#because Internet

[black-crested-jaybird]

Yes and:

This is also a generational (Internet-generational) communication difference. Gretchen McCulloch talks in her fantastic and fascinating book Because Internet about the different ways that people communicate in text media, and how those style differences are reflective of how and where they started using (and, I think, but can't remember if she discusses this, how and where they are currently using) online communication tools.

Adding "!!" and emotion-markers like emoticons and emoji is common among a certain generation of internet-users. The fact that it's not universal has got at least as much to do with the users' extra-Internet (i.e. IRL/brickspace) experience and training and their formative online experiences and culture as with individual expression and/or social anxiety.

[rainbowfic]

But there was a period of friction, when “hello” was spreading beyond its summoning origins to become a general-purpose greeting, and not everyone was a fan. I was reminded of this when watching a scene in the BBC television series Call the Midwife, set in the late 1950s and early 1960s, where a younger midwife greets an older one with a cheerful “Hello!” “When I was in training,” sniffs the older character, “we were always taught to say ‘good morning,’ ‘good afternoon,’ or ‘good evening.’ ‘Hello’ would not have been permitted.” To the younger character, “hello” has firmly crossed the line into a phatic greeting. But to the older character, or perhaps more accurately to her instructors as a young nurse, “hello” still retains an impertinent whiff of summoning. Etiquette books as late as the 1940s were still advising against “hello,” but in the mouth of a character from the 1960s, being anti-hello is intended to make her look like a fussbudget, especially playing for an audience of the future who’s forgotten that anyone ever objected to “hello.”

Because Internet, Gretchen McCulloch

[allthingslinguistic]

Si alguna vez te has preguntado cómo ha cambiado internet la forma en la que hablamos, "Arroba lengua" es tu libro. Una instantánea de un mundo en constante cambio. ✍️Escribe: Gretchen McCulloch 📝Traduce Miguel Papineau ¡Ya disponible en preventa!

Because Internet is now available in Spanish! There are also translations in Japanese and Korean but this is the first translation into a language I can understand, so I'm particularly excited! I'm doing an event in Madrid on Friday, 13 September at 8pm with the translator, Miguel Sánchez Ibáñez, and I hope to see people there!

The title has been translocalized into a Spanish social media expression: arroba is the name for the @ sign, and is a way of getting someone's attention, so Arroba Lengua is like @language (only written out so people can actually find it in bookstores).

[adhd-languages]

I finally started reading “Because Internet” and I’m having so much fun :)

[southeast-northwest]

giggling and kicking my feet reading this book??like hi? hello?? dude linguistics has always scratched my brain in such a!!! perfect way!! and ive found the time to read and got my hands on some second hand books and I've been getting through them like fuckkkk,,,,

i wish. i wish. id gotten the opportunity to study linguistics at a uni level. that'd be the dream..

in another life im an academic linguist. unfortunately in this life i like being able to afford food.

ANYWAY huge hype about Because Internet by Gretchen McCulloch. as soon as I finish reading this book I wanna check out her podcast @lingthusiasm

also!!! send me reccs of linguistics books (that are less than a few decades old if possible). as interesting as Pinker's thoughts are, it's kinda funny reading this guy say, in full confidence, that language is so complicated that computers will never be able to believably write anything resembling natural human communication. lol

[sirentheseaslug]

Well it happened

voraphiles rejoice.

the vaguely vore-like moment in the Albion plotline

has finally taken place in the official series.

you thirsty folks willing to stretch something from nothing

can finally breathe a sigh of relief

and pester its creator with adult charged questions.

[ilikereadingactually]

Because Internet

Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language by Gretchen McCulloch

i've been wanting to read this book for ages, and my instinct that i would enjoy it proved totally true. it's a book very much of its moment (it came out in summer 2019) and McCulloch knows and embraces that, and it was actually fascinating to read a few years after the fact because even in that short time, i can already see how internet language and my own informal language have continued to change.

according to the internet speech cohorts outlined in the early chapters of the book, i am a Full Internet Person, maybe a little bit on the cusp of Old Internet Person, and i haven't felt so specifically seen since that article about the Oregon Trail Generation. but everybody's in here, pre-internet, post-internet, you name it, and the book lays out language evolutions over these waves in fun and smart and readable ways. why do boomers use ... at the ends of their texts?? why did emojis catch on?? how do memes evolve??? why do multiple question marks and almost no capitalization feel different than if i wrote this like i was about to turn it in for a grade???? go forth and read to find out!

the deets

how i read it: i read this one as an ebook on Libby, which was deceptive because there were a lot of endnotes and back matter! it was a quick read, for nonfiction, which often goes slower for me.

a line i liked: tag yourself im "kept the same username for decades even"

Those who joined the internet to meet new people kept the same username across platforms for years, decades even, so that their internet friends could find them. But for the internet users who joined in order to hang out with people they already knew, screennames were a way of performing identity, rather than obscuring it: your username might honor a favorite band or movie quote, and could change a few months later as your pop cultural allegiances shifted.

try this if you: think linguistics is cool, are an Internet Person, or want to spend hours thinking about what your top emojis say about your emotional expression (maybe that's just me?)

