Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language

Languages evolve over time. In the internet age, this process has greatly sped up. Online communication changes as digital innovations inspire new ways to speak and express thoughts and feelings; these shifts alter our spoken and written languages.

Early users of the internet had limited means of written communication. Sending audio or visual data was difficult and costly; instead, most interactions were typed. Users quickly found ways to express feelings by constructing emotional icons, or “emoticons,” out of punctuation: A happy feeling was typed as a smiley face, :-) and a sad feeling was typed as a frown, :-(. Dozens of emoticons were invented, and language acquired an illustrated format to accompany written words.

Later, two- or three-second videos called gifs became popular and could be added to an online conversation: “gifs become a kind of emotional currency, a way of sending someone a tiny zap of positive feeling” (190). Though somewhat cumbersome, gifs made possible the expression of feelings and thoughts—ironic, sardonic, or cynical, along with multiple meanings layered into single comments—that are hard to put into words.

Later still, an efficient system for sending small cartoon images was invented; these images, called