month" (said Peter Hershock in 2003), [7] and they are collected along with emoticons and smileys into folk dictionaries that are circulated informally amongst users of Usenet, IRC, and other forms of (textual) computer-mediated communication. [11] These initialisms are controversial, and several authors [12] [13] [14] [15] recommend against their use, either in general or in specific contexts such as business communications.

The Oxford English Dictionary first listed LOL in March 2011. [16]

Origins

In the 1980s, Wayne Pearson was reportedly the first person to have used LOL while responding to a friend's joke in a pre-Internet digital chat room called Viewline. Instead of writing "hahaha," as he had done before when he found something humorous, Pearson instead typed "LOL" to symbolize extreme laughter. [17] [18]

Analysis

Richard Nixon laughing out loud in 1969 (prior to the invention of the initialism LOL) Nixon having some lulz.jpg
Richard Nixon laughing out loud in 1969 (prior to the invention of the initialism LOL)

Silvio Laccetti (professor of humanities at Stevens Institute of Technology) and Scott Molski, in their essay entitled The Lost Art of Writing, are critical of the terms, predicting reduced chances of employment for students who use such slang, stating that, "Unfortunately for these students, their bosses will not be 'lol' when they read a report that lacks proper punctuation and grammar, has numerous misspellings, various made-up words, and silly acronyms." [12] [13] Fondiller and Nerone in their style manual assert that "professional or business communication should never be careless or poorly constructed" whether one is writing an electronic mail message or an article for publication, and warn against the use of smileys and abbreviations, stating that they are "no more than e-mail slang and have no place in business communication". [14]

Linguist John McWhorter stated, "Lol is being used in a particular way. It's a marker of empathy. It's a marker of accommodation. We linguists call things like that pragmatic particles…" Pragmatic particles are the words and phrases utilized to alleviate the awkward areas in casual conversation, such as oh in "Oh, I don't know" and uh when someone is thinking of something to say. McWhorter stated that lol is utilized less as a reaction to something that is hilarious, but rather as a way to lighten the conversation. [19]

Frank Yunker and Stephen Barry, in a study of online courses and how they can be improved through podcasting, have found that these slang terms, and emoticons as well, are "often misunderstood" by students and are "difficult to decipher" unless their meanings are explained in advance. They single out the example of "ROFL" as not obviously being the abbreviation of "rolling on the floor laughing" (emphasis added). [15] Matt Haig singles out LOL as one of the three most popular initialisms in Internet slang, alongside BFN[ dubious – discuss ] ("bye for now") and IMHO ("in my honest/humble opinion"). He describes the various initialisms of Internet slang as convenient, but warns that "as ever more obscure acronyms emerge they can also be rather confusing". [1] Hossein Bidgoli likewise states that these initialisms "save keystrokes for the sender but [...] might make comprehension of the message more difficult for the receiver" and that "[s]lang may hold different meanings and lead to misunderstandings especially in international settings"; he advises that they be used "only when you are sure that the other person knows the meaning". [20]

Tim Shortis observes that ROFL is a means of "annotating text with stage directions". [8] Peter Hershock, in discussing these terms in the context of performative utterances, points out the difference between telling someone that one is laughing out loud and actually laughing out loud: "The latter response is a straightforward action. The former is a self-reflexive representation of an action: I not only do something but also show you that I am doing it. Or indeed, I may not actually laugh out loud but may use the locution 'LOL' to communicate my appreciation of your attempt at humor." [7]

David Crystal notes that use of LOL is not necessarily genuine, just as the use of smiley faces or grins is not necessarily genuine, posing the rhetorical question "How many people are actually 'laughing out loud' when they send LOL?". [21] Louis Franzini concurs, stating that there is as yet no research that has determined the percentage of people who are actually laughing out loud when they write LOL. [2]

Victoria Clarke, in her analysis of telnet talkers, states that capitalization is important when people write LOL, and that "a user who types LOL may well be laughing louder than one who types lol", and opines that "these standard expressions of laughter are losing force through overuse". [22] Michael Egan describes LOL, ROFL, and other initialisms as helpful so long as they are not overused. He recommends against their use in business correspondence because the recipient may not be aware of their meanings, and because in general neither they nor emoticons are in his view appropriate in such correspondence. [3] June Hines Moore shares that view. [23] So, too, does Sheryl Lindsell-Roberts, who gives the same advice of not using them in business correspondence, "or you won't be LOL". [24]

Acceptance

On March 24, 2011, LOL, along with other acronyms, was formally recognized in an update of the Oxford English Dictionary . [16] [25] In their research, it was determined that the earliest recorded use of LOL as an initialism was for "little old lady" in the 1960s. [26] They also discovered that the oldest written record of the use of LOL in the contemporary meaning of "Laughing Out Loud" was from a message typed by Wayne Pearson in the 1980s, from the archives of Usenet. [27]

Gabriella Coleman references "lulz" extensively in her anthropological studies of Anonymous. [28] [29]

A 2003 study of college students by Naomi Baron found that the use of these initialisms in computer-mediated communication (CMC), specifically in instant messaging, was actually lower than she had expected. The students "used few abbreviations, acronyms, and emoticons". Out of 2,185 transmissions, there were 90 initialisms in total; [30] 76 were occurrences of LOL. [31]

