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.
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.
Your Ability to Can Even: A Defense of Internet Linguistics (via brutereason)
Also: internet typography! I love the ways we compensate for the tone and body language that’s lost in a written medium. So much of communication on tumblr is about emotions, and the ways our written language has adapted to convey them is really beautiful to me!
Yesterday I was struck by just how perfectly capslock beginning in the middle of a word conveys that split-second when you realize just how excited you are about something; it’s the typographical equivalent of the widened eyes and the sliding shift of intonation you see and hear when it happens in person. We scream in capslock and we break our sentences up into lines for emphasis and we use lowercase to whisper or mumble and strikethrough for things we’re unsure or ashamed of and we mark out our sarcasm with tildes.
And this is really obvious analysis! And yet I still hear people saying that we write like this because we can’t do otherwise, that it’s a sign of mental and moral decline, that we’re vapid and stupid and need to be taught proper writing. I still find myself second-guessing, letting my finger hover over the shift key and wondering if using it will make me seem shrill or foolish. Which is ridiculous, because Internet Linguistics is awesome! (via axonsandsynapses)
I believe there have been studies to the effect that Internet and texting and other innovative language forms don’t actually have any effect on people’s ability to write the standard lect, and in fact they have the same salutary effect as reading anything else.
(via cauda-pavonis)
(Source: the-toast.net)
27. Chaotic Neutral INFP, techie, Blizzard gamer. Possibly a shitposting robot. Anti-authority, anti-fascist, far-left radical.