How is voice communication acquire on the cyberspace ? In this series on internet philology , Gretchen McCullochbreaks down the latest invention in on-line communicating .
A recent studyfound that people who use internet slang are actually better at standard English too . It sounds surprising , but Jacob Eisenstein , the lead generator and an adjunct professor in Georgia Tech ’s School of Interactive Computing , explicate that“Non - received English is not a query of power , but of appropriate standard English for the right social situations . In this sense , lowering social media users have an especially nuanced sympathy of language , since they keep multiple linguistic system of rules . ”
Here are seven ways that communicating on the internet is make our language more dynamical and flexible .
1. HASHTAGS
One kind of hashtag , the forefinger hashtag , lets people from all over the populace talk about a apportion issue of interest . The other form of hashtag , the commentary hashtag , permit us give tongue to our feelings on two tier , a topic plus a comment or backchannel . And interestingly , a recent studyhas show that people tend to habituate more standard language in tweet with hashtags , and more informal , regional language in tweet with @-mentions , showing that we interpret how to adjust our words for dissimilar audience .
2. INDICATING FORMALITY
The judicious enjoyment of internet slang can indicate informality and comfort . The choice of"u " instead of " you"orrlly instead of reallycan tell the reader that you’recomfortable and relaxed , like putting on your comfortable sweatpants rather than a dainty getup .
3. SPEAKING IN PICTURES
It ’s never been easier to add pictures of various sort to our piece of writing , fromemojitoreaction gifsto photograph and video recording clips we take ourselves , especially on picture - centered societal apps like Snapchat and Instagram . In real life , we ’re not disembodied voices , so why should we be so online ?
4. CONVERSATIONS
We’veingeniously adapted the alike / star / heart/+1 symbolsto show not just like but also the terminal of a back - and - off conversational thread on social media . When you ’ve had a somewhat asynchronous conversation on Facebook or Twitter or another social web , sometimes it ’s drop dead out but you do n’t want to leave the other person marvel whether you ’ve scat out of thing to say or just have n’t seen their most recent post . A like , star , or appropriate other symbolic representation indicates that you ’ve seen it and you still experience positively charged about the conversation , but that you do n’t have anything give to say — without the bother of a schematic sign - off .
5. SARCASM
Internet language hasa whole legion of insidious ways to indicate sarcasm , and it ’s a good thing , too , since none of thedozens of marriage proposal for satire punctuationhave caught on .
6. MAPPING DIALECTS
When you stake a tweet , you have the option to indicate precisely where you ’re posting it from using your speech sound ’s GPS . Linguists have used these geotagged tweet to map who ’s using which forms of language where . Sometimes , this confirms what we already know : loudspeaker system of Southern American English and African American English tend to articulate the word " caught " differently from the word " cot"—andthey also spell them differently on Twitter . Sometimes , this learn us something Modern : such as that people in New York use " and all that"way more thanthe rest of the country , or that unlike regionsprefer different swear wrangle .
7. PRACTICE
hoi polloi who communicate with others a lot online merely have a lot more opportunities to rehearse writing than we ’ve ever had . Before it became normal to text , email , and C. W. Post on social media , most people stopped write anything longer than a grocery leaning or a birthday card after they ’d end school . Now we ’re writing constantly , andas this XKCD comic head out , you ’d expect people who are always nonchalantly throw a baseball game around to be much better at the stately game than people who never toy collar : why should casual authorship be any unlike ?