LOL, ROFL, and other initialisms have crossed from computer-mediated communication to face-to-face communication. David Crystal—likening the introduction of LOL, ROFL, and others into spoken language in magnitude to the revolution of Johannes Gutenberg's invention of movable type in the 15th century—states that this is "a brand new variety of language evolving", invented by young people within five years, that "extend[s] the range of the language, the expressiveness [and] the richness of the language". [32] [30] However Geoffrey K. Pullum argues that even if interjections such as LOL and ROFL were to become very common in spoken English, their "total effect on language" would be "utterly trivial". [33]

Variations on the theme

Variants

The OMEGALUL emote Omegalul emote.png
The OMEGALUL emote

Derivations

A lolcat using "LOL" Lolwut cat.jpg
A lolcat using "LOL"
An animated ASCII art image popularized in 2004 by memes using the word "roflcopter" Roflcopter.gif
An animated ASCII art image popularized in 2004 by memes using the word "roflcopter"

Commonly used equivalents in other languages

Pre-dating the Internet and phone texting by a century, the way to express laughter in morse code is "hi hi". The sound of this in morse ('di-di-di-dit di-dit, di-di-di-dit di-dit') is thought to represent chuckling. [47] [48]

The word "lol" in other languages

See also

Related Research Articles

An abbreviation is a shortened form of a word or phrase, by any method. It may consist of a group of letters or words taken from the full version of the word or phrase; for example, the word abbreviation itself can be abbreviated as abbr., abbrv., or abbrev.. It may also consist of initials only, a mixture of initials and words, or words or letters representing words in another language. Some types of abbreviations are acronyms or grammatical contractions or crasis.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Emoticon</span> Pictorial representation of a facial expression using punctuation marks, numbers and letters

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Troll (slang)</span> Person who sows discord online

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Internet slang</span> Slang languages used by different people on the Internet

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Leet</span> Online slang and alternative orthography

Leet, also known as eleet or leetspeak, is a system of modified spellings used primarily on the Internet. It often uses character replacements in ways that play on the similarity of their glyphs via reflection or other resemblance. Additionally, it modifies certain words on the basis of a system of suffixes and alternative meanings. There are many dialects or linguistic varieties in different online communities.

A slang is a vocabulary of an informal register, common in verbal conversation but avoided in formal writing. It also sometimes refers to the language generally exclusive to 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.

Military slang is an array of colloquial terminology used commonly by military personnel, including slang which is unique to or originates with the armed forces. In English-speaking countries, it often takes the form of abbreviations/acronyms or derivations of the NATO Phonetic Alphabet, or otherwise incorporates aspects of formal military terms and concepts. Military slang is often used to reinforce or reflect interservice rivalries.

Lel or LEL may refer to:

LOL is an initialism for 'laugh(ing) out loud' in Internet slang, and once 'lots of love' in letter writing.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">RAS syndrome</span> Acronym redundantly coupled with its word(s)

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Acronym</span> Word or name made from the initial components of the words of a sequence

An acronym, a type of abbreviation, is a word or name consisting of parts of the full name's words. Some authorities add that an acronym must be pronounced as a single word rather than individual letters, so considering NASA an acronym but not USA; the latter they instead call an initialism or alphabetism, for a string of initial letters which are pronounced individually. Acronyms commonly are formed from initials alone, such as NATO, FBI, YMCA, GIF, EMT, and PIN, but sometimes use syllables instead, as in Benelux, NAPOCOR, and TRANSCO. They can also be a mixture, as in radar and MIDAS.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lolcat</span> Image combining a photograph of a cat with text intended to contribute humour

A lolcat, or LOLcat, is an image macro of one or more cats. Lolcat images' idiosyncratic and intentionally grammatically incorrect text is known as lolspeak.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Internet linguistics</span> Domain of linguistics

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">SMS language</span> Abbreviated slang used in text messaging

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Face with Tears of Joy emoji</span> Emoji featuring laughing crying face

Face with Tears of Joy (😂) is an emoji that represents a crying with laughter facial expression. While it is broadly referred to as an emoji, since it is used to demonstrate emotion, it is also referred to as an emoticon. Since the emoji has evolved from numerous different designs pre-unicode, it has different names and meanings in different regions and cultures. It is also known as Tears of Joy emoji, lol emoji, joy emoji, laughing emoji, cry-laugh emoji, crying laughing emoji, or the laughing crying emoji. The emoji is used in communication to portray joking and teasing on messaging platforms including Apple's iMessage and Meta's WhatsApp, as well as social media websites such as Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter, and Instagram. The emoji is one of the most commonly used emojis in the Emoticons Unicode block. The Oxford Dictionary recognized the emoji as its Word of the Year in 2015 due to its popular usage, and regarded it as the most popular emoji.

<i>Because Internet</i> 2019 linguistics book by Gretchen McCulloch

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References

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  3. 1 2 Michael Egan (2004). Email Etiquette. Cool Publications Ltd. pp. 32, 57–58. ISBN   1-84481-118-2.
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  5. 1 2 LMAO Archived December 2, 2017, at the Wayback Machine  – entry at Netlingo.com
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