We all make linguistic decisions like this all the time. Sometimes, we decide to align ourselves with the existing holders of power by talking like they do, so we can seem rich or educated or upwardly mobile. Sometimes, we decide to align ourselves with particular less powerful groups, to show that we belong and to seem cool, antiauthoritarian, or

Even without being consciously aware of it, people were aiming to be polite just as soon as they had the typing skills to do so.

But regardless of the specific linguistic circles we hang out with online, we’re all speakers of internet language because the shape of our language is influenced by the internet as a cultural context.

Several studies have found that this expressive lengthening, as linguist Tyler Schnoebelen named it, is sensitive to social context: people lengthen more in private texts or chat messages than in public posts.

This group provides an intriguing bridge between digital and analogue informal writing: even people who are almost completely at sea with the technical side of things have correctly identified the social framework and mapped it onto familiar linguistic practices.

Twitter is particularly valuable: even the most casual of searchers can look for a word or phrase and form an impression of how people are using it. They might notice that a lot of people who used “smol” in 2018 also appeared to be fans of anime or cute animals, or that “bae” was used primarily by African Americans until around 2014, when it

There’s not that much difference between a late-1990s teenager constantly sending mundane but vital updates via AOL Instant Messenger and creating social drama about who was in their top eight friends on MySpace and a mid-2010s teen who’s constantly sending mundane but vital updates via Snapchat and creating social drama about who liked whose

In the plain text of late 1990s and early 2000s instant messenger status messages, sparkle punctuation would range from ~ just one ~ of each all the way up to ~~~~~~ ~~~~~~so many sparkles~~~~~~ ~~~~~~; ~ ~ ~ ~alternating~ ~ ~ ~ or ~ ~~ ~~in combination~~ ~~ ~~; mixed with wOrDs iN mIxEd cAPiTaLiZaTiOn, e x t r a s p a c e s, and ✧･ﾟ: ☆ ✧･ﾟ: ★

America despite the millions of people who already lived there.