[wanderingsp1rit]

In a chapter on how people choose to use language, based on society and a certain choice that the author adopted.

Gretchen McCulloch, Because Internet (p.48)

[rainbowfic]

The linguist J. K. Chambers did a survey of Canadian twelve-year-olds in the 1970s, and found that two-thirds of them said “zee”—but when he went back and surveyed the same population in the 1990s, he found that the vast majority were now using “zed” as adults. The same shift happened with successive generations. Chambers figured that children learn “zee” from the alphabet song and American children’s television programs like Sesame Street, but when they get older, they learn that “zed” is associated with Canadian identity and switch. Indeed, noted Chambers, “zed” is one of the first things that American immigrants to Canada change about their speech, “because calling it ‘zee’ unfailingly draws comments from the people they are talking to.”

Because Internet, Gretchen McCulloch

[allthingslinguistic]

May 2023: Spanish Because Internet, True Biz, and Word Magic

This month, I announced that there’s going to be a Spanish-language edition of Because Internet coming at some point in 2024! Spanish has been the translation that people have requested from me the most and I’m delighted that Álex Herrero and the other folks at Pie de Página are making it happen. The main episode of Lingthusiasm was Word Magic, in which we discuss the linguistics of the magical…

[ryan-sometimes]

TERF shocked to discover that the real world is not an online echo chamber, and that instead the average woman either supports or just doesn’t care about trans people the way they do

[gibbearish]

love when ppl defend the aggressive monetization of the internet with "what, do you just expect it to be free and them not make a profit???" like. yeah that would be really nice actually i would love that:)! thanks for asking

[musicalhell]

"Man can believe the impossible, but man can never believe the improbable." ~Oscar Wilde

I've asked this question before and been surprised by the results, now I have access to more weirdos it's your problem:

It is the middle of a Sunday afternoon. You have nothing on, and aren't expecting visitors, deliveries or post.

Unexpectedly, there is a knock at the door.

[such-a-daydreamer]

And then they explode

[blackpearlblast]

a video call for help from @haya-orouq19 who is in gaza

[Transcript: Please don't scroll if you want to help a family in Gaza. Hey everyone, this is Haya Orouq, I am 18 years old from Gaza City. Today is the 167th day of the war in Gaza City. And through this war we lost our house, my university was bombed. My whole childhood neighborhood area was completely damaged. We have been displaced to three different places in search of a safer place but unfortunately there's no safer place in Gaza. Everywhere there's bombing, everywhere is dangerous, so we are now displaced in Deir al-Balah. And me and my family lost everything, we have nothing left here in Gaza.

And my mom is very sick also, she is suffering from Lupus and because she has Lupus, she is a kidney failure patient in need of an urgent treatment and care outside of Gaza. The hospitals here is so poor and bad and the quality of her treatment is getting worse and worse because the quality of the hospitals is bad, because of the conditions of the war. So please guys, help my family, we deserve to- we deserve a decent life, we deserve to start a new beginning and deserve a new life.

So, here's the link in the bio and you can help me by sharing the video, repost, comment, like, whatever you can do can help. Every one dollar can make a difference. You can make life-changing difference to my family, you can save my family, you can save my mom. I am also trying to reach out to as many celebrities who are interested in helping people like me by making videos about the family that needs help in Gaza, like me. So I will mention them in the comment and please go to them, ask them to share my videos, and to make a video about my campaign and ask them to share my link. This is so urgent, I need your help guys because my account is prevented from receiving and sending messages so I can't reach out with them. I will mention them so please help me, and help my family.

I can't bear seeing my mom struggling with death because she has a dangerous disease which is Lupus and she is a kidney failure patient and I can't bear seeing my older sister suffering from hunger. So please guys, you can do it and please make #HelpHayasFamily. Share this video, whatever you can do can help. You can share the link as widely as possible, you can share the video. End of transcript.]

you can donate to her campaign here!

[flagellant]

yeah we might be brothers in christ but so were cain and abel so shut the fuck up before i decide to find a rock about it