I'm open to falling from grace

[walkingshadow]

E. thinks the research paper idea is a feasible one, and we're meeting on Monday afternoon to work it out. ROCK. This gives me the weekend to come up with, like, what I want to write the research paper on. Stop me when this starts sounding familiar.

I mentioned netspeak to him when I first broached the god-forsaken thesis, so I should probably stick with that. And I am interested in it. Specifically in the paradox of a form of writing that is not only communication, but originally and still largely an attempt to mimic conversation, and the conventions that developed to fill in the gaps of not being able to see or hear your conversation partners—and the way those conventions cannot be translated back into the spoken word. Not easily, at least. I'm thinking specifically of what I call "stage directions"—anything you'd put in framing asterisks (or commas, or double commas), e.g. *crosses fingers*, :boogies:, :shakes fist at universe:, *facepalm*, *hugs*. There are patterns, of course, and interesting extensions—moving from present-tense verb phrases to adjectives and nouns (*rage*, *paranoid*, *cranky native*). There are also the trends springing from the use of html, such as embedded links, faux html tags (usually end-tags, e.g. /rant, /random, /snob, /dork), and the strike-through tag. I adore the strike-through tag, as it is the perfect written equivalent of (e.g.) Oops, did I say Bush was insipid? I meant inspirational. In a medium completely lacking in suprasegmental pitch cues, the strike-through manages to encode sarcastic intonation (and I think sarcasm is the tone most people wish there were a special font for) and encodes it unambiguously, unlike in actual speech; nobody ever has to explain "I was just being sarcastic" with the strike-through. Some people find it twee, maybe because it's so obvious, but I find it absolutely fascinating. Unsurprisingly. And then there are your abbreviations (lol, ymmv, tbh, omg) and your emoticons. Other than the fact that people can't spell, what have you noticed about the way people communicate online?

From this language blog, linked in languagelog's blog roll call:

In watching Do You Speak American, on PBS just now, author John Simon just called descriptive linguists "a curse upon the race."

Oh yes. That's me. Busy being a curse upon the race.

To which I add, \o/

Turns out I didn't really get the death flu (or it was the wimpiest death flu ever), but I am floundering in the middle of a really bad cold. It started out with a really nice, wet cough, but by Thursday evening had grown to include nasal congestion, my least favorite cold symptom. *blows nose four billion times*

Yesterday I filed my tax return for free online and can therefore expect a $224 reward for my time in the doctor's office this past summer to wing my way some time soon (Dear all current and future beneficiaries of Social Security: Enjoy that $133, comrades!). I almost didn't get out to class, but in the end I only missed the handing back of the quizzes. Topic of the day: the Atlantic slave trade. It was the most interested I've been all semester. Last night, after the least successful nap in the history of the world, Jules and I went out to celebrate the end of the week: dinner at our fallback of Don Pablo's and coffee at Maude's. At Maude's we clung to our table right up to closing time so Jules could be forced to admit that Trivial Pursuit is totally the boss of her.

I never sleep well when I'm sick. I got into bed at about 3 a.m. and fell asleep a couple of hours later; I was awake again some time between seven and eight. My eyes, how they burn. Things I could have done (and probably should have done) but did not do with all those hours of the morning: clean my room, do laundry, pay bills, flesh out a research topic, do research, read for AFH, read for LAH and begin the take-home exam due Thursday, burn CDs, or work on scarves. Instead I managed a bowl of cereal, a mug of tea, and an orange at nine, then the five or six new entries on my flist and several icons before Jules got up and ready in the early afternoon and we went for lunch at Panera. We ate our soup and sandwiches and then sat over our coffee and cookie or muffin before hopping off our high chairs and running some errands.

I got myself a new pair of sunglasses and they're HUUUUGE. I feel like I'm wearing goggles. It's awesome. They set me back twenty bucks, easily the most I've ever spent on a pair of sunglasses (there was a period of time when I couldn't hold on to a pair of sunglasses to save my life; they got lost, they got sat on, they lost earpieces, etc.), but my old ones were crooked and tiny. These are so big I can see the corners of the frames out of the corners of my eyes—but it's better than seeing the sun. Plus Isaac Mizrahi made them for Target! It says so, right there. I saw Isaac Mizrahi on Celebrity Jeopardy once. He seemed like a cool sort of fish. At Target my over-the-counter drugs timed out, but Jules and I still managed a highly successful shopping expedition, including (on my part) a toothbrush, a birthday card, travel packets of tissues, more Curèl (may I never be without it again), more cold medication (DayQuil and NyQuil; I am so far incredibly unimpressed), a spindle of 100 CD-Rs for $27, and 50 jewel cases in which to put them and pass them out.

