Because Internet

by Gretchen McCulloch

  in 2011, a study of emoticons: Tyler Schnoebelen. 2012. “Do You Smile with Your Nose? Stylistic Variation in Twitter Emoticons.” University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 18(2). Penn Graduate Linguistics Society. repository.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1242&context=pwpl. The paper was published in 2012, but the data was collected in 2011.

  Classic kaomoji: Kenji Rikitake. February 25, 1993. “The History of Smiley Marks.” Archived at Internet Archive Wayback Machine. web.archive.org/web/20121203061906/staff.aist.go.jp:80/k.harigaya/doc/kao_his.html. Ken Y-N. September 19, 2007. “:-) Turns 25, but How Old Are Japanese Emoticons (?_?).” What Japan Thinks. whatjapanthinks.com/2007/09/19/turns-25-but-how-old-are-japanese-emoticons/.

  When researchers show: Masaki Yuki, William W. Maddux, and Takahiko Masuda. 2007. “Are the Windows to the Soul the Same in the East and West? Cultural Differences in Using the Eyes and Mouth as Cues to Recognize Emotions in Japan and the United States.” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 43(2). pp. 303–311.

  Some kaomoji have caught on: Amanda Brennan. April 24, 2013. “Hold My Flower.” Know Your Meme. knowyourmeme.com/memes/hold-my-flower.

  table flip: nycto. July 8, 2011. “Flipping Tables / (╯°□°)╯︵ㅗ—ㅗ .” Know Your Meme. knowyourmeme.com/memes/flipping-tables.

  designers at SoftBank: Jeremy Burge. March 8, 2019. “Correcting the Record on the First Emoji Set.” Emojipedia. https://blog.emojipedia.org/correcting-the-record-on-the-first-emoji-set/.

  picture of a normal cow: Sam Byford. April 24, 2012. “Emoji Harmonization: Japanese Carriers Unite to Standardize Picture Characters.” The Verge. www.theverge.com/2012/4/24/2971039/emoji-standardization-japan-kddi-docomo-eaccess.

  Japanese mojibake: Ritchie S. King. July 2012. “Will Unicode Soon Be the Universal Code?” IEEE Spectrum 49(7). p. 60. ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/6221090/.

  Russian krakozyabry: Jonathon Keats. 2007. Control + Alt + Delete: A Dictionary of Cyberslang. Globe Pequot.

  German Zeichensalat: “Harte Nuß im Zeichensalat.” Der Spiegel. June 8, 1998. www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-7907491.html.

  Bulgarian majmunica: Ilian Minchev. July 2, 2015. “Как субтитрите, да не ми излизат на маймуница?” (How do the subtitles do not go to a monkey?). Блогът на Илиян Минчев (The blog of Ilian Minchev). iliqnktz.blogspot.com/2015/07/blog-post.htm. (With thanks to Google Translate.) vik-45. April 21, 2009. “Надписи с ‘маймуница’” (Captions with “monkey”). SETCOMBG forum. forum.setcombg.com/windows/30330-%D0%BD%D0%B0%D0%B4%D0%BF%D0%B8%D1%81%D0%B8-%D1%81-%D0%BC%D0%B0%D0%B9%D0%BC%D1%83%D0%BD%D0%B8%D1%86%D0%B0.html. (With thanks to Google Translate.)

  Multiply that by all: According to this link, there are 615 Unicode arrows as of 2017: (No author cited.) (No date cited.) “Unicode Utilities: UnicodeSet.” The Unicode Consortium. unicode.org/cldr/utility/list-unicodeset.jsp?a=%5Cp%7Bname=/%5CbARROW/%7D&g=gc.

  Apple wanted people in Japan: Mark Davis and Peter Edberg, eds. May 18, 2017. “Unicode® Technical Standard #51 UNICODE EMOJI.” The Unicode Consortium. www.unicode.org/reports/tr51/.

  contained 608 symbols: (No author cited.) (No date cited.) “Emoji and Pictographs.” The Unicode Consortium. www.unicode.org/faq/emoji_dingbats.html.

