What a fantastic book review,
Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language, as seen on
NPR.com! I am super impressed with linguist Gretchen McCulloch's insights and how they relate to all of the potential for miscommunication online - which is what I've been preaching as well. If you are one among us who has wondered whether a message in ALL CAPS meant it was urgent, or furious, or enthusiastic, then my website
NetLingo.com and her book can help you!
Below is Gretchen's interview where she says the "new" rules, are "emergent..." so, for example, "The old rules are these top-down, 'here's how you use an
apostrophe,' 'here's how you use a semicolon' type of thing." "The new rules are about: How are other people going to interpret
your tone of voice? ... The old rules are about using language to
demonstrate intellectual superiority, and the new rules are about using
language to create connection between people."
Gretchen says a
lot of the confusion stems from the fact that people read Internet
writing differently, depending on when they first went online. Here are a few excellent examples, enjoy!
On the changing use of LOL
There's
a difference between how these different groups use "LOL" ... the
acronym which initially stood for "laughing out loud." And if you talk
to people in some of these older generations who are, you know, have
been using the Internet for 20 years but came online in a less social
space, they see it: OK, here's an acronym; they're told it is an
acronym; it must mean "laughing out loud." And so they still use it as
actual laughter. Whereas when you talk to the youngest groups, LOL may
have meant laughter for a very short period of time, but that laughter
quickly became aspirational — you know, "Oh, that is kind of funny." And
then it became not even real laughter at all. It became more a marker
of irony or softening or "I'm not angry at you," "I'm not feeling
hostile" — you know, these additional subtle social meanings.
And
for the youngest group of people, there's no literal meaning left to
LOL at all. ... It's a filler that specifically indicates that there's
some sort of double meaning to be found. ... If I say something that
could be interpreted as rude or hostile like, "Oh, I hate you" — if I
say "I hate you LOL," now I'm joking, so it's fine. I'm not laughing out
loud while I hate you, like in a malicious sort of way; I'm undermining
my message and saying "I hate you LOL [but I'm not serious about it]."
But in the inverse, if you say "I love you LOL," that doesn't soften the
message any more. Now that means "Oh no, I fake-love you," like I'm
being quite mean about that. So it's not always a softener — it just
hints toward some sort of double meaning, which could be good or bad.
On the passive-aggressive period
The period
is such an interesting new battleground for Internet language because
there's definitely a traditional use which is still found in formal
writing. You know, the book contains many periods, and they're not
passive-aggressive because it's a formal context. But in an informal
context, you don't need the period anymore to distinguish between one
sentence or one phrase and the next because you're just going to hit
"send" in a chat context. You can just send the message. ... And that
makes your messages easier to read than this massive wall of text,
particularly on a tiny screen.
And yet that means that the
period is now open and available for taking on other sorts of meanings
and other connotations. And one of those is that very sense of formality
— and you know when you read a formal sentence ... and making your
voice deeper at the end of the sentence, like you conventionally do with
a period in formal writing, adds a note of solemnity or finality or
seriousness to what you're saying. ... But the problem is if you say
"OK, sounds good." — and you add that note of seriousness — now you've
got positive words and serious punctuation, and the clash between them
is what creates that sense of passive aggression.
On the construction "because [noun]," which gives the book its title (Because Internet)
One
of the things I really love about Internet language these days is what I
call stylistic verbal incoherence mirroring emotional incoherence. So
when you're feeling upset or excited or angry or any of these extreme
emotions or overwhelmed by how cute something is when you're feeling any
of these extreme emotions you make your language get artfully
disordered to express that. And so for the title of the book
Because Internet,
saying: OK, I'm going to truncate this. Instead of "because of the
Internet," I'm going to make the shorter version "because Internet" — or
"because homework" or "because weather" or any of these types of
things, I'm going to make the shorter version because the answer is so
self-evident that I can reduce it into this less coherent form. And
you'll understand that I'm nodding at this bigger phenomenon that we can
share.
On keysmash (i.e. "asdf;lkjasdlf" or similar to represent frustration)
For the youngest group of people, there's no literal meaning left to LOL at all. One new trend that I've seen that I really wish I had been able to
spend more space on in the book is the continued evolution of keysmash.
So, keysmash is when you mash your fingers against a keyboard to, you
know, convey this incoherent emotion. And what I noted in
Because Internet
is that people have specific stylistic ways of keysmashing. He will
write ASDF, etc. and they smash on the home row of keys. And I did a
survey, and I asked people: Do you ever adjust or retype your keysmash
if it doesn't quite look right to you? And most people said yes. Even
though this is random, they still retype it because they want it to look
like the right kind of social randomness.
But what I was just
noticing as I was writing the book, and didn't quite have enough data to
include, is that keysmashing has also been changing as we use mobile
phones more. Because when you keysmash on a full mechanical keyboard you
do have your fingers on the home row with ASDF and so on. But when you
keysmash on a smartphone keyboard, you have your thumbs over like GHSDSK
something like that so instead of going ASDF from left or right you
might end up with like SKSKSK or GHGHGH, something going back and forth
between your thumbs near the center of the keyboard. And so, the way we
keysmash has been changing partly in response to the social pressure,
partly in response to the devices we're using. And it's such an
interesting example for me because it looks like we're just being
monkeys typing randomly on a keyboard producing something totally
incoherent, and yet there are social patterns to it. There are real
linguistic trends to keysmash — even something that looks so random.
On how to avoid misunderstandings
We
talk to each other. You can ask people what they mean. ... I mean, you
don't have to talk to people by picking up the phone — you can talk to
people by saying, "What did you mean by that?" or "Are you actually mad
at me?" in the text message. ... Sometimes I say this is associated with
older people, and people take that as a criticism. But I think it's
just as incumbent on younger people to say: Maybe I shouldn't be
overinterpreting hostility or passive-aggression ... maybe I should just
be interpreting this with the context of "I know this person is older
and so they're not actually being passive-aggressive at me." I think the
increased understanding can go both ways.
It's OK to be a bit
older. I've accepted I'm not a teenager anymore. ... It doesn't mean
that just because this is what the kids are doing means we all have to
talk like that. But having increased understanding across different
generations can help people avoid miscommunications in their text
messaging — which is really what I'm trying to do with
Because Internet. Special thanks to Mallory Yu and Emily Kopp who produced and edited the
broadcast version of this interview and Patrick Jarenwattananon and Beth
Novey who adapted it for the Web.
Subscribe
to the NetLingo Blog via Email or RSS here | Donate to NPR here
Posts
