Quick questions:

• When do you use the acronym ‘lol’?
• Is there are different between ikr and IKR?
• When did we start using the phrase “it be”
• How many crying/laughing emojis do you use? Why?
• Is the Internet ruining the English language?

Well, if you’ve ever thought about these questions, or even if you haven’t but are now curious, then you should read Because Internet by Gretchen McCulloch. This book looks at the way that the Internet has impacted the English language while taking emojis, acronyms, and even capitalisation seriously.

In Because Internet, McCulloch argues that the Internet isn’t ruining English – it’s facilitating the rise of informal writing, something that is different from formal writing. While we’ve always had informal writing (in diaries, notes, and even letters), we’ve never had quite so many examples of informal writing as we do now; the Internet had helped give rise to text apps, forums, blogs, and many more. From there, she defines the types of internet people around and then goes on to look at aspects of Internet writing; for example, emojis, punctuation, and memes.

First interesting fact I learnt: women are the ones who “lead linguistic change” (at least in the US). Men, on the other hand, tend to follow “a generation later: in other words, women tend to learn language from their peers; men learn it from their mothers”. While the answer for why this is the case is less clear, the book suggests that gender is a “proxy for other factors related to how we socialise with each other.”

Second thing that I thought was interesting: languages tend not to change if a community is small and full of close ties (aka a tight-knit community). On the other hand, if the speakers of a language only have weak ties, then changes come and go pretty quickly. In terms of English, the original speakers of the language has had “several significant sources of weak ties over its history – invasions by the Danes and the Normans, a tradition of uprooting and moving to London and later other cities to seek one’s fortune, and imperial expansion of its own” while also having tight-knit communities in small villages. This collection of close and weak ties allows one option to catch on for a while and for the other options to sort of hang around as the less popular choice.

What this means for the Internet is that because the Internet leads to more weak ties, language on the internet changes faster than normal. This probably explains why my students who are just a few years younger than me type/speak very differently.

Looking at the waves of Internet People, I was pretty interested to find out that I’m part of the second wave Full Internet People who first joined the internet with instant messaging apps. I haven’t thought of them in ages but yes, that was a huge part of my internet use when I first started, but I don’t see younger kids using these apps at all.

The second half of the book looks at various aspects of the Internet, including emojis and memes. As a Full Internet Person (or is it ‘despite being a Full Internet Person’?), I knew about most of the things she talked about. I have not, however, considered things like why I use three emojis in a row, the aesthetics of the keyboard smash, or the meaning behind an all-caps vs no-caps reply. So to read about a discussion about all these things was pretty fascinating to me and will probably make me a bit more alert to such language use.

Although Because Internet focuses on the English language, the book also touches on other languages – such as how Arabic adapted to the Internet and how Chinese speakers use homonyms to get around censors. Personally, I would have loved it if this section was longer – for example, many people I know in Singapore are convinced that the word “bae” originated organically in Singlish (as a short form of ‘babe’) and that they have heard the word used even before Internet and so don’t think of it as something from African-American culture. It would have been interesting to see if the same, similar, slang can arise simultaneously in different cultures or if there’s any prior influence that speakers would not have been aware about. But to be fair to the book, it does say that it can’t cover all aspects of Internet language and that there are tons of things left to study – including this, I suppose.

Overall, I found this book to be an enlightening and surprisingly quick read. If you’re interested in Internet English or if you need a few arguments to rebut the idea that “the Internet is killing proper English”, this is the book for you.

Featured Image: Picture from Canva Photo Library