  Just five years after emoji: Ben Medlock and Gretchen McCulloch. 2016. “The Linguistic Secrets Found in Billions of Emoji.” Presented at SXSW, March 11–20, 2016, Austin, Texas. www.slideshare.net/SwiftKey/the-linguistic-secrets-found-in-billions-of-emoji-sxsw-2016-presentation-59956212.

  list of words people also use: Thomas Dimson. May 1, 2015. “Emojineering Part 1: Machine Learning for Emoji Trends.” Medium. engineering.instagram.com/emojineering-part-1-machine-learning-for-emoji-trendsmachine-learning-for-emoji-trends-7f5f9cb979ad.

  rely less on other expressive resources: Umashanthi Pavalanathan and Jacob Eisenstein. 2016. “More Emojis, Less :) The Competition for Paralinguistic Function in Microblog Writing.” First Monday 1(1).

  most trustworthy kind: Erving Goffman. 1959. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Doubleday/Anchor.

  deliberate cues to the intention: Eli Dresner and Susan C. Herring. “Functions of the Non-Verbal in CMC: Emoticons and Illocutionary Force.” Communication Theory 20. pp. 249–268.

  the smiley changes the intention: Monica Ann Riordan. 2011. “The Use of Verbal and Nonverbal Cues in Computer-Mediated Communication: When and Why?” PhD dissertation, University of Memphis.

  One teen explained: Mary H.K. Choi. August 25, 2016. “Like. Flirt. Ghost. A Journey into the Social Media Lives of Teens.” Wired. www.wired.com/2016/08/how-teens-use-social-media/.

  invoked Austin’s idea: Adam Kendon. 1995. “Gestures as Illocutionary and Discourse Markers in Southern Italian Conversation.” Journal of Pragmatics 23(3). pp. 249–279.

  Liking can also backfire: Deborah Cicurel. October 27, 2014. “Deep-Liking: What Do You Make of the New Instagram Trend?” Glamour. www.glamourmagazine.co.uk/article/deep-liking-instagram-dating-trend.

  “Ugh, I got a flat”: Carl Rogers and Richard E. Farson. 1957. Active Listening. University of Chicago Industrial Relations Center. www.gordontraining.com/free-workplace-articles/active-listening/.

  how they used emoji: Ryan Kelly and Leon Watts. 2015. “Characterising the Inventive Appropriation of Emoji as Relationally Meaningful in Mediated Close Personal Relationships.” Presented at Experiences of Technology Appropriation: Unanticipated Users, Usage, Circumstances, and Design, September 20, 2015, Oslo. projects.hci.sbg.ac.at/ecscw2015/wp-content/uploads/sites/31/2015/08/Kelly_Watts.pdf.

  looking at cute cat videos: Jessica Gall Myrick. 2015. “Emotion Regulation, Procrastination, and Watching Cat Videos Online: Who Watches Internet Cats, Why, and to What Effect?” Computers in Human Behavior 52. pp. 168–176.

  cute puppy photos: Jessika Golle, Stephanie Lisibach, Fred W. Mast, and Janek S. Lobmaier. March 13, 2013. “Sweet Puppies and Cute Babies: Perceptual Adaptation to Babyfacedness Transfers across Species.” PLOS ONE. journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0058248.

  Esperanto: Arika Okrent. 2010. In the Land of Invented Languages. Spiegel & Grau.

  More than two million: CMO.com Staff. November 22, 2016. “Infographic: 92% of World’s Online Population Use Emojis.” CMO.com. www.cmo.com/features/articles/2016/11/21/report-emoji-used-by-92-of-worlds-online-population.html#gs.X8X1e_g.

  People who saw the play: Sarah Begley. August 12, 2016. “The Magic Is Gone but Harry Potter Will Never Die.” Time. time.com/4445149/harry-potter-cursed-child-jk-rowling/.

  idea of pictorial communication: Lauren Gawne. October 5, 2015. “Emoji Deixis: When Emoji Don’t Face the Way You Want Them To.” Superlinguo. www.superlinguo.com/post/130501329351/emoji-deixis-when-emoji-dont-face-the-way-you.

  those who are illiterate: Diana Fussell and Ane Haaland. 1978. “Communicating with Pictures in Nepal: Results of Practical Study Used in Visual Education.” Educational Broadcasting International 11(1). pp. 25–31.

  neither pictures nor gestures: Gretchen McCulloch. June 29, 2016. “A Linguist Explains Emoji and What Language Death Actually Looks Like.” The Toast. the-toast.net/2016/06/29/a-linguist-explains-emoji-and-what-language-death-actually-looks-like/.

