#internet linguistics

[nordarknessdimsthesky]

ok hear me out reacting to discord messages with emojis essentially serves the same purpose as aizuchi (interjections that show the listener is paying attention or understands the speaker). if a friend is going on a spiel in discord DMs, reacting with emojis to successive messages can be a more efficient way of showing you're listening without interrupting the flow of messages by responding with "yeah" or "yep."

and then you have custom emojis that vary across servers which allow individual servers to develop their own emoji dialect. joining a new server and looking at its custom emojis scratches my linguist brain because immediately i think about when/where/how said custom emojis are used.

i also think about nitro discord users being able to spread server emoji dialects (but only to a limited extent because regular discord users can't save and use custom emojis outside of their original server). i've now been in a handful of interactions where i've had to ask about the etymology of certain custom emojis and the explanations i've received are always fascinating.

[i-the-ginger]

i love the linguistic trend of expressing something difficult to describe by just not including an adjective where there usually would be one. “i had a day today,” or “he’s definitely one of the characters of all time.”

it’s like i can’t describe this so i just won’t. you get it tho.

[glitterdustcyclops]

i'm sure i've mentioned it before but i really love the evolution of "shrimp colors" as a sort of shorthand for being beyond in perception of something, like it's not even true that mantis shrimp can see colors we can't, as we've done more research on the way their eyes work that theory has been debunked but it's such a common understanding on the internet that we can all make metaphorical reference to it and it just charms me endlessly

[bread--quest]

do you want to be sooo niceys and helpful to me. do you find language in all its mutations interesting and worth researching. do you use the suffix "-core" in conversation

if the answer to any of these is yes, then please fill out my form!!!

this is for a project in my linguistic anthropology class!! we're researching uses of the suffix "-core", as in "cottagecore" and "fairycore" but also as in "mecore" and (this is an actual example i overheard) "joe bidencore." as part of the project we're supposed to interview people who use it, but unfortunately none of my friends have used it out loud recently, and so my group project members kindly agreed to let me use my tumblr platform to take a larger group sampling instead. please help me. i need them to think i'm cool. take my poll

your information will not be shared, the poll does not collect emails and none of the data collected from it will be used outside of this college course. there is a set of optional questions about identity at the bottom, but you can leave any of them blank if you wish. thank you so much!!!!

also the presentation is due on thursday so um. the poll will close by wednesday at the latest. thumbs up.

[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…

[touchlikethesun]

one fun little thing about linguistics is that the stages speakers go through during their lives and the stages internet users go thru when integrating a new online community are actually quite similar.

so like, the first stage, broadly, when talking about language acquisition, a speaker starts with having no competence, but a huge receptiveness to the linguistic data around them. this is why babies learn to speak so fast. in online communities, a new comer won't have all the right vocab, they won't have learned/assimilated to the ways of "speaking"/communicating in the community, and can kinda easily be identified as like, not being from here (think of the way tumblr users can sometimes spot twitter migrants)

after learning the norms, and the basics of communication in a community, the speaker enters an adolescent phase. in irl speech communities, this is when someone's most receptive to new slang or linguistic innovations, but as these speakers grow up, the innovations become the standard. in online communities there's a very very similar adolescent phase (that has nothing to do with age, and just time spent in the community), where someone is fully integrated into the community and is in the centre of linguistic innovation for the community (often means coming up with new vocab, and sometimes can mean changes in other conventions like typing style, punctuation usages, etc.).

after the adolescent phase, in the adult phase, a speaker has a lot of linguistic competence (they can... speak... well... idk how else to describe it), but they are much more resistant to innovation, and hold on to the way that they spoke as a young person as being the objectively correct way to speak, looking down on the younger generation for their slang and their innovations. think of how boomers and gen x make fun of gen z slang. in online communities, i don't see this as being so much of conflictual relationship, but what is similar is that people that have been in online communities for extended periods of time will hold on to the way of communicating that was popular when they were in their adolescent phase, and won't be able to as easily adapt to the new ways of communicating, and this marks them as being an "elder", or long-time member, of the community.

