The first time I consciously realized that there was something unique about how we speak on the Internet was when a friend’s post popped up on my newsfeed. It was a link to something awesome and it was captioned: “I have lost all ability to can.”
I’ll be honest. I don’t remember what the link was. It’s statistically likely that it was either a wittily executed “How the Hetero Capitalist Able-Bodied White Patriarchy Ruined the World” article or yet another set of Mean Girls gifs explaining the most topical event of the time. Regardless, it was the phrase that gave me pause.
“I have lost all ability to can.”
A playful riff on the more frequently used Internet expression: “I can’t even.”
Loose translation: “This link is so amazing that I have lost my ability to express my appreciation for it in fully formed sentences. All speech has been reduced to this ill-formed sentence. Thus is the depth of my excitement about this. Click on it. Click on it if you too would like to experience this level of incoherent excitement.”
How did I get all of that from one sentence? My immersion learning of Tumblr-Internet-speak was so gradual that I hadn’t even noticed it was happening. One day, scrolling through Facebook I happened to notice that this phrase, a fairly non-standard sentence, was itself a variation of another Internet expression. I was only able to understand it because of a wealth of reference points from other places on the Internet. The friend who posted the comment was tapping into a shared cultural knowledge that I understood. I was fairly certain that someone lacking this shared reference point would not only find the sentence jarring but also mildly confusing.
To confirm this, I asked a non-Internet-obsessed friend what he thought the phrase meant. I even showed him the original post.
“Ummm…like canning? Canning food items? She can’t can things? Is that article about canning something, maybe?”
So I explained the phrase and he seemed fairly disgusted in a what-are-these-people-doing-to-our-language way. My first instinct was to agree with him, until I realized: Isn’t this what language is supposed to do? Isn’t it supposed to flex and shape itself to convey what we mean to say as directly and efficiently as possible?
There is just something about “I have lost the ability to can” that can’t be captured by “this is so great, it’s driving me crazy” or any variation thereof. Internet language does this all the time. Sometimes “AODEHwhddhwdwebw” is far more eloquent than saying “I’m so overtaken with emotion, I can barely type so I smashed the keyboard with my forehead.” The phrase “right in the feels” may, in fact, express more than “wow, [insert name of most popular BBC show of the day] made me so sad that I felt the pain as one would a physical blow.”
That’s when you know something interesting is happening linguistically. When the new grammatical structures and phrases express something that conventional language simply cannot. Sure, this new grammar-bending, punctuation-erasing, verb-into-noun-turning, key-board-smashing linguistic convention doesn’t dominate the whole Internet. While it is mostly Tumblr that generates this language, let’s remember that there are only virtual borders on the Internet. Users of one social media platform are likely to be users of several and they take the language with them across Internet borders. So language generated on Tumblr is is now becoming Facebook and Twitter language and influencing language everywhere from Buzzfeed to Autostraddle.
As with all other things, once I noticed the effects of the Internet on language use around me once, I noticed it all the time. It was there in day-to-day vocabulary people use, vocabulary that would be impossible without the Internet: “She was trolling that entire conference.” I caught myself emailing friends links to articles that I agree with, providing only the simple explanation: “THIS.” It was in the way my friend said about her coworker’s incomprehensible desire to wake up at six in the morning to play golf: “what even though, you know?” Author and Tumblr-parental-figure John Green has noticed this phenomenon, as have other Tumblr users, leading to some great tongue-in-cheek jokes about Internet Language.
The linguistic study of the Internet is a very young field but it does, in fact, exist. A quick search confirmed that I was (of course and alas) not the first to look at what is happening and think: Internet linguistics. David Crystal, one of the notable linguists working on this topic may, indeed, have penned the term. Crystal, along with Deborah Tannen, has jumped to the defense of the Internet community, fighting against the notion that the Internet is ruining the English language. Conventional wisdom portrays this form of linguistic flexibility and playfulness as the end of intelligent human life. The Internet has been blamed for making children illiterate, making adults stupid and generally tarnishing the state of modern discourse.
Not only are these allegations not true. David Crystal’s research actually points to the opposite. Those who use technology read more on a day-to-day basis than non-tech users and are, therefore, faster and better readers. For all the stereotypes that tech-language is ridden with incomprehensible abbreviations and misleading punctuation, Crystal actually finds that less than 10% of texters abbreviated any words at all. A remarkable number of people are simply using technology to communicate more quickly without altering the rules of language.
Other critics don’t quite accuse the Internet of making us illiterate but question its use of language nonetheless. Critics such as Robert McCrum of The Guardian, recognize that language is normative, subject to change and that it cannot be policed but still warn us: “To paraphrase Orwell, the English of the world wide web – loose, informal, and distressingly dyspeptic – is not really the kind people want to read in a book, a magazine, or even a newspaper… The violence the Internet does to the English language is simply the cost of doing business in the digital age.”
Critics of Internet language owe a letter of apology to George Orwell, who (along with Ayn Rand, Ronald Reagan, and Jesus Christ) belongs to an exclusive club of people who are conveniently reanimated whenever someone wants to win an argument without actually being clever. If we’re going to drag Orwell back from the grave, then let it be noted for the record that it sounds like he would have quite enjoyed some of the liberties that the Internet has taken with English. In fact, he took issue, not with language being flexible or non-standard, but with language that did not communicate efficiently:
To begin with [my concern] has nothing to do with archaism, with the salvaging of obsolete words and turns of speech, or with the setting up of a ‘standard English’, which must never be departed from. On the contrary, it is especially concerned with the scrapping of every word or idiom, which has outworn its usefulness. It has nothing to do with correct grammar and syntax, which are of no importance so long as one makes one’s meaning clear, or with the avoidance of Americanisms, or with having what is called a ‘good prose style’.
It is important to note the backlash against Internet Language because it confirms that: yes, something is going on, something big enough to make technophobes take up their pens (or their keyboards?) against it. The backlash confirms the emergence of Internet Language as a fairly serious development, if not a very small and vibrant written dialect. Dialects are characterized as deviations from the “standard” version of a given language and are often dismissed due to their lack prestige by standard users of the language. Internet speech, when not viciously attacked for fueling the hatred of our enemies and weakening the resolve of our allies, has been dismissed as a passing fad or simply poorly developed slang. Even linguists such as Crystal, who defend the development of Internet Language, note that it is limited in its grammatical and structural contribution to language.
Yes, the type of very flexible and linguistically creative Internet speech that I’m referencing here, is limited if we consider the English speaking population as a whole but the effects are overwhelming large if we narrow our sample population. Within the population of Tumblr-loving, blog addicted, tech-savvy, avid Internet users the influence of this language cannot be ignored. The fact is, the type of language that is being created online is affecting day-to-day speech patterns and writing styles of most young adults. Internet-speak, Tumblr-speak, blog-speak or whatever you want to call it allows us to associate expressions of opinions and feeling with gifs, pictures and visually stylized texts. It enhances our visual thinking and makes us more creative with the use of verbal language. It allows us to subvert standard grammar constructions and experiment with changing verbs to nouns and vice versa.