Because that was such a rollicking success, we next turned to Best Buy, and there Jules bought a DVD player for $42. I know! It's off-brand, but the blue-shirt I flagged down recommended it, saying they sold tons of them, and he'd only ever seen one or two returned. It's tiny, it will play DVDs, and it cost $42. A steal at, like, three times the price. We just got our invitations to the winners-at-life party; we'll be there with bells on. While we were there the tech people gave her some very heartening news about the possibility of recovering the files from her hard drive, bypassing the possibly-but-hopefully-not corrupted operating system (it's in won't-boot limbo; she's holding vigil and hoping a friend will be able to recover everything and/or FIX IT omg), so send recuperative thoughts to Douglas.

Did I mention the three hours of wheezy sleep? and that the DayQuil did nothing? and my eyes, how they burn? There's a party tonight that I know Jules would love to drag me out to, but I think I'd much rather stay here, sniffling and hacking, with the outside possibility of getting to bed and maybe staying there the whole night and morning through.

Comments

[isilya]

FWIW (possibly helpful for googling) "stage directions" are actually called emotes, the term originating from Multi User Dungeons (MUDs) which are usually text based RPGs. Obviously in a text-based RPG, it's vitally important to be able to portray character action. This is usually solved pre-programmed character emotes (hugs, smiles, waves, grins) or by prefacing text with /em or /me or ::

Eg, :: cartwheels through the air

looks like this to you in the RPG:

You cartwheels through the air

and like this to the other players:

IsilyaTheMagnificent cartwheels through the air

This is interesting in that to make your actions grammatically correct for the other players, you constantly have to refer to yourself in third person and conjugate verbs appropriately. This also has the effect of fucking up the grammar for your own RPG experience: "you squees" is something that you have to learn to discount.

ravenchel wrote a paper all about emotes a while back; I think she was exploring the different methods of delineating emotes (italics, surrounding characters like asterisks, colons and underscores).

Something I find fascinating in the way that I learned to chat is that I tend to hit ENTER where I would usually pause for breath. I learned to chat this way with ivyblossom and so we participate in a fairly rapid-fire chat, with half completed sentences scrolling past each other. We don't wait to complete a thought or a sentence, or (god forbid) a paragraph before sending it out to the other person.

Because this is my natural method of chatting, I find chatting with those people who prefer to write long sentences before sending them slightly nervewracking/tedious. Waiting, waiting, waiting.

However, I think that they find my style of interrupted speech totally confusing, having to read up and down the lines (and past their own interjections) to piece together one thought.

[tenebris.livejournal.com]

Intonation units! *squee!*

Sorry, couldn't help myself there. :)

[walkingshadow.livejournal.com]

Hee! I'm like, constituent test! But wouldn't they usually be the same? I'm thinking of times when people would break sentences at points that aren't between constituents, and in my head it sounds like they've just run a marathon and are completely out of breath.

[tenebris.livejournal.com]

Yeah, you're right--intonation units usually break between constiuents, not within one. Though cases with modals--have to, need to, gotta, etc.--I could see a break between them and the infinitive. (Have examples to this effect, too.) Also, things like discourse markers tend to have their own unit, especially if they don't occur before a complement clause. Things like 'ya know." Now that would be an interesting thing to look at...

[walkingshadow.livejournal.com]

Though cases with modals--have to, need to, gotta, etc.--I could see a break between them and the infinitive. (Have examples to this effect, too.)

Ooh, cool, I could totally see it. Though with gotta and shoulda, there really isn't an infinitive in them, not in speech--they operate as a single unit, like must and could. Right? *ransacks brain from three semesters ago* When speakers break sentences after "have to" or "need to" are they just treating it like "hafta"?

You know, that would be an interesting thing to look at. Hmm.

[walkingshadow.livejournal.com]

This is all AWESOME. I have as you can see, *zero* experience with RPGs, so I really appreciate the vocabulary and explanation. First of all, it makes so much sense that it comes out of RPGs! And second, you're right that the grammaticality is interesting. Like, really interesting. "You squees." Hmm!

I called them stage directions because the text of a play is another place where you have no communication but through dialogue, and the action that isn't present there is introduced in asides (in present-tense verb phrases, along with the occaional adjective for emotional/tonal (read: suprasegmental) cues) for the reader (actor/director/etc.) to reproduce the scene. So, RPGs, of course, but I just never thought of them. I'll probably be reading up on them quite a bit in the near future. *g*

Something I find fascinating in the way that I learned to chat is that I tend to hit ENTER where I would usually pause for breath.