  Nuclear scientists, for example: Juliet Lapidos. November 16, 2009. “Atomic Priesthoods, Thorn Landscapes, and Munchian Pictograms.” Slate. www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/green_room/2009/11/atomic_priesthoods_thorn_landscapes_and_munchian_pictograms.html.

  Judges and juries: Eric Goldman. 2018. “Emojis and the Law.” Santa Clara University Legal Studies Research Paper 2018(06).

  court interpreted a smiley emoticon: Eric Goldman. 2017. “Surveying the Law of Emojis.” Santa Clara University Legal Studies Research Paper 2017(08).

  In a list of emoji examples: Eli Hager. February 2, 2015. “Is an Emoj
i Worth a Thousand Words?” The Marshall Project. www.themarshallproject.org/2015/02/02/is-an-emoji-worth-1-000-words.

  people who read a lot of fiction: Julie Sedivy. April 27, 2017. “Why Doesn’t Ancient Fiction Talk About Feelings?” Nautilus. nautil.us/issue/47/consciousness/why-doesnt-ancient-fiction-talk-about-feelings.

  Chapter 6. How Conversations Change

  In one video: (No author cited.) July 12, 2017. “Google’s DeepMind AI Just Taught Itself to Walk.” Tech Insider YouTube channel. www.youtube.com/watch?v=gn4nRCC9TwQ.

  In another, a metallic: (No author cited.) (No date cited.) “How to Teach a Robot to Walk.” Smithsonian Channel. www.smithsonianmag.com/videos/category/innovation/how-to-teach-a-robot-to-walk/.

  The two most prominent solutions: Ammon Shea. 2010. The Phone Book: The Curious History of the Book That Everybody Uses but No One Reads. Perigee/Penguin. Robert Krulwich. February 17, 2011. “A (Shockingly) Short History of ‘Hello.’” NPR. www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2011/02/17/133785829/a-shockingly-short-history-of-hello.

  Some early phones . . . “That is all”: William Grimes. March 5, 1992. “Great ‘Hello’ Mystery Is Solved.” The New York Times. www.nytimes.com/1992/03/05/garden/great-hello-mystery-is-solved.html.

  “Goodbye”: Douglas Harper. 2001–2018. “Good-bye.” Online Etymology Dictionary. www.etymonline.com/word/good-bye.

  “When I was in training”: BBC One. January 25, 2015. twitter.com/bbcone/status/559443111936798721.

  Etiquette books: Claude S. Fischer. 1994. America Calling: A Social History of the Telephone to 1940. University of California Press.

  According to the same survey: (No author cited.) (No date cited.) “Expressions (Such as ‘Hello’) Used When You Meet Somebody You Know Quite Well.” Dictionary of American Regional English. dare.wisc.edu/survey-results/1965-1970/exclamations/nn10a.

  “I almost always say ‘hey’”: Allan Metcalf. November 7, 2013. “Making Hey.” The Chronicle of Higher Education. chronicle.com/blogs/linguafranca/2013/11/07/making-hey/.

  “One could write tersely”: J. C. R. Licklider and Albert Vezza. 1978. “Applications of Information Networks.” Proceedings of the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) 66(11). archive.org/stream/ApplicationsOfInformationNetworks/AIN.txt.

  “most users exercise”: Naomi S. Baron. 1998. “Letters by Phone or Speech by Other Means: The Linguistics of Email.” Language & Communication 18. pp. 156–157.

  “I receive innumerable e-mails”: David Crystal. 2006. Language and the Internet. Cambridge University Press.

  the research of the linguist Gillian Sankoff: Gillian Sankoff and Hélène Blondeau. 2007. “Language Change across the Lifespan: /r/ in Montreal French.” Language 83(3). pp. 560–588. Gillian Sankoff and Hélène Blondeau. 2010. “Instability of the [r] ~ [R] Alternation in Montreal French: The Conditioning of a Sound Change in Progress.” In Hans van de Velde, Roeland van Hout, Didier Demolin, and Wim Zonneveld, eds., VaRiation: Sociogeographic, Phonetic and Phonological Characterics of /r/. John Benjamins.