The most interesting aspect of this sociolinguistic development is that there is a somewhat post-modern element of self-consciousness and playfulness present in its construction. Taking Tumblr as a “home base” for the construction of this dialect, we see self-conscious musings on the state of Tumblr language quite often. The speakers of Chicano English or Yinglish did not stop midway through the creation of their new dialect to say: “Hey? Do you think we’re, like, making a new language here or what?” The development of most dialects is often gradual and utilitarian. Dialects develop when people with a distinct cultural and linguistic heritage run up against a rigid and unfamiliar system, usually by immigrating to a new country. It becomes necessary to develop a way to retain old linguistic features while adopting new ones in order to able to communicate. While the participants in this process are certainly cognizant that there is a linguistic development, they are not consciously trying to develop a new language. The process happens over time without any conscious effort.
Let’s compare and contrast that with Tumblr-speak: we’re taking a group of people who have insider knowledge of the English language (or at least a good grasp of it) and placing them in a new, unfamiliar, virtual space. This space introduces visual aids to language in the form of photos and gifs, the ability to comment on someone else’s text in a reblog and the ability to communicate a lot of information in very few words using hashtags. We also see the creation of tone in a toneless medium. In order to simulate conversational patterns in writing we SHOUT WHEN WE’RE SUPER EXCITED or *psssst whisper when we’re pretending to tell someone a secret while perfectly aware that anyone on the internet can read what we’re saying.* slash the coolest bit tho is that u can like ironically forgo all capitalization and punctuation just write in a weird speech pattern its ok everyone will still understand maybe it even helps read the text more quickly because nothing is interrupting the flow of words
In short, this dialect results when people who already share a language are given new tools. The result isn’t a butchering of English language but a creative experiment with it. Am I claiming that the Internet as a whole is operating on a level of postmodernism that would make Joseph Heller, Kurt Vonnegut and Thomas Pynchon seem like novices? maybe i am maybe im not u punk wut of it like who r u to tell me otherwise
Dr. Tannen does the interesting work of examining gender and tech language. In studying sample text messages, she found that women were much more likely to use enthusiasm markers like exclamation points and add emphasis via capitalization. Most linguists emphasize the lack of understanding that can take place between men and women as a result of the different value that each gender places on conveying emotions. Supposedly, women perceive men’s lack of enthusiasm markers and capitalization as coldness and men perceive women’s use of them to be unnecessary.
However, what I find most fascinating about the Internet Language is that it is making language less, not more, gendered. Men and women on the Internet use many of the same tropes, enthusiasm markers and emphasizers in order to communicate. In the world of blogging and Internet writing, women are the creators of language. It is a realm in which women are not being socialized with already existing language but are doing the work of socializing and creating a community. Women dominate every important social media platform. Women outnumber men on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest and account for 72% of all social media users. On Tumblr, where the number of men and women is roughly equal, women dominate the conversation.
There is so much shared language and comfort with different gender expressions that it is not uncommon for people to mistake a poster’s gender. Instances like this Tumblr post are not uncommon on the Internet. Because gender presentation is not immediately apparent on the Internet, writers have agency to play with language and expression of gender through writing. That is not to say that gender no longer matters; it does. But this new linguistic tradition allows users to create the rules of language together instead of being bound by pre-existing conditions.
On the one hand, linguists like to remind us that this is more of the same old stuff, just another development in communication, much like the advent of the typewriter and the telegram: it will change how we communicate but it will have a limited effect on the way we speak with one another.
On the other hand, the Internet could be something on the scale of the invention of the printing press, it might forever alter the way we think about language and relate to one another. Increasingly, Internet Language is not just a phenomenon restricted to the computer screen and we don’t simply disconnect from this dialect when we log out of Tumblr. Admittedly, language moves quickly on the Internet and it’s hard to talk about one definite “Internet Language” when it’s continuously changing.
And, of course, it isn’t perfect: there are, as there have always been, those determined to treat language rather poorly. But the Internet Language phenomenon is just as much sociological as it is sociolinguistic: we are just as shaped by language as it is shaped by us. Internet language requires participation and imagination. It requires you to be able to convey excitement and frustration and sarcasm using only words and symbols—if you don’t think that’s cool…well, then, I don’t even.
[Image via Wiffle Gif]
Tags: i can’t even, i firmly believe in your ability to can, my feels, tia baheri, Tumblr
I’m a linguistician (as opposed to a linguist – I don’t know a lot of languages, but I have a degree in linguistics), and a sub-editor, so I am often torn between my descriptivist training (linguistics tries to describe language as it is, not make rules about what it should be) and prescriptivist inclinations (what with my job being to correct people’s grammar).
I love new uses of language, I like being playful with it, finding out new things words can do. It entertains me endlessly, but I do also think there’s a place for formal language and professionalism. I use Buffyisms with the best of them at home and on the interwebs, but I make season-1 Giles look positively relaxed when I’ve got my work hat on.
This is the correct balance to strike. I also work in the editorial field, and I find my abhorrence of many of these newfangled linguistic trends comes down to the fact that, to me, they quickly fall into cliches. When they’re new and novel, I appreciate their ability to convey a complex emotional response. By the 1,000th time I’ve seen it on Tumblr, it just feels hackneyed. But, question to the linguistician! Is there some kind of evolution from cliche to trope to standard usage? Am I trapped in some kind of uncanny valley of linguistic development???
Yeah, i think it’s that the ones that really work and say something new and that needs to be said become standard, and the others wither and die. I dont use a lot of social networky sites – I don’t do twitter, or tumblr; only facebook really, so I’m shielded from the worst of it.
As for tropes/cliches/standard – I think there’s a lot of overlap between tropes and cliches – perhaps a cliche is a trope that’s been lazily represented? I shall have to go and think about that one.
YES to your point on formal language and professionalism. I must admit this article fought very hard to make its way onto the page because, by instinct, I use complete spelling and punctuation even when texting friends. So you can imagine what my visceral reaction is to some of the things I’m waxing poetics about.
You know that you don’t have to know any other languages to be a linguist, right? My phonology professor has studied dozens of languages – can’t speak a lick of any of them.
I think that most people though, see ‘linguist’ and think ‘speaks lots of languages’ – I like that there is another word that cane be used to distinguish the two disciplines.
Most academic linguists use the term polyglot (or even hyperpolyglot) to refer to someone who speaks a bunch of languages, if you’re looking for another word.
I definitely used to code switch between a more professional tone at work and internet silliness with friends or on gchat. And now, I work with a marketing team who are all six to 10 years younger than me (we joke that I’m The Oldest Millenial Alive since I was born in 1980) and the internetspeak has invaded our team communications. Rarely does an email thread not go by without a gif at the end. I dunno, I fought it for a while but now I find it delightful – we all know how to switch back to real world voices when we’re dealing with customers or professional contacts.
I don’t draw such a clear distinction – although I am in similar circumstances as a linguist by training and a language teacher by profession. In fact, my profession further disables my ability to use internet language because I teach English as a Second Language to immigrants and “the interwebs” is inherently confusing AND inherently clear to them, but I want them to at least approximate ‘correct’ forms. And not that I doubt the value of register, but the true value of register (and code) is in one’s ability to switch between a wide variety of them whenever necessary. Personally, i use both “internet” and “regular” terminology; professionally I use more of the formalized language until I speak freely with peers and younger and it seems possible (or maybe the word is “permissible”). One of the oddest occurrence was meeting a fellow academic at a fan convention – we covered a lot of ground very quickly. 😀
Ah, yes! I am so glad this is here. I was just defending internet speak yesterday with a friend who posted this article about the “because + NOUN” construction.
i am glad to see this link, i saw the headline the other day, and forgot to read it, and now i can!