the comparisons aren't always completely spot on, but there are enough parallels that i can have a lot of fun paying attention to this in the online communities that i'm a part of lol

[darlingofdots]

LOVING the hot new grammatical construction we are using on the internet that goes "are you a [x] or perhaps some kind of [y]" and "POV: you are a [x] or maybe a [y] of some sort". It always delights me. It's such a whimsical turn of phrase. I love internet grammar

[thewalrus-said]

help me, i want to know if i'm the only one in my camp

[elvencantation]

love how language works sometimes. fanfiction has been shortened to fanfic, then into just fic. i wrote down that i “finished my first big fic” in my five year journal which got me onto this tangent. though fic on its own should just mean fiction!

[rubiscodisco]

50-ish years ago foods that left a burning sensation on the mouth was more often described as "hot" rather than "spicy".

Over the years "spicy" gradually overtook "hot" in the english vocabulary, and it seemed like "spicy" became more common around 10-ish years ago.

A few years ago, the use of "spicy" to refer to sexual content in books and other media gradually became popular.

Now anything that's even mildly controversial, or out-of-the box, or confronting, or aggresive, can be called "spicy"...

The year is 2050. Everything can be called spicy. It's spread to include verbs, nouns, spicy, and spicy. Spicy spicy spicy, spicy spicy.

[lingthusiasm]

Gretchen: A lot of people ask me if language is changing faster in the internet era. You get the sense that they really, really want that answer to be yes. They’ll sometimes try to make my answer for that yes even if it’s not what I’m saying. The thing is we just don’t have complete enough records to know that for sure because a lot of the words that become trendy these days may become trendy for a week or so, but that doesn’t mean that they stick around and stay in peoples’ vocabularies. It’s less clear how fast that is happening. Somebody would actually have to do that study. It’s not a study that I’m aware of existing in terms of how fast does the average person’s vocabulary change and how many of the words that are being added in a given year were coined within the last ten years or something like that. It’d be a very complicated study to actually do in practice. It’s hard to say definitively English is changing faster or slower because what do you mean by that change and how long does that change have to persist for you to say it’s a “durable” change versus “This is the trend of the week.”

Lauren: It will hopefully keep future generations of people who make dictionaries very busy.

Gretchen: The good thing is we may be able to answer this question in another 100 years or something because we’ll actually have so much more data of this period.

Excerpt from Lingthusiasm episode ‘Where to get your English etymologies’

Listen to the episode, read the full transcript, or check out more links about the history of language

[nordarknessdimsthesky]

A linguistic analysis of tumblr hyperbole in the tags

This post expands my previous analysis of hyperbolic reactions to cluster tags by themes. There were too many themes, some of them overlapping, to create a cohesive graph. Instead, I present several overarching themes from a data set of 50 tags observed and documented in various corners of tumblr.

1. Feeling Normal™️

Tags within this cluster profess Normal feelings (read: extreme excitement, enthusiasm, obsession, derangement, etc.).

#mmmmrrrghuhhhhghhh #I'm so normal about it teehee #absolutely not rending my clothing #feeling very normal and not feral at all #i will simply never recover #gif sets sent to personally destroy me #i can't cope #the eyes #i'm a puddle #i am INCONSOLABLE #i am DISTRAUGHT #IM NOT OKKAAAAAAYYYYYY #FEELING TOTALLY ONE HUNDRED PERCENT NORMAL

2. Feralness

The following data points conjure animalistic behavior. There’s a non-zero amount of biting and chewing involved.

#chomping biting barking #biting my arms off #rattling my cage #[incoherent biting noises] #chewing glass #chewing through wood #*shaking the bars of my enclosure* HELLO!!!!!!!! #climbing the walls #biting gnawing chewing #im gonna rip off my front door and eat it

3. Noisy Emotional Outbursts

These tags encompass crying, screaming, yelling, and other loud reactions.

