Can you point me in the direction of articles on the linguistics of the internet? I like analyses of changes in syntax and meaning and grammar, and how that relates to the differing culture of different sections of the internet. Have you seen anything like that? Or can you ramble on your own observations (even though you work with sounds, not syntax)?

s-cornelius:

bothslashneither:

s-cornelius:

Ehhh. I’m a really terrible resource for that sort of thing. I know that sort of work exists (in fact, one of my friends in my program does a little with syntax and pragmatics of tweeting), but I wouldn’t even know where to begin to point you in the right direction.

And while I’ve taken a whole host of syntax classes, observations about syntax don’t come naturally to me, so I haven’t really thought a lot about syntax as it relates to internet-speak and the low register of social media.

Really what fascinates me is the use of punctuation to affect prosody, i.e. the use of a ‘?’ to indicate rising intonation, rather than an actual question. So, yea, sound stuff. 🙂

Also, when I’m looking for articles on a topic I’m interested in, a lot of times I just use Google. What’s nice about Google is that if it brings up an article, you can see where its been cited and you can start to build up a bibliography on that topic. Also, if you have access to it through a library or institution, the LLBA (Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts) is your best friend for finding articles. 

Hope that helps! Sorry I’m so useless on this topic haha.

Gretchen McCulloch has written articles about doge grammar and fake Benedict Cumberbatch names. Tia Baheri wrote an article about the ability to can even. Rebecca Cohen wrote an article about the question mark disappearing. Ben Crair wrote an article about angry periods. Anne Curzan wrote about slash as a conjunction. And Megan Garber wrote about because as a preposition. Just to name a few. If you track the linguistics tag, these types of articles get posted sometimes.

Here you go, anon! (Now that I see all these together, I have actually read all of these oops)