You have regained your ability to can!
You beat me to it!
I was about to come in here and link the same article, because relevance!
Reading the comments under that hurts my brain. None of them get it!
Because +NOUN.
I teach at a bilingual school in South America, and my students often say “because yes”, a translation of a Spanish phrase. I love it. Because yes.
“because NOUN” is my favorite! 🙂
because+noun is simply a phrase that someone with wit came up with but will cease to be used once it’s no longer witty (i.e. when everyone with a keyboard is using it, which is pretty soon or possibly last week). The internetisms aren’t changing the English language; they’re just witty turns of phrase that come into style and then go out (when they’re not longer witty). “THIS” is a perfect example. And these phrases precede the Internet. When I was in junior high it was all the rage for us to say something like “I just love spinach. NOT!” No one says “NOT” anymore, because it’s no longer witty and it’s perceived as juvenile.
Even the author of this article would probably admit that speaking “I’ve lost my ability to can” rather than writing it online would sound ridiculous and juvenile. If it can’t be translated into spoken English it won’t last.
Loved this!!
I’m so behind on trends of any sort. If I had read “I have lost all ability to can”, I would have assumed the writer pressed submit before the sentence was finished and not realized that WAS the sentence :-/
It took me a few goes to parse it! My sister says I can’t even an awful lot, if she didn’t, it would never have occurred to me.
I love the “lost all ability to can” specifically because it takes a little bit of time to understand it. I love it.
THIS IS SOOOOOO GOOD. I love this. LOVE. SUCH A GOOD PIECE. I CANNOT EVEN. <3
YESSSSSSSSSSSS.
Internet language is a pet subject of mine, so I really appreciated this article. Loving the super diverse subjects this week! I have been given a great supply of dinner-table conversation every night.
“In the world of blogging and Internet writing, women are the creators of language. It is a realm in which women are not being socialized with already existing language but are doing the work of socializing and creating a community. Women dominate every important social media platform. Women outnumber men on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest and account for 72% of all social media users. On Tumblr, where the number of men and women is roughly equal, women dominate the conversation.”
So interesting.
I love The Toast so much.
We love you BACK
Even before the internet, women (specifically teenaged girls) have been linguistics trendsetters for a long time. Of course, speech patters associated with women/girls (such as the word “like,” all that “vocal fry” bullshit, etc) is made fun of incessantly in the media, and then it becomes a part of everyday speech (I read a study recently that said men and woman use “like” with the same frequency nowadays).
Basically, women are the arbiters of the English language and I think that’s awesome.
It would be FASCINATING to compare the dialects of the “mainstream” internet with very male-dominated corners of Reddit or wherever. Is there the same level of uptake of “Internet-Speak”? How much does that dialect vary from, say, The ‘Pin? etc.
YES. You ladies are brilliant. Or brill, as kids these days might say. Do they say it? I don’t know. Sometimes I think I’m old. I’m not old.
I browse tumblr, mainly, and my brothers spend most of their time on Reddit and it’s satellite communities. If internet speak is a dialect, we speak different sub-dialects of it. As far as I can tell, there is just as strong of a sense of new grammar and language in the male centered communities, and they may be even more expectant that all members adhere to those memetic conventions.
Both Reddit and Tumblr have aspects of the community that playfully mock their own word usage and language creation (omg i can’t even aefnawepfiun i hate u wat are you god check ur privilege scum) vs (lel upvote dis pic of my hawt gf w/ dawkins fuk u biblef*g). When we all come home there is some interesting cross culture comparisons that happen. Like the article says, some things easily cross boarders (and most every communities both claim dislike for others and readily adopt memes from them, as well as having tons of member cross-over). Other things stay very isolated and even end up markedly opposite.
I <3 internet speak (and especially Tumblr speak) so much I can’t even tell you. ALL THE HELLS YES for developing languages based on how we communicate in all areas. This was a fantastic post. Thank you.
Anyone else find themselves wishing they could insert a GIF into face-to-face interaction, as they capture reactions in a way that IRL interactions sometimes just CAN’T?
YES. Talking to people who don’t understand what I mean when I say nopetopus is always disappointing.
ALL THE TIME WITH THE NOPETUPUS!
“you know that gif? with the octopus? that’s just… [miming an octopus octopussing away]”
it’s like how can you not know the glory of the nopetopus.
gotta stick the gif on your phone i think.
My boyfriend and I have a hand gesture for the nopetopus. I think this originated when I first explained it to him somewhere where the Internet was not to hand, and then I showed him the GIF later
I routinely think “If I could hyperlink in conversation, this would be much easier.” Also, there are some forms of joke and forms of fiction that only work in hypertext.
(I also sometimes find myself looking for the search-page options when reading books and magazines, so my immersion is becoming complete. TL; DR: I’m ready to live in Tron.)
That’s a really interesting aspect of internet language that I would love to get into if I had the background – there’s just so much of it that’s completely unpronounceable ( ;-), asdfjkl, gifs, etc.). I’m sure there are cases of languages that have had written components with no relation to a spoken component (because in human history I’m pretty sure there’s an example of everything). And there really are times when I just want to bust out an I REGRET NOTHING in conversation.
I have no citations, but if I remember my linguistic training properly, women tend to be the drivers of change in language. We’re the early-adopters, the innovators.
So, yeah, totally makes sense that women are driving the Internet-speak vehicle.
Again, Labov!!! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_paradox he’s the best and just won a medal from the Franklin Institute.
Yup! We just studied this this semester in my Linguistics class 😀 I was thinking of sending this article out to my classmates just to mention this!
so writing
such wisdom
very yes
wow
such comment
very language
very internet
amaze
heuheuheuheu
because language
this
amazeballs.
I love this, and you. Thank you for writing the article I always wished I could write.
For me the most interesting way Tumblr has changed my brain is how often I find myself looking at a picture of a person I find devastatingly attractive and thinking “HOW DARE YOU.” See also, the rise of “YOU’RE THE WORST” as a term of affection between friends.
I need someone with photoshop skills to make me a “Yes We Can Even” Rosie the Riveter poster.
Can we get a series? I’d love a shibe doge version of Rosie. “so can very yes”
Suddenly the WWII poster Can All You Can has a whole new level of meaning.
I would buy the hell out of that poster and I would frame it and hang it in my house.
This is pretty amazeballs. All of the win for you.
On a similar note, I’m reading We Are Anonymous right now (nonfiction book about Anonymous’ hacks, but also deals widely with /b/ and LulzSec and stuff) and it is really great to see early Internet terms explained in earnest journalistic prose. The language and attitudes actually concretely influenced some of these crazy events. Who’d have thunk that silly Internet culture would have such a wide affect on the rest of it?
I never get tired of journalists trying to explain internet phenomenon and memes. I don’t think it can be done without everyone involved sounding ridiculous.