  “To the Right noble”: Edmund Spenser. 1590. “A Letter of the Authors expounding his whole Intention in the course of this Worke.” The Faerie Queene. Disposed into Twelve Books, fashioning XII Morall Vertues. spenserians.cath.vt.edu/TextRecord.php?textsid=102.

  “I have the honor”: Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr. 1804. Hamilton–Burr duel correspondences. Wikisource. en.wikisource.org/wiki/Hamilton%E2%80%93Burr_duel_correspondences.

  Reading through the comments: Maeve Maddox. January 27, 2015. “Starting a Business Letter with Dear Mr.” Daily Writing Tips. www.dailywritingtips.com/starting-a-business-letter-with-dear-mr/. Lynn Gaertner-Johnson. August 16, 2005. “Do I Have to Call You ‘Dear’?” Business Writing. www.businesswritingblog.com/business_writing/2005/08/do_i_have_to_ca.html. Susan Adams. August 8, 2012. “Hi? Dear? The State of the E-Mail Salutation.” Forbes. www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2012/08/08/hi-dear-the-state-of-the-e-mail-salutation/.

  Even if just 0.2 seconds go by: Antony J. Liddicoat. 2007. An Introduction to Conversation Analysis. Continuum.

  ever so slightly miscalibrated: Deborah Tannen. 1992. That’s Not What I Meant! How Conversational Style Makes or Breaks Your Relations with Others. Virago.

  Conversation analysts find: Antony J. Liddicoat. 2007. An Introduction to Conversation Analysis. Continuum.

  Some early chat systems: Brian Dear. 2002. “Origin of ‘Talk’ Command.” OSDIR.com Forums. web.archive.org/web/20160304060338/osdir.com/ml/culture.internet.history/2002-12/msg00026.html.

  Some systems tried: Paul Dourish. (No date cited.) “The Original Hacker’s Dictionary.” Dourish.com. www.dourish.com/goodies/jargon.html.

  Other chat systems: (No author cited.) (No date cited.) Unix talk screenshot. Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Unix_talk_screenshot_01.png.

  You could add more boxes: Brian Dear. 2017. The Friendly Orange Glow: The Untold Story of the PLATO System and the Dawn of Cyberculture. Pantheon. David R. Wooley. 1994. “PLATO: The Emergence of Online Community.” Matrix News. A re-created modern web version of Talkomatic that you can try out yourself is here: talko.cc/talko.html.

  Indeed, Google tried: Ben Parr. May 28, 2009. “Google Wave: A Complete Guide.” Mashable. mashable.com/2009/05/28/google-wave-guide/#sHbYql_QFqq4.

  read faster than we can type: Keith Rayner, Timothy J. Slattery, and Nathalie N. Bélanger. 2010. “Eye Movements, the Perceptual Span, and Reading Speed.” Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 17(6). pp. 834–839. Teresia R. Ostrach. 1997. Typing Speed: How Fast Is Average: 4,000 Typing Scores Statistically Analyzed and Interpreted. Five Star Staffing. cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0156/9110/files/Average-OrbiTouch-Typing-Speed.pdf.

  The oldest example: Dylan Tweney. September 24, 2009. “September 24, 1979: First Online Service for Consumers Debuts.” Wired. www.wired.com/2009/09/0924compuserve-launches/.

  An employee of CompuServe: Michael Banks. 2012. On the Way to the Web: The Secret History of the Internet and Its Founders. Apress.

  Internet Relay Chat (IRC): Jarkko Oikarinen. (No date cited.) Founding IRC. mIRC website. www.mirc.com/jarkko.html.

  These public chatrooms: John C. Paolillo and Asta Zelenkauskaite. 2013. “Real-Time Chat.” In Susan C. Herring, Dieter Stein, and Tuija Virtanen, eds., Pragmatics of Computer-Mediated Communication. Mouton de Gruyter. pp. 109–133. Susan Herring. 1999. “Interactional Coherence in CMC.” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 4(4).

