#internet language

[official-linguistics-post]

Hi there! You wouldn't happen to have any record of neopronouns being used in online circles (like forums) in the late 90's and early 2000's, would you? I've heard that some neopronouns, like "ze" / "hir" and "xe" / "xem", were used in some online circles around that time. I'd love to have some sources to include in a mega-post I'm making about neopronouns. If you can help me out in any way, I'd be eternally grateful! :)

i don't but i'll put this out there in case someone else does! and PLEASE share the link to this post when you're done, i'm so intrigued.

[lingthusiasm]

Gretchen: I did a study with a smartphone keyboard app looking at millions of anonymised examples of how real people use emoji in aggregate. One of the things that we came across really early on in this data – so I got them to extract examples of the most common sequences of two, three, and four emoji, because this is a common thing that people do for a large data set of words is they’ll say one of the most common sequences of two, three, and four words. So, let’s try to do the same thing with emoji and see what happens because, obviously, we couldn’t read individual people’s messages. This is a way of kind of extracting from that and figuring out what the common sequences are. The most common sequence of emoji overall is [tears of joy] [tears of joy]. Lauren: Right. Okay. Gretchen: The second most common sequence is [tears of joy] [tears of joy] [tears of joy]. Lauren: Okay. Hmm… Gretchen: Do you wanna guess what the third most common sequence is? Lauren: I’m going for, hmm, [tears of joy] [tears of joy] [tears of joy] [tears of joy]? Gretchen: Yeah. Four of them. Lauren: Amazing. Gretchen: Once you get to number four, I think it was two kiss faces. So, it did change eventually. We did eventually run out of [tears of joy]. Lauren: Just moved on to more repeating sequences. Gretchen: Turned out, we looked at the Top 200 sequences of two, and then Top 200 of three, and Top 200 of four, and about half of all of these lists was just straight up repetition of the exact same emoji. This was really interesting to us because a lot of the emoji narratives and media at that point were really excited about the idea of telling stories with emoji of like, “Okay, if you have a [person] and then a [tongue sticking out] and then a [hamburger], maybe that means a person is eating a hamburger,” or something like that. But that’s not what people were doing. People were doing the exact same emoji a whole bunch of times in a row.

Excerpt from Lingthusiasm episode ‘Emoji are Gesture Because Internet’

Listen to the episode, read the full transcript, or check out more links about language and society, and pragmatics.   

[allthingslinguistic]

hi hello alert so that classic tumblr flowing jungle river post is now cited in a real book like an actual paper book and it’s called because internet and it's all about the evolution of internet language and how TUMBLR DID THE THING and you can get it here

[iamtrippingballz]

unscheduled intelligent content from me for once:

The germanspeaking subreddit ich_iel, the equivalent to me_irl. They generaly deal in normal memes with two linguistic caviats.

1. Sprich! Deutsch! Du! Hurensohn!

Translates to "speak german you son of a bitch". Very simply, people dont want english memes/language and will call you out on that.

2. This doesn't have a specific name attached to it but simply put it is required to translate anything english badly. specificaly just translate every word, ignoring grammer/syntax.

This has by now developed to the point where people just talk like that. this leads to absolutly garbeld sentenced that barely make sense at times.

To explain the example i have added;

Dackel is the German word for Wienerdog. While Wienerdog translated to Wurst(Sausage/Wiener) hund(dog)

I personaly dont have much to add because im no linguist and certainly not a smart person but i just wanted to document this weird quirck of internet language.

we will now return to the regularly scheduled bullshit

[darkestabsol]

Why the fuck are people using the word ‘unalive’ here? This isn’t tiktok, you can use the word dead! You won’t get your post removed or whatever for using the word dead!

(This post was made because I saw someone use the word ‘unalive’ on a post about the Rust prop gun incident and it rubbed me in a very wrong way. Please just use ‘dead/died/killed’.)

[aladybirdqueer]

Perfectly following a list of punctuation rules may grant me some kinds of power, but it won't grant me love. Love doesn't come from a list of rules - it emerges from the spaces between us, when we pay attention to each other and care about the effect that we have on each other. When we learn to write in ways that communicate our tone of voice, not just our mastery of rules, we learn to see writing not as a way of asserting out intellectual superiority, but as a way of listening to each other better. We learn to write not for power, but for love.

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

[la-z-boy-linguist]

Documenting a ‘viral’ pandemic: Why memes are the most apt way to communicate about Covid-19

Memes serve essential functions of communication, political participation, laughter, and community, which are even more important during a global crisis of this scale.

I have a post published today on the blog of the PanMeMic Collective, a group of researchers interested in how Covid-19 is changing interaction and communication. It’s a bit of an introduction to my aims and theoretical lens of my dissertation, though I am focusing specifically on memes about the UK government’s “Stay Alert” guidance.

The main takeaway: Memes are perfect tools for communicating about Covid-19, because they fill three social functions that are particularly relevant now:

Memes are expressions of intersubjectivity, and help answer questions about how we as individuals are experiencing a collective shift in lifestyle.

Memes make us laugh - a coping mechanism that is normal and important during times of crisis.

The pandemic is as political as it is medical - memes are an accessible entry point into political participation, and allow millions of different voices to be heard.

[tsukisapphic]

Hi friends. I would like you to know on this beautiful day, I will be reclaiming the word "Boi", which I thought was specifically created for/by lesbian women thanks to something I probably read on tumblr.com (which is why I stopped using it for myself bc I identify strictly as transmasc nonbinary), when it is ACTUALLY a word originally used within the BLACK community for several kinds of BLACK, mostly QUEER, people. Imagine taking such an inclusive AAVE word, appropriating it, making it less inclusive, and forgetting its true origins. 🤦🏽‍♂