I am also a linguist (trained in the Soviet tradition, no less! In Russia, we don’t have the distinction between linguisti/linguistician. I guess someone who knows a lot of languages is just someone who knows a lot of languages, or maybe a philologist, and a linguist is trained in linguistics and can do linguistic research? I’m also a Russian-to-English translator, so I guess I’d be both in English? Anyway!) and one of the differences between linguists and laymen is that linguists are FASCINATED by how language develops and changes, and do not consider “mistakes” as such. (Shout out to William Labov, father of sociolinguistics!) Like, linguists get really excited about the different ways people use language and why. “Grammar,” so to speak, in the traditional sense, tries to make other languages fit into grammar precepts based on Latin, and it just doesn’t work. When it comes to English, theoretical grammar goes crazy asking if things exist, like cases. But yeah, BASICALLY, prescriptivist grammarians are outside the field, and any trained linguist would sit up all damn night being really excited about internet linguistic changes. I love, for example, noting the difference between Russian and English LOLcats and could probably do a whole dissertation on that shit.
I would totally read about the differences between LOLcats.
I demand a dissertation on LOLcats! LOLcats in your L1, in your L2, etc. Oh man, write it!
Someone actually wrote a master’s thesis on LOLcats a while back: http://allthingslinguistic.com/post/56280475132/i…
I have a linguistics degree too and have never heard of ‘linguisticians’ before, maybe that is a West coast thing?? (I was trained in the East Coast/Chomsky tradition.)
Anyway, YES to all of this. 🙂 And I, too, would love to see an article on Russian vs. English LOLcats.
Yes, BUT
I would argue that internet linguistics are often structured and perceived as jokes. E.g. “I can’t even” is intended to be parsed as a joke about how something has reduced your ability to explain why it’s so great, or “So many feels” is a joke about… well ok the same thing.
But repetition has reduced the power of the gag. “Feels” is not a funny turn of phrase any more (sort of like calling the internet “the internets” as a gag is overplayed too) and you end up with this sort of back-slapping in-joke-support. The linguistics become a signifier of being a member of a culture rather than a method of communicating ideas or gags.
I think your complaint points to what an earlier thread was talking about- how fast it takes something to go from new and funny to cliche and boring. The sheer volume of written communication online means that, for example, a phrase I’m personally really fond of (WHY WOULD ANYONE EVEN MAKE THIS PIE?), becomes standard within a week and stale within six months.
I don’t think it’s accurate that the “gag” negates the initial ideas or feelings that it was attempting to express, but it gives dialogue a timestamp, a contextual marker, which language has always had. I’d even say it’s on par with immediate time/place markers like I do/thou dost/she doth or WHAT HO, JEEVES! COW CREAMER! And yes, our communications will lose detail and depth the further time walks away from it, but THAT’S LIFE. We’ll never know what Aristophanes really meant when he had someone dress up as Sophocles and walk around with a comically large phallus. NO SHH WE’LL NEVER KNOW OK
Sure, but isn’t that part of the role of language, anyway? “Feels” has become a shibboleth for online communities; it’s moved past its inception as simply a joke.
Signifying “I am a member of this culture” is communicating an idea, though, is it not?
My whole thing about the newly-accepted usage of “Because” as a preposition is a little related, in that I have always felt that that construction was partly a play on the fact that it wasn’t a complete or correct sentence, traditionally speaking. I love “because reasons” as an answer to “why?” partly because it has a sort of tautalogy to it, and partly because of the vaguely subversive “incorrectness” of it. So making it a “correct” usage sort of takes away some of the punch of the meaning to me. (which, of course, will not stop me from saying it)
I actually have to disagree with you on this, feels isn’t a gag (though I’ll admit it was at its inception) per se – in that I don’t say it because its funny, I say it because it quickly conveys an idea in the social circles I frequent. It’s heavy use has made it /more/ useful to me, not less because now more people understand it. Feels is a term to describe a tangled mess of emotions, especially contradictory ones (for example “I’m happy because wow that was an amazing episode but also sad because x character died, but also excited because y character has started a really fascinating story arc, and worried because I’m concerned y will die too” takes up far more space than “this episode hit me right in the feels” and also has the downside of spoiling the episode to anyone who hasn’t seen it). It obviously also signifies that I’m part of a certain culture and I certainly don’t mind that as a side effect but it has never been my main reason for using the term.
I can’t even definitely stayed far more in joke territory, perhaps because it’s a set phrase? Whereas ‘feels’ has a bit more flexibility as demonstrated by you and me using it in different phrases for our examples. I can’t really say, but it’s certainly a fascinating topic
I would lovelovelove to have a Gal Science segment with a lady linguist. (This piece was amazing and I’m not trying to put it down – I’m just thinking about the possibilities of a topic like this being discussed by a linguist on The Toast and I’m getting so excited that I can’t even)
Yes! This thought also just came to me unbidden…what if they found an anthropologist who writes about the internet? I’m just imagining a soft National Geographic voice narrating “yes, yes, watch. They are now comparing traditionally attractive males in reclining positions to various pictures of cats. Fascinating. Fascinating.”
To be fair though, there’s not much on the internet that is better than hommes & chatons, is there.
There really isn’t. And I am not sorry that when we are wiped out as a civilization and the only remaining relic of our existence is a compilations of cats and men, explorers centuries down the road will come and assume…I do not know what they will assume but in any case it is cause for endless amusement.
I will grant the internet permission to do absolutely anything and everything it wants to do to language — shoot rockets into the face of “ironic,” smash “literally” under a thousand anvils, contort “because” into however many parts of speech it likes — if only it would meet me halfway and figure out how to homophone. Nothing sets my teeth on edge like reading along through an article and running into someone having their interest peaked about something they red while pouring over some pole results. And it happens awl the dam thyme.
Normally I’d agree, but my friends and I have started using “thyme” pretty extensively in texts/emails (eg. “what thyme will you be there?”). it’s hilariously and inexplicably pleasing
I’m less bothered by deliberate homophone switching, FWIW, but I see it in a lot of cases where there’s no indication that the writer has any idea that they’re using the wrong one.
(More on-topic for the article: has anybody else noticed that “pallet” seems to be taking over the internet as the accepted spelling for both “palate” and “palette?” ‘Cause if that’s going to be a thing, than I totally have the ability to can, and will happily forget that the other words ever existed.)
And as far as it goes, I recognize that there’s a privilege / elitist aspect to this too, and feel an appropriate amount of shame over this. I’ve successfully trained myself not to care about a lot of internet errors — typos, sentences with missing or duplicated words from incomplete editing, the slow painful death of the subjunctive mood, some textspeak. With homophones, though, I’ve tried, but I just can’t do it.
I’m with you there. I adore the way internet has streamlined our textual communication, but the homophone thing really grates on me for some reason. Especially faze/phase, I dunno- I just get really worked up about that particular pair.
I think the distinction is this: Most of the changes discussed in the article are there to streamline communication, by adding precision, tone, or other detail. Homophone confusion does the exact opposite- it takes two unrelated words and swaps them with no purpose. It actually *breaks* the flow rather than refining it.
That sounds delightful.
Agree! Everything else I can get on board with, but the homophone thing just irritates me. I think because people aren’t usually doing it on purpose, they’re just being wrong without realizing it. How very dare they.
Peaked (meaning piqued), pouring (meaning poring), and vice (meaning vise, as in crushed in a) are the three that bother me the most, and I try to tell myself I’m avoiding the privilege issue because the contexts in which I see those are generally ones that get most other ones correct (red/read, time/thyme, etc.)