# shaking sobbing crying #SCREAMIIIING BANGING MY HEAD ON THE WALL #*no thoughts only wailing* #i am SOBBING #IM CRYING LIKE A BITCH #*just fucking yelling* #S C R E A M #screeching into a pillow #brb sobbing for 5-7 business years

4. Throwing

All of these tags except the last one involve being thrown instead of throwing things. I, personally, am entertained by the range of places/situations people are throwing themselves into.

#i am going to THROW MYSELF into the SEA #hurl me into the sea #hurl me into the sun #trebuchet me into the sun #hurl me straight at europa #vent me out of an airlock #slam me against a wall #put me in a box and throw me down the stairs #throwing myself into traffic you know? #just defenestrate me already #defenestrate me #absolutely hurl me through plate glass #i'm going to start tossing furniture

5. Bodily Harm

There’s a good deal of overlap with the previous theme. Nearly all of the tags involving throwing would result in varying degrees of bodily harm. Here are the tags outside of the Throwing subgroup.  

#im going to throw upppppp #tearing my hair out #banging my head against the wall #SCREAMIIIING BANGING MY HEAD ON THE WALL #biting my arms off #microwaving myself #crumple me up and microwave me

6. Absurdism

My personal favorite cluster. The imagery conjured and resulting comedic hyperbole is just [chef’s kiss].

#im gonna rip off my front door and eat it #crumple me up and microwave me #put me in a box and throw me down the stairs #defenestrate me #absolutely hurl me through plate glass

7. Keysmashes

These tags center less around meaning and more around style, so they form the last group. A handful of these could fall under Noisy Emotional Outbursts because they represent reaction noises. In my linguistic judgment, keysmashing increases the hyperbole – consider augh versus aughfhghghghhh – the latter reads as prolonged and more intense emotionally.

#aghdjakgsjadhjaka * #hrhrhrhgnnnghhhhh #aughfhghghghhh #mmmmrrrghuhhhhghhh #I'm so normal about it teehee #waughfhghghh #oughhhhghghhh

*one digression in a friend discord server was how people interpret keysmashes in their minds. Some hear the first couple letters and then some sputtering, others hear static. It’s a common joke that you need a minor in linguistics to understand conversations in this friend group. Such is the nature of things when the chaos linguist energy is strong.

[mina-le]

Mina Le on how internet slang was co-opted from AAVE and America’s Black drag scene

[klavierpanda]

One of my favourite internet (I'm guessing it's cause of the internet) linguistics things is how we'll just repeat the last letter of a word to signify that the word is drawn drawn out even if it doesn't correspond to how you'd actually pronounce it.

For example, we have the classic "noooooooooo" which does make sense but we also might have something like "come backkkkkkkk" which we all read as "baaaaaaaaack" but the latter looks more wrong to me at least.

Perhaps it's because "backkkkk" is more clearly supposed to be the word "back"; it's easier to parse as "back". Whereas "baaaaaaack" is a lot harder to parse, at least for me

[chaddicus]

hashtags as used on Tumblr evolving into a standard punctuation mark in frequent use as a result of tags being limited in length but not restrictive of character (besides hard breaks like commas), and so the hashtag is a naturally occurring stop in one's asides and discussions. vs hashtags on other (often algorithmic) platforms indicating a word or phrase that will at best provide a punchline or context to the rest of the post or at worst be of no use or value to the viewer and function only as a bribe to the computer to show more people your face or whatever. is there something here?

[allthingslinguistic]

August-September 2023: Etymology isn't Destiny merch and an academic article about lingcomm

My newsletter for August-September 2023: Etymology isn't Destiny merch and an academic article about lingcomm

I joined onto a fun project this month, Zach Weinersmith of the webcomic Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal is running a Kickstarter for his book, The Universe: Abridged Beyond the Point of Usefulness, and one of the bonus rewards is an audiobook of his other book, Shakespeare’s Sonnets: Abridged Beyond the Point of Usefulenss. I’ll be the one reading the highly abridged sonnets, which I’m looking…