The interwebs have been widely cited for spreading individual lexical items like
lolcat and wtf, but has their influence become so great as to tinker around with
grammar as well? http://goo.gl/3Y8P That would add another, much more intense level
of influence on the linguistic system.
Sociolinguistics is only just getting to grips with the idea that old-fashioned mass
media might be facilitating the spread of more than just individual words and phrases
(ahem, my forthcoming article: http://www.academia.edu/3509267/); can we rise to this
new prospect too? There are some studies that touch on internet and language change
in certain ways (e.g. http://goo.gl/0rsWaq, http://goo.gl/ixrnux,
http://goo.gl/xSQnTX) but those are about innovations that spread initially without
the help of the net. 'Because internet' would be an early example of a grammatical
innovation (not just a lexical item) spreading initially and principally via teh
internetz.
I can haz fundingz?
Dave
--
Dr. Dave Sayers
Honorary Research Fellow, Arts & Humanities, Swansea University, UK
Visiting Lecturer (2013-14), Dept English, University of Turku, Finland
[log in to unmask]
http://swansea.academia.edu/DaveSayers
########################################################################
The Variationist List - discussion of everything related to variationist sociolinguistics.
To send messages to the VAR-L list (subscribers only), write to:
[log in to unmask]
To unsubscribe from the VAR-L list, click the following link:
https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?SUBED1=VAR-L&A=1
|