I wonder if we could convince Tumblr to bring back the word pique.
(Pique 1. To cause to feel resentment or indignation. 2. To provoke; arouse: The portrait piqued her curiosity. 3. To pride (oneself): He piqued himself on his stylish attire.)
These are all still feelings that people have, after all, and it seems like definition 1, in particular, could have no possible better habitat than Tumblr.
Your feels are my feels.
I am disappointed that the gender-mistaken post was not the 16 year old girl with the large chicken. Also, fascinating article.
A lot of interesting points raised in this article! I’m wondering about other internet subcultures of speech/writing. Tumblr’s not the only part of the internet out there — what other dialects are developing online? How is this taking place in other languages? So much more to think about!
yeah there’s another thread of internet language coming out of the S*A/4chan side that i don’t see as much outside of the subculture type places, but it’s equally distinct as being influenced by the sites they grew from, if that makes sense. it’s similar in a lot of ways to the stuff from Tumblr, but also completely different.
I’m on a few horsey forums and there’s definitely a new internet language there that is creeping into the real life equestrian scene.
HORSEY FORUMS
We talk a lot about matchymatchy.
Don’t even, our community is real. RIP, Fugly Horse of the Day blog.
I miss Fugly so much!
Now that everyone has moved on to panicking about lolz the internets, does this mean that the hatred of vocal fry by old men is over?
I think they’ll basically latch onto anything that lets them make fun of teenage girls (regardless of whether they’re the major offenders)
This is great! I think it’ll be really interesting to see what current Internet language will survive and be passed on, and what will become the 20teens version of “groovy.”
I loved this! I majored in engineering but took a bunch of linguistics classes in college and occasionally which I’d majored in that instead so I could study internet linguistics.
I know. I basically study linguistics without majoring in it and writing articles about linguistic trends always makes me pause and be like “should I have…am I making the right…what if…”
If you want to do it, you could always do a masters. That’s what I did. I didn’t study it in undergrad at all; it wasn’t even offered where I went. If you studied humanities-type things, you’ll be fine. A lot of the same people and theories came up and, for example, we had to take straight-up philosophy in my program.
Exactly! And most of the classes I took didn’t use textbooks so I don’t even know where to start teaching myself more.
oh gosh this was even happening before Tumblr. i remember a lot of trends on LiveJournal and ONTD that i still see over at Tumblr or Twitter, and there’s a lot of cross-contamination from the early days. and then i know there was somewhere else that was a major player – S*A or 4chan idek – that got into Livejournal. ofc LJ isn’t even the first, but its rise and establishment followed the Eternal September pretty closely, and it was so diverse and whatnot that it established itself as this fannish place and created a lot of the seeds of what we see at Tumblr now.
also UGH. i logged in to post and lost half my comment. the bit about how i’m fascinated by internet language, particularly because i always wanted to study linguistic transmission as it relates to folklore transmission, but i was an idiot teenager who didn’t put enough thought into college and then it turns out that i am bad at the school part of school so i can’t even succeed at a graduate program, and anyway i love reading/talking about this kind of thing because the trends/fads on the internet really play into my interests.
OH MY GOODNESS I am so interested in how this relates to folklore transmission. I could write a whole other thing just comparing the Internet to Medieval folklore and rituals. Linguistic transmission is the most interesting!
YES you are reading my mind.
I got interested in folklore/linguistic transmission because of stories of the saints and the iconography and stuff (I was a catholic school girl), but the internet makes for an interesting study in transmission – especially when something jumps from one language group (like 2chan) to wider internet usage, as with emoji or joke forms. And it’s not necessarily all language, exactly, because it’s also about things like how blogs are designed (mommy blogs have a very distinct look compared to fanblogs or wonk blogs and so on, and you can see that in how sub-groups on Tumblr or LJ have similar blog types) or the filters and whatever photoshop elements used on images. I think that all definitely counts as a type of folklore, because it often has a specific purpose for the community or reason behind the design, like with traditional architecture or clothing.
TL;DR: fascinating, fascinating.
YES! And the best/weirdest part is that the way we tell stories and share things across sub-cultures on the internet is really similar to the oral tradition even though the Internet lacks oral communication.
Every time I get to talking about this with people, I have a big sad that I was an idiot, depressed 18-year-old who didn’t make more of an issue about going to a university that offered proper folklore + linguistics courses, because I don’t have the words/skills in my toolbox to properly explain the concepts and stuff that I’m observing, and armchair linguist/folkloricisiting isn’t quite the same.
I want to talk about this SO MUCH, especially with people who don’t need a primer on what is folklore to start with (“you mean that isn’t just fairy tales?”). One of my friends is doing her sociology PhD dissertation on a particular online community and I can’t wait until she publishes it and I can read it and we can talk all about this stuff together. Especially since she started her research 5 years ago and the community has changed since then and incorporated new shibboleths and traditions and stuff.
Thank you for pointing out how much of this was happening before Tumblr. I love that people are talking about internet linguistics, but I think it’s important to look at the true origin of some of these phrases if we are going to properly analyze them. For example, “right in the feels” and referring to one’s “feels” in general is from 4chan, where rage comics and everything going along with that was really invented. My personal armchair sociolinguistic analysis of that particular phrase is that because 4chan (specifically /b/) was/is primarily populated by young men/boys who were very concerned with how manly they were, but it was still a community where people wanted to express their emotions, they made up this concept of “feels” as almost another body part that could be physically hurt, since physical pain is more socially acceptable than emotional pain. Thus was born “right in the feels, bro”.
That’s just an example, but internet linguistics is particularly fascinating because things stay put here – so we can actually use some forensics and see not only when a phrase was first coined, but when and where it picked up steam. Pretty much everything cited in this article as “Tumblr-speak” is just how people have been using the internet since Usenet and IRC channels first came online (CAPS = YELLING and *uses asterisks to whisper or show the action I’m currently pretending to undertake* are at least over 10 years old now) – it’s not very accurate to say that that’s where most of the language shifting is originating. Tumblr didn’t come online until 2007 – at that time, reddit, 4chan, S*A, fark.com, etc. were already going strong, as well as platforms like livejournal, xanga, and others as you mentioned.
Okay I realize this just sounds like I’m being a jerk about Tumblr – I think it’s a great example culture to use, but that’s what it is – one example among many.
Full Disclosure: I have never been able to figure out how tumblr works and it makes me grumpy.
4chan is an amazing case study.
Like, I would love to be able to do a hugely thorough examination of just about every aspect, whether it’s the language or traditions or the way it always seemed (to me) that you have to be “one of the boys” to not be laughed out, and that means exaggerated manliness and a thread of misogyny through so much of it, if not outright informing every aspect at times. I haven’t really spent much time there in the last five or six years (at least), though.
And I forgot about fark – I don’t know how, since one of my coworkers browses the site when he’s using the computer, and I’m always surprised that it’s still a thing. Slashdot, too.
But you’re so right about there being so many threads! My focus was on LJ because of the fandom/social justice stuff that transferred to Tumblr, and I specifically remember a CAPSLOCK fad on LJ about 7 years ago where a large group in some fandom or another (HP?) would make poorly grammatical posts in all caps, not as a means of indicating shouting, but for some other purpose that I can’t really explain and which I still see on Tumblr, especially the posts/sentences that lack punctuation or caps (oddly enough).
