How and Why the Internet Is Changing Language

In this interview with Gretchen McCulloch of the All Things Linguistic blog and the podcast Lingthusiasm, we talked about Gretchen’s new book, “Because Internet.” These are the major things we talked about:

Why internet language isn’t a sign of laziness.

Why people tend to lowercase more words when writing on a digital medium.

Why you probably love words your family makes up but hate words your boss makes up.

Why Mark Twain wasn’t sure about the telephone.

Why older people will answer a phone call during dinner but younger people will text.

Why the weak ties of the internet make language change faster than it used to.

Why people edit keysmashes.

Why it’s possible to use emoji ungrammatically.

What we can learn from access to the informal language databases online.

How Gretchen created a special meaning for the word “Dijon.”

How emoji are like gestures.

You can listen to the entire interview by clicking the player above or by finding the podcast on any podcasting app, but if you prefer to read it, we also have a complete (rough) transcript.

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Date:
  • July 22, 2019
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