lesserjoke: Book #147 of 2019: Because Internet: Understanding...
Book #147 of 2019:
Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language by Gretchen McCulloch
I’ve known and followed Gretchen McCulloch since 2012, when we connected as fellow grad students drawn to the messy question of how to apply the systematic approaches from our linguistics classes to the strange new frontier of informal writing that we saw developing in digital spaces everyday. I mention that as both a disclaimer — Gretchen’s a friend! We’ve even met in person! — and an endorsement — Gretchen’s an expert! You can trust her on this stuff!
For this book exploring some of the distinctive elements of online language use, the author adopts the same informative yet casual tone that has made her such an engaging science communicator in her @allthingslinguistic blog, Lingthusiasm podcast, and The Toast and Wired columns. There’s so much neat creativity going on in electronically-mediated communication, from expressive lengthening (“sooooooo coooooooool!”) to sarcastic encoding (“~so cool”), and McCulloch captures and explains it all with a deft touch. It’s great nonfiction, in that the topics she covers are recognizable to an insider, interesting to a novice, and entertaining no matter what.
It’s also a strong showing for creative writing, peppered with clever turns of phrase like calling irony “a linguistic trust fall” or Morse code “dashingly dotty.” Although the cited examples of tweets and whatnot are probably easier to grasp in print, it’s fun to listen to the audiobook as I did for Gretchen laughing at her own jokes and somehow managing to pronounce an aksjdfhlaksjg-style keysmash.
Internet culture changes quickly, and today’s dank meme can soon become tomorrow’s dated lolcat. McCulloch’s strength as an ethnographer of cyberspace is that she doesn’t attempt to present this inevitably static snapshot as some definitive report, but rather walks her audience through the social and historical forces that have allowed variation from the formal rules to flourish online in the first place. Drawing upon her personal observations as a curious digital native as well as decades of studies from before and after such a status was even possible, the writer connects research on network ties, dialect maps, emerging technologies, and more into a fairly cohesive and persuasive account of how the language we see and use on our devices has acquired its particular characteristics.
Throughout it all, Gretchen conveys what a sheer joy it is to dig into this weirdness, both to uncover the underlying patterns of this ubiquitous new medium and to lovingly participate in and remix them oneself. Whether you’re plugged into that same ecosystem or not, this is an outstanding guide to its many linguistic wonders.
★★★★★
