In a previous life, I studied Linguistics.
It was my first year at the University of Toronto, and as opposed to American colleges, where you can meander through a variety of different subjects before settling on the one that makes your heart sing, I had to declare a (double) major from the get-go. I loved languages; I decided to study linguistics… despite having no idea what linguistics actually was.
It turns out that linguistics wasn’t the study of languages but rather of language – the phonetics and syntax and semantics of it all, ranging from what exactly your tongue has to do to make the word “ribbit” emerge from your mouth to why we call a Jeep a Jeep. And while I eventually changed majors (a side effect of changing universities and also of the fact that I didn’t want to be a speech therapist), I remain captivated by language. My favorite YouTube rabbit hole to go down is linguist and dialect coach Erik Singer breaking down film accents. I dig etymology. I’m far from a prescriptivist, but I have a sincere love of correct punctuation (specifically semicolons). And so it’s perhaps no surprise that I fell hard for Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language, a book by linguist Gretchen McCullough about how the evolution of the Internet has had a profound effect on the way that we speak English.
I was an early adopter of the Internet, entering chatrooms and building my own Xanga and MySpace page back in middle and high school (before Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter even existed). I loved combing through past Internet fads and jargon, from *˜*sPaRkLeTeXt*˜* to 133t. This is an incredibly intelligent, deftly researched book that presents information about how we speak (and write!) in the digital age in a context that can be understood by people from a wide variety of backgrounds, whether you were raised with or without the Internet and whether or not you boast (half) a degree in linguistics.
Whether you’re interested in knowing why texting “yeah” is nbd but “Yes.” feels passive aggressive or how chat programs evolved to better suit the way we naturally converse IRL, this is the ideal book to take to the beach this summer.