I only joined Tumblr this summer because of the Swimming Anime and my delight at the way the fandom had grown and was so very…well…tumblr about it, and I wanted to be able to follow the tags more easily. But it’s been completely natural to pick up the slang and whatnot, when until now I’ve been mostly on LJ and Twitter, and much of it feels like a natural evolution or growth of what I used before. So that’s where I’m coming from. 🙂
That makes sense! I didn’t think about what specifically would have been a tumblr precursor, but it makes sense that it would have been LJ for exactly the reasons you said. I’m sure there are all kinds of truly tumblr-specific internetisms – I just didn’t see anything unique to tumblr in this article, besides the mention of meta-analysis, which is very interesting.
I have seen a bit of that meta thinking on reddit (where I spend most of my time), mostly in discussions of where memes truly originated. Of course every teenager who just uses reddit thinks that all the memes started there, but it’s definitely not true, though they play a huge role in popularizing them. I mean, jesus, the size of the advice animals subreddit alone… But people are also generally very nice about answering questions about memes – someone will always provide a link to the original thread or macro that started it, which is how I get most of my secret internet knowledge.
Oooh! Yes. Thank you for educating me on the precursors. Most of my observations were coming from the platforms being used TODAY to distribute this language (Tumblr was a safe bet but I would never argue that Tumblr is the majority of the Internet.) The Internet actually has a fairly long history at this point and I’m glad you’re bringing up the origins of these phrases. It’s important.
ITA… I’m from LJ and have moved more to Twitter. I can’t figure out Tumblr but I have seen and know all the Internet Speak in this article. It definitely precedes and isn’t only at/from Tumblr.
One of my favorite blogs is http://www.awesomelyluvvie.com/, in large part because she has her own vocabulary drawn from all different internet influences. In fact, there’s even a glossary: http://www.awesomelyluvvie.com/2013/04/luvvie-glo…. It’s highly entertaining and a great example of what the article is talking about.
I clicked through and I love her! Thanks!
I think my favourite part of this Tumblr-centric linguistic shift is how self-aware it is. For example, someone grumps about replacing “said” with “was like” and other Tumblr-folks provide analysis of why, including examples, and expanding to “was all”: http://speakeasybutch.tumblr.com/post/66087429583…
It’s wonderful! We can change language *on purpose*.
Related: all the gender- and race-bending that happens on Tumblr. Someday, this will transfer to The Media and everything will be just that little bit better.
I love using “was all” – it has to be related to paraphrasing the original quote and describing/re-enacting the tone of voice and mannerisms. At least, that’s how I *think* I started using it?I feel awkward sometimes when using the phrase, because of how slangy it is, but it seems to fit better than a strict “said” and it works more nicely with emoticons or **action descriptors**
Exactly. Because saying what someone said is just reporting the words they used, but saying what they were like or were all includes inflection, attitude, hand gestures (those things which, btw, so many people regret that we can’t experience when we’re communicating over the internet)
YES. That is such a good description of why “was all” is fantastic. I use “was all” a lot because “said” is too descriptive and I like impersonating people.
Also that webshoo guy (the link about ruining the English language) is not only super English-centric in kind of a gross way, but also is failing to understand how language works, in that he seems to be of the “there is and always has been a right way to English [haha see what I did there] and any change is a threat” school, when the fact is that language is for communicating, and as long as it does that it doesn’t much matter how.
Is “I can’t even” something exclusive to interenet? I’m POSITIVE it is not a new phrase, it’s just reached a greater level of useage thanks to tumblr and such.
“I can’t even” goes the way of “[thing]…not so much” to me, because west coast.
Thank you for reporting. I remember a number of these phrases circa 1980…so it all seems to me to be the usual “teen dialect” going on. Interesting, but this article seems to miss this (significant) aspect.
Love it. THIS. Co-signed. GPOY. #yes
tl;dr
I see what you did there 🙂
Clearly we are a generation raised on Calvin & Hobbes: http://entropy.tumblr.com/post/367560/verbing-wei…
“I can’t even” isn’t an internet phrase. I’ve been using it since I was a child. My mother uses it, and she barely knows what the internet is. Mostly she used it when she was so angry with us as children that she couldn’t… I don’t know, speak? Deal with us right then? Every time I came across it in this article, I heard my mother’s voice, could picture her shaking her head and walking away. I’m almost positive my grandmothers did this, too.
I think you’re right. I think it’s fantastic that this sort of grandmotherly expression has become popular though — and that it has acquired some additional connotation and meaning. It’s the linguistic version of naming your hipster baby Mildred or Annabelle.
I agree, I definitely heard “oh I can’t even,” from my Southern grandma. Usually, she was shortening/dropping either the “begin” or the “deal” at the end of the phrase.
But I think the “I can’t even … with this” construction is an internet variation that took off *from* an already existing shortening, and was adopted much more widely in internetland than it ever was in real-life-grandmas land.
I’d interpret it as part of the inevitable macroevolutionary transition in memetic transfer protocols, as the formal structures of individuated language are replaced with neural analogues. What matters is not formal interchange between selves, but rather, the distribution of a particular state of being…like the release of seratonin, really.
“The distribution of a particular state of being.” Eloquently put.
How is the Internet changing other languages? asks the dumb monolingual American over here in the corner. Are Spanish, Arabic, Japanese, et al undergoing similar changes?
Such a great question! I study this all the time. I speak Persian and French. Within both of those languages there have been a lot of changes to daily speech and written language due to Internet/chat/forums/text. Some of it is quite similar to what I’ve noted about English. A notable difference being that a lot of English and English-hybrid is seeping into both of these languages due to Internet influence, as well as others (Russian, Spanish and Arabic come to mind, not positive about others.) This starts a whole different conversation about neo-colonialism and the bastardization of languages because of outside influence. Complex issue. Another article for another time for a real linguist.
My Brasilian nieces and cousins all use “rsrsrsrsrsrsrsrs” on Instagram when something is funny, instead of “hahahaha”, because the Brasilian word risos (smiles/laughs) is what they’re shortening/modifying.
Isn’t that cool?! Even onomatopoeic laughter is different, in different languages!
So good!!! Someone at work the other day told me that Malaysian teens use “ha3” instead of “lol” when texting.
I would also be interested to see what (if any) large-scale language changes occur based on common texting auto-correct mistakes. A couple of my friends and I have an injoke where we send each other “pesos”, meaning love, because of somebody’s phone stubbornly refusing to recognize “besos”.
Similarly, Japanese use “wwww” (any amount of W’s) when something is funny, because it is the first letter in the word “warau”, which means “to laugh” in Japanese.
Is this not just slang on a large scale? It’s a group of people who talk to each other a lot, who have adopted some unusual phrases and wordplay-y devices, and use them to signal belonging to a group. I mean, I’m into it, but I’m also into my dictionaries of archaic slang.
Related: this is why I can’t ever live anywhere non-English-speaking, because my ability to do and understand high-level language shit like this is my LIFE’S BLOOD.
Haha, I just wrote a giant email to a friend about this. I’m hesitant to call it slang because the “group” you’re signaling as belonging to is so ill-defined – yes, it is predominantly young women or whatever, but it’s not used in an exclusionary fashion (at least, not anymore, in my opinion). BUT, I wouldn’t call it a dialect either because it IS very trendy and ephemeral (“I can has” is super dated, right, while the doge constructs “wow, such rich, very shine” is “in” right now).
I decided I liked calling it a “register with the hallmarks of slang”. Because really, what it is signaling moreso than the membership of a particular group, is the formality/seriousness of the conversation. At least, in what I’ve seen. And it’s not a perfect description, not least because “register” is not really a widely-agreed-upon term, but also because we’re trying to describe something in terms previously only used for oral language and the Internet is a medium of communication kind of unlike anything that has ever come before. So any description is going to be imperfect.
Respectfully, I have to disagree wholeheartedly with the author. My problem with “Internet speech” as an accepted cultural norm is not the supposed creation of a new language, but that language’s continued use is bastardizing Standard English. When Internet speech is used outside of the actual medium of the Internet, it comes off as uneducated and lazy. When people are unable to spell because it is no longer required in order to formulate a thought into text it speaks to a general disregard of something that should be respected, if not revered. Just because it is popular and could be considered the next generation of English, doesn’t mean it should be. When people are no longer able to write coherent sentences for the sake of convenience, or rather laziness, it speaks to our overall tendencies as a culture to take the easy road.
I’m 25 years old and I pretty much hate how my generation and those younger than mine treat the English language. Even in this article, the lack of adverbs is deplorable. Everyday speech is one thing. I don’t expect everyone to be conscious of whether or not a sentence spoken just ended in a preposition. But written text, that is how we catalog our progress as a species. It’s how our history is recorded and how our future is shaped. Do we really want to look back and think “OMG! 2day wuz the worst eva! #tgif!” was the best way to reflect on our experiences? I sincerely hope we are better than that.
Written speech should be held to the highest scrutiny. Maybe it’s because just three centuries ago, my people (enslaved Africans) were persecuted and beaten if it was discovered they could read that I hold my generation to so much more. What sort of legacy are we leaving? Don’t justify Internet speech as evolution, because it is the exact opposite. We are regressing. And at this rate I am terrified of what we’re creating for the future look back on. ( <– See, preposition.)
I love that you disagree. The point is to have dialogue, is it not? And I understand your aversion, seeing as I spend most of my day engaged in academic writing. In that realm, Formal English is not only expected but demanded. I would, however, refer you to the works of linguists like David Crystal and Deborah Tannen who show that, despite popular belief, digital language is not making this generation illiterate and it is not making anyone a worse writer when it comes to serious prose (based on quantitative studies.) You may dislike my prose freely but the poor Internet is hardly to blame.
The English we speak is a bastardization of Standard English from 1550. Even the completely correct written English today would have been ‘wrong’ as early as seventy years ago. Let’s remember that Shakespeare (ah, yes, no point is complete until we have surreptitiously brought up the Bard for our own purposes) was churning non-sensical words at every turn. He had only to run into a noun before he was turning it into a verb! He was inventing words that seemed really silly at the time. (Seriously…hobnob? And…luggage? Go home Bill, you’re drunk.)
I’m not arguing that every blogger is Shakespeare and I appreciate your point and agree that sometimes people are just being lazy. However, if you refer back to the article you’ll see that I am arguing that there is something beyond mere laziness going on here. Some of it is creativity. Some of this language takes more time than simply using the standard. And, sometimes, it sounds awful to the ear. In many ways, I’m recovering from being an Internet-speak-phobe. For example, I still cringe when I hear “feel” used as a verb.
But why should bastardizing English be okay when the Beats, Shakespeare, Chomsky, P.G.Wodehouse and Oscar Wilde (Wilde coined the term ‘Dude’, true story) perpetuate it and lazy when teenagers are doing it? All I’m arguing is that we need to take a closer look at what we’ve dubbed “internet slang” before dismissing it.
I have a linguistics degree too and have never heard of 'linguisticians' before, maybe that is a West coast thing?? (I was trained in the East Coast/Chomsky tradition.)
Anyway, YES to all of this. 🙂 And I, too, would love to see an article on Russian vs. English LOLcats.
Haha, I just wrote a giant email to a friend about this. I'm hesitant to call it slang because the "group" you're signaling as belonging to is so ill-defined – yes, it is predominantly young women or whatever, but it's not used in an exclusionary fashion (at least, not anymore, in my opinion). BUT, I wouldn't call it a dialect either because it IS very trendy and ephemeral ("I can has" is super dated, right, while the doge constructs "wow, such rich, very shine" is "in" right now).
I decided I liked calling it a "register with the hallmarks of slang". Because really, what it is signaling moreso than the membership of a particular group, is the formality/seriousness of the conversation. At least, in what I've seen. And it's not a perfect description, not least because "register" is not really a widely-agreed-upon term, but also because we're trying to describe something in terms previously only used for oral language and the Internet is a medium of communication kind of unlike anything that has ever come before. So any description is going to be imperfect.
I called the vet today and told them I needed an appointment for my dog. “For what?” the receptionist asked. My reply?
“All The Things.”
I love you, internet.
ALL THE THINGS is definitely one of my favorites.
I agree, I definitely heard "oh I can't even," from my Southern grandma. Usually, she was shortening/dropping either the "begin" or the "deal" at the end of the phrase.
But I think the "I can't even … with this" construction is an internet variation that took off *from* an already existing shortening, and was adopted much more widely in internetland than it ever was in real-life-grandmas land.
ALL THE THINGS is definitely one of my favorites.
My Brasilian nieces and cousins all use "rsrsrsrsrsrsrsrs" on Instagram when something is funny, instead of "hahahaha", because the Brasilian word risos (smiles/laughs) is what they're shortening/modifying.
Isn't that cool?! Even onomatopoeic laughter is different, in different languages!
I definitely used to code switch between a more professional tone at work and internet silliness with friends or on gchat. And now, I work with a marketing team who are all six to 10 years younger than me (we joke that I'm The Oldest Millenial Alive since I was born in 1980) and the internetspeak has invaded our team communications. Rarely does an email thread not go by without a gif at the end. I dunno, I fought it for a while but now I find it delightful – we all know how to switch back to real world voices when we're dealing with customers or professional contacts.
” Isn’t it supposed to flex and shape itself to convey what we mean to say as directly and efficiently as possible?”
Yes, which is why, however cool it sounds, it doesn’t work if your reader supposes you to be referring to tinned goods (as did I). The first job of language is to communicate. If it only does so to one generation at a time, it sort of misses the point.
Everyone needs unfamiliar words and phrases explained to them at least once. This doesn’t make the word or phrase unclear, it makes it unfamiliar. If it also messes with your sense of the ‘correct’, that makes it doubly unfamiliar.
http://allthingslinguistic.com/post/68941607628/w…
I’ve noticed hints of Internet dialect leaking its way into common culture. For example, Xfinity claims to be ‘The Future of Awesome’ while some Hostess products are making ‘The Greatest Comeback in the History of Ever.’
Also, ‘I can’t even’ can be expressed negatively, which is how I usually see it used.
