After reading an interesting review in the New York Times last week, I decided to check out this book : “Because Internet - Understanding the New Rules of Language”
It’s about how the internet and the popularity text messaging and social media platforms like Twitter is rapidly changing the rules of written language. Not only that, but for the first time in the history of written language, linguists have a massive amount of easily accessible data about informal written language to study and analyze. (As opposed to informal spoken language, or formal written language, which are already widely studied). So there’s a lot to learn and unpack!
I’m only a few chapters in but I’m really enjoying it so far. Every day I find myself sharing little anecdotes and interesting facts from the book with friends and colleagues. It’s an engaging and accessible read - scientific but not at all dry or boring. I would recommend it to anyone that’s interested in language and culture!
(Note this book focuses on English specifically and uses English examples, although the same trends may be seen in every language that’s widely used online and in texting).