Ooh, now what would be really fascinating is to look at those chats and see where in the sentence you hit ENTER. A girl in one of my linguistics classes once posited in passing that each of the strings of words in chats/IMs (what you typed before hitting ENTER) was a constituent (constituents are parts of sentences that are naturally grouped together: in IsilyaTheMagnificent cartwheels through the air, each individual word is a constituent, each phrase is a constituent ("Isilya the Magnificent" = a noun phrase, "cartwheels through the air" = a verb phrase, "through the air" = a prepositional phrase, "the air" = a noun phrase), and the entire sentence is a constituent. But a string like "IsilyaTheMagnificent cartwheels through" is not. Would you type something like that as a complete string before pressing enter? That is, does what you enter as dialogue in each transmission of a chat constitute a new kind of constituent test (where a constituent test = a test to determine whether a given string of words is or is not a constituent). It would certainly say things about what English speakers instinctively do with constituents (or perhaps only confirm them).

However, I think that they find my style of interrupted speech totally confusing, having to read up and down the lines (and past their own interjections) to piece together one thought.

Hmm, I think that's another inherent aspect of the chat forum. Because whether you're posting in really short bursts or in slightly longer ones, you always have the element of simultaneity. In a conversation, if we start talking at the same time, one of us yields. But we can both post at the same time in an IM, and several people can post at almost exactly the same time in a chat, so the strings aren't necessarily going to be exactly in order. I've found it's perfectly natural and easy to follow at the time, but trying to read back through a chat transcript can get confusing for just that reason.

And you're fabulous. Thank you! *hugs*

[isilya]

An example:

Ivy Blossom: what are you up to?
Ivy Blossom: I haven't seen you in ages
Isilya: I haven't been online much
Isilya: House full of guests
Isilya: Work
Isilya: Hell
Isilya: Now there's a short reprieve until Thursday
Isilya: How have you been?
Ivy Blossom: what happens thursday?
Ivy Blossom: oh I'm okay
Ivy Blossom: bored
Ivy Blossom: but fine other than that
Ivy Blossom: all done school?
Isilya: All done!
Isilya: *weary*
Isilya: I pulled an all-nighter to finish my Yuletide and SeSa stories
Isilya: and now I have to go to work
Ivy Blossom: congratulations
Isilya: how are you?
Ivy Blossom: oh no
Ivy Blossom: ouch
Isilya: Back home?
Ivy Blossom I'm fine
Isilya: very tired
Ivy Blossom: back home

[walkingshadow.livejournal.com]

*smooches*

Perfect. Totally broken down by phrases, and totally typical with the back-and-forth; it's like someone says a chunk of stuff, and then the other person responds as they get the words out. Again, absolutely no problem for the chatters at the time, but it takes a bit of detective work to reconstruct it as you read over it (something about the items in short term memory?).

And your "*weary*" is exactly what I was talking about, that extension. It's an adjective, not a verb, and it's not expressing an action, or even a feeling; more like a general state of being. Rather than saying "I am weary," you directly convey the weariness. You exude it. It is your aura of weariness.

[tenebris.livejournal.com]

Heh. *is busy being a curse upon the race, too*

Other Internet-isms? The lexicalization of typos: pwned and teh are two of, I'm sure, a much longer list. And hey, when did -ism get to mean, "stuff people say"?

Actually, I've seen problems with sarcasm and irony online (in those that don't use strikethrough, which I always thought of as...umm, something different) so much people do the </ irony>, </ sarcasm> thing. (What's so interesting about that is no one ever opens those tags, they just close them. What's that tell you about final pitch?)

[walkingshadow.livejournal.com]

*is busy being a curse upon the race, too*

:-D

Lexicalization of typos! Absolutely. The semantics behind them are interesting, because we haven't just aborbed "teh" as an alternate spelling of "the," but it gets trotted out in specific cases when we want to make a point. Good question about the -ism. Spoonerism? Okay wait, a quick trip to American Heritage at dictionary.com (http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=ism) reminds us that there are other uses for the suffix than for ideologies—that's the first thing we think of because we're used to referring to the nineteenth century as "the Age of the -Isms." The 4th definition they give is "distinctive or characteristic trait: Latinism."

Right, the faux closed tag for sarcasm, I see that all the time too. I'm guessing final pitch . . . is important? ;) I think it also acts as a final punctuation, a kind of non-verbal cue, like an eyