Because Internet makes a linguist’s case for l33t speak, other online-text fads

Enlarge / Linguistics in the Internet age can be fun. (credit: Aurich Lawson / Getty Images)

The Internet has done good things to the English language.

That's the most important thing linguist Gretchen McCulloch has to say in her book, Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language. Though many prominent opinion-havers rage about the imminent death of the English language at the hands of emoji-wielding teenagers, the Internet has done no more harm to English than television, radio, or dime novels.

In fact, McCulloch makes a compelling argument that Internet language, and emoji in particular, is restoring life to the relatively emotionless medium of text. For hundreds of years, public writing was limited to formal contexts like newspapers and books, written by educated people using very formal language for the edification of other educated people. Even fiction draws a clear line between informal dialogue and formal narration. On the Internet, on the other hand, the lines are much less clear. Private, informal writing (like shopping lists or notes passed between students at the back of a classroom) is now publicly visible, and the conventions developed by individuals or small groups for writing informally can spread and interact on a global scale. To McCulloch, this is more exciting than it is scary, and reading Because Internet might convince you to feel the same.

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