A New Frontier for Linguistics: Gretchen McCulloch’s ‘Because Internet’
Because Internet by Gretchen McCulloch. Image credit: author website
We can think of language like the internet … there’s space for innovation, space for many Englishes and many other languages besides, space for linguistic playfulness and creativity.’
— Because Internet, p.274
4 / 5 stars: highly recommend to anyone interested in language or the internet
Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language is linguist Gretchen McCulloch’s exploration of how new conventions and styles of communication have arisen on the internet. McCulloch has worked extensively on internet linguistics, and is an active figure in popular linguistics and linguistics outreach – she is perhaps best known for being the co-host of the podcast Lingthusiasm. Published in 2019, Because Internet includes McCulloch’s personal reflections and anecdotes on how she has seen internet language develop around her, as well as insights from academic linguistic to analyse these phenomena.
The book’s introduction establishes that the internet has given rise to new linguistic norms for informal writing. The styles of writing we encounter in books and at school tend to belong to the formal register, and any informal writing before the internet age (letters etc.) were not circulated quickly or widely enough to establish widespread usage conventions. McCulloch then introduces the study of linguistic variation, and a brief demography on the types of internet users, whose experience of and expectations for the internet differ based on when and why then went online. Then, McCulloch discusses a few internet linguistic phenomena in detail, with a chapter each on typographic tone of voice; emoji analysed as linguistic and paralinguistic gestures; how messaging services and social media fulfil our desire for a flexible form of socialising that is not tied to time and place; and how memes reflect the construction and spread of shared cultural knowledge.
Emojis. Image credit: Pixabay
McCulloch’s explorations of typography and emoji are, in my opinion, the most substantive and interesting in the book. The typography chapter looks in detail at the emergence of typographical conventions on the internet – such as CAPITALISATION IS LIKE SHOUTING, # for categorisation, or s p a c i n g f o r d u r a t i o n – and how people convey a wide variety of nuanced attitudes by following or subverting these rules. For example, ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*over-the-top*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧sparkle✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*text*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧ can be sardonic, just as over-exaggerated phrasal intonation can be in speech. While most of the book focuses on linguistic phenomena on the Anglosphere internet, McCulloch also discusses the prosodic use of ～ in East Asia: typing ～ suggests that the preceding syllable has been lengthened, as in 好～～ (pronounced hǎo in Mandarin, ‘okay’) (p.131), just as a word in English can be lengthened by repeating the last letter even if it’s silent, as in sureee. As someone who avidly used ～ to convey a chilled-out vibe when I was thirteen, reading McCulloch’s duration-based analysis was like a lightbulb moment.
As to emoji, McCulloch arrives at the conclusion that their role in writing is like gesturing in speech. Body language can ease the flow of the conversation and clarify the attitudes of the speaker; emoji can achieve a similar purpose by relating informal writing back to our physical bodies. In this sense, the rise of emoji simply represents body language, an integral part of informal speech, being transferred into the digital medium.
Filled with anecdotes and observations about the internet, linguistics, and internet language, Because Internet is informative and readable, but sometimes it reads as rather meandering and beside the point. The early chapter on different generations of internet users felt never-ending, while the chapter on memes works as a brief history of certain meme formats but offers no particular analytical insights.
This captures the book’s general confusion of who it’s aimed at: boomers who need an explanation of what memes are, or zoomers who have never been on a mid-1990s online forum. In a valiant effort to cheerfully bring everyone along, McCulloch prefers to err on the side of over-explanation. It fits well with the book’s conversational tone, though drags down the book’s pace and sense of direction. But then, this is an inherent problem for anyone writing about the internet at length: different groups of people have such different experiences of it that it’s near-impossible to talk to all of them at once.
The internet and its linguistic practices are fast-evolving: Because Internet was written in the late-2010s, which may well have been a generation ago. Meme culture has diversified and proliferated massively since McCulloch’s excursus; both the turnover rate and self-referential quality of internet culture has gone through the roof with the rise of TikTok; and as the pandemic forced us to move our lives online, it has both deepened our criticisms of the internet while making us acknowledge its importance in our lives. It’s also interesting to see how some of McCulloch’s observations from 2019 no longer hold: for example, the book talks about how overt sarcasm markers were unpopular because indicating sarcasm outright is like explaining the joke. However, tone markers like /s (sarcasm), /h (hyperbole), and /sx (sexual intent) are becoming more popular as a way to make the internet more accessible for neurodivergent people.
But it doesn’t matter whether McCulloch’s book no longer describes the newest internet linguistic phenomena. I found reading Because Internet genuinely joyous because it takes the curiosity and rigour of academic linguistics and applies it to developments in internet language. We tend to either take these phenomena for granted or hail them as a fresh form of linguistic degeneracy, but Because Internet says they are worthy of respect and academic interest.
McCulloch’s book is important because it helps to lay down the foundations of internet linguistics, and thereby provides a starting point for future linguists who are interested in the subject. In the meantime, Because Internet remains accessible, fun, and a genuinely informative read!