“I can’t even” just about encapsulates what I think is the flaw in internet-speak. Even Orwell agrees that the ability to accurately convey concepts is important for language. In that sense, we should proceed with utmost – I repeat, utmost – caution when manipulating language.
How does “I can’t even” inaccurately convey a concept? I think it does exactly the opposite- it converys very clearly the incoherantness of being overwhelmed by something. Just because you might have to have it explained the first time you are exposed to it, doesn’t make it inaccurate, it just makes it a new exposure. I could say something very specific with “loquatious”, but if the person I’m saying it to has never heard or read the word, they’re still going to need introduced to the concept.
I think some of the antagonism towards internet dialect is an assumption that clear and accurate also equals verbose. “Two”, “too” and “to” are just symbolic representations of a sound we make with our mouths, so is 2. Contextually in writing, the meaning of 2 is informed by the words around it, and makes it just as accurate and clear as spelling out the words.
Doesn’t mean it isn’t going to give the collywobbles to anyone who’s spent their life trying to teach the difference between two/to/too (or it’s/its there/their/they’re, or any of the other weirdass and mostly arbitrary lingual rules that written English has), but the useage doesn’t equate to unclear, inaccurate concepts- or stupid writers.
Love the article. I find it especially interesting when you start hearing internet-speak and references to memes from random people on the street, or on TV, or in other places supposedly ‘outside’ the internet. I think there should be a point made that it *not* just something teenagers and young adults are doing, but people of all ages and backgrounds.
Reminds me of Liz Lemon’s “I want to go to there.”
As a non-Tumblr, but a internet speaker, I raise objection at the Tumblr-centric theory of the evolution of internet language.
So much of this originates in /b/, or LJ (as another commenter noted), reddit, or soooo many other places, and just eventually bubbles to the surface on Tumblr. Sure, it is definitely on the front lines of internet change in recent days, but so much netspeak I see these days is stuff I’ve been seeing since long before Tumblr even was a blip. Tumblr’s popularity however, may have a part in making memes like these more accessible to more people, and spreading the awesome new linguistic variety we’ve been developing all over the net for years.
interesting. but, I would point out that the phrase “I can’t even” (as I’ve understood, and used it) is followed by a “…” and not a period, as it was shown here. That small distinction makes a difference as to the degree which our language has been butchered. to me, the ellipsis is vital for that phrase to work, as it implies whatever fathomable act that the author is now unable to perform…otherwise it IS just nonsense.
i think people (not just young) gloss over/miss these details, and in doing so, that’s how things start to go way off…
How are these internetism any different than other catch phrases that have come into use and fallen out of use over time? Haven’t we, being people, always done this? The cycle goes like this: someone witty comes up with a phrase; it gets recycled by other people; even more people use it; it gets picked up by broader society and goes from being witty to overused and cliche to inanely stupid; and then you start hearing totally uncool adults and marketers using it to try to sound “with it.” “THIS” is a great example. It was witty to start. Now it’s just repetitive, says to me “the person using it is trying to sound cool and hip.”
I don’t see this stuff changing our language anymore than other catch phrases do.
“I have lost all ability to can” and “I can’t even can” are examples of Singapore English…interestingly.
*flails and makes dolphin noises* Ahhhh, yessss! The internet is not “ruining” English, it’s evolving, creating and playing with it! And it’s GLORIOUS. Also, like the article points out and disproves, the assumption is that people don’t know or understand “real” English and only know the “broken” English of text speak and netspeak. Despite the fact that people in the internet tend to know it *better* because we use it more often. We sit on the internet and do nothing but READ AND WRITE. And then get off and probably write a 15 page paper for an English lit final.
A lot of the features of Tumblr-speak (LOLCATZish?) were already present in Buffy-era Whedonisms. Here is a great summary using examples from Firefly:
http://signal.serenityfirefly.com/mmx/segment/vie…
It’s also really interesting that you say that internet language is less gendered. I agree, but that’s actually really weird considering its other lineage: 4chan. Tumblr-speak came from LOLcatz which came from 4chan which came from gaming l33t-speak. The latter two coined words like “rapage” and “newfag”.. and were predominantly communities of teenage boys socialised into a very specific kind of assholery.
We got from there to here in about 15 odd years. #cohorteffectlolz
I’m late to the party as usual, BUT… I believe I saw this meme born.
Somethingawful is the more grown up and conventionally evil big brother of the differently evil site 4chan, and in the run-up to the 2008 election, somethingawful, like all of the internet, suffered from masses of overly excited Ron Paul fans. In the political discussions which followed, it was determined that “because FREEDOM!” accurately summed up both the “why” and the “how” of Ron Pauls policies. This later shifted to “because REASONS”, indicating political handwaving as explanations to serious objections.
I think this is the very first use of “because FREEDOM”: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?t…
We live in such interesting times. In this new age of communication, we are developing a common language across the globe, building bridges that smash right through the walls of gender, ethnicity, etc. And this same language is infiltrating our media more and more (especially for those forms of entertainment where there is a close relationship between author and fandom, once again thanks to the Internet). For example, I am a big comics fan and I can attest for more and more instances of Internet speak in them and references from Internet culture (last year’s run of Young Avengers even had a recap page shaped like a Tumblr dashboard, the new Ms. Marvel is a fanfiction writer, Instagram and hashtags are often incorporated in the plot and so on). This means we took this amazing instrument that is the Internet and shaped the culture around us. Again, if this isn’t cool, what is?
Actually, I think “I have lost all ability to EVEN” is more internet-grammar-correct than “I have lost all ability to CAN”.
Great read! Yes the internet is changing how we think and how we communicate. Great book about it “The Shallows” by Nicholas Carr. Thank you for the article.
I think that internet speak is actually improving our language, not just changing it, or making it worse, as some people feel. It’s becoming stronger and better-rounded. I feel that there are some gaps in our language have been filled, somewhat, by the internet.
For instance, a lot of languages have two words for “you”: a formal “you” and an informal “you”. One for elders, people you respect, and strangers, and an informal one for close friends or family that can also be used to indicate disrespect (as in, the “being too informal with someone” kind of disrespect, or else the “you’re small and beneath me” type). Tu and vous. Etc.
English doesn’t have that. But on the internet, people say “you” or “u”. On Tumblr at least, I’ve noticed that spelling out the word “you” is used in more formal situations, addressing people at large, or quoting somebody… General use. But using “u” is diminutive. People use “u” when referring to a small, cute thing, maybe a precious close friend that they love. Or a dog or something. On the other hand, they also use it when condescending to someone or telling them off, in a sassy way. It’s the exact way other languages use their informal “you”.
It’s fascinating to me especially because it’s JUST a spelling difference; there’s no way to translate this to speech. with the way the internet is changing things, we may end up with new intricacies in the English language that can only be understood when written down…
yEs
(look at that, me joining in on the subliminal meanings by use of a short statement)
yEs
(look at that, me joining in on the subliminal meanings by use of a short statement)
I’m like two paragraphs in and I just want to say 1000% this. Defending linguistic progression is my bae. I have a bike jacket with several patches, one being “I literally can’t even”. A guy only a few years older than me said ‘well that makes no grammatical sense’ because clearly he’d never heard of this phrase or the fact that people already knew it was grammatically incorrect. I wanted so bad to throw in his face just how out of the loop he was…