  Here’s a nineties example of such overlap: John C. Paolillo. “‘Conversational’ Codeswitching on Usenet and Internet Relay Chat.” Language@Internet Volume 8 (2011). http://www.languageatinternet.org/articles/2011/Paolillo.

  Even the “is typing”: David Auerbach. February 12, 2014. “I Built That ‘So-and-So Is Typing’ Feature in Chat and I’m Not Sorry.” Slate. www.slate.com/articles/technology/bitwise/2014/02/typing_indicator_in_chat_i_built_it_and_i_m_not_sorry.html.

  Reviews of the first-generation: Kent German and Donald Bell. June 30, 2007. Apple iPhone review. CNET. www.cnet.com/products/apple-iphone/review/. Sam Costello. October 19, 2016. First-generation iPhone review. Lifewire. www.lifewire.com/first-generation-iphone-review-2000196.

  starting with BlackBerry: Jesse Ariss. July 27, 2015. “10 Years of BBM.” INSIDE BlackBerry. blogs.blackberry.com/2015/07/10-years-of-bbm/.

  Apple’s iMessage: Adam Howorth. June 6, 2011. “New Version of iOS Includes Notification Center, iMessage, Newsstand, Twitter Integration Among 200 New Features.” Apple Newsroom. www.apple.com/uk/newsroom/2011/06/06New-Version-of-iOS-Includes-Notification-Center-iMessage-Newsstand-Twitter-Integration-Among-200-New-Features/.

  a 1992 survey found: Robert Hopper. 1992. Telephone Conversation. Indiana University Press.

  I tried replicating the survey: Gretchen McCulloch. December 22, 2017. twitter.com/GretchenAMcC/status/944395370188234753.

  E
ven if nothing particular: Gretchen McCulloch. December 22, 2017. twitter.com/GretchenAMcC/status/944400462861783041.

  caller ID became widely available: Anthony Ramirez. April 4, 1992. “Caller ID: Consumer’s Friend or Foe?” The New York Times. www.nytimes.com/1992/04/04/news/caller-id-consumer-s-friend-or-foe.html.

  In the 1970s, 80s, and 90s: Paul F. Finnigan. 1983. “Voice Mail.” AFIPS ’83 Proceedings of the May 16–19, 1983, National Computer Conference. American Federation of Information Processing Societies. pp. 373–377. Linda R. Garceau and Jayne Fuglister. 1991. “Making Voicemail a Success.” The CPA Journal 61(3). p. 40.

  “butler lies”: Jeff Hancock, Jeremy Birnholtz, Natalya Bazarova, Jamie Guillory, Josh Perlin, and Barrett Amos. 2009. “Butler Lies: Awareness, Deception and Design.” Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. pp 517–526.

  Op-ed articles: Ian Shapira. August 8, 2010. “Texting Generation Doesn’t Share Boomers’ Taste for Talk.” The Washington Post. www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/07/AR2010080702848.html. Sally Parker. October 23, 2015. “Dear Old People: Why Should I Turn Off My Phone?” The Telegraph. www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/social-media/11951918/Dear-old-people-why-should-I-turn-off-my-phone.html.

  younger people find: Stephen DiDomenico and Jeffrey Boase. 2013. “Bringing Mobiles into the Conversation: Applying a Conversation Analytic Approach to the Study of Mobiles in Co-Present Interaction.” In Deborah Tannen and Anna Marie Trester, eds., Discourse 2.0: Language and New Media. Georgetown University Press. pp. 119–132.

  idea of a third place: Matthew Dollinger. June 11, 2008. “Starbucks, ‘The Third Place,’ and Creating the Ultimate Customer Experience.” Fast Company. www.fastcompany.com/887990/starbucks-third-place-and-creating-ultimate-customer-experience.

  What Ray Oldenburg: Ray Oldenburg. 1989. The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Community Centers, Beauty Parlors, General Stores, Bars, Hangouts, and How They Get You Through the Day. Paragon House.

  Examples include pubs: Leo W. Jeffres, Cheryl C. Bracken, Guowei Jian, and Mary F. Casey. 2009. “The Impact of Third Places on Community Quality of Life.” Applied Research in the Quality of Life 4(4). pp. 333–345.