Ironic, Informal And Expressive, ‘New Rules Of Language’ Evolve Online
But in a lively and wide-ranging new book called Because Internet, the linguist Gretchen McCulloch argues that a huge part of our Internet lives is conducted in a common vernacular, what she calls in her subtitle the New Rules of Language. I think of it as "chatspeak." McCulloch traces its origins back to the early days of email, but it came into full flower in the modern era of social media. It's the style of informal writing people use when they go to the Internet to reproduce the sense of connectedness they get hanging out in physical gathering places like high school cafeterias, bars and coffee houses. To that end, they've had to devise ways of compensating for the loss of the gestures, expressions and vocal effects that convey meaning in face-to-face conversation — that is, they've had to create what McCulloch calls a "typographical tone of voice."
They've done that through what social scientists call bricolage, cobbling together the scraps of material they happen to have on hand. They convey emphasis by putting spaces between l e t t e r s, using all CAPS, or repeating exclamation points. They lengthen words like "yesss" or "noooo" to suggest a friendly intimacy. Or they achieve other effects by repurposing the rules of formal writing. There's no need to mark the end of a text message with a period, so when somebody does use one, it's taken as a sign of passive aggressiveness — "I'm fine."
Then there are all the graphic indicators such as emoticons like smileys, which morphed into a whole army of emojis, particularly the emblematic ones like thumbs up and praying hands.
See the full story here: https://www.npr.org/2019/08/20/749946265/opinion-ironic-informal-and-expressive-new-rules-of-language-evolve-online?utm_campaign=the_download.unpaid.engagement&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=75915037&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-_8BgLQc_oZ_ohoGWc73Pyss9AB64Wv2bh1YQGQw4TEgLjLWryoHAqresiCZ3G4bYv7q0nGx1AQqDPb__3NP3DaeT_jGg&_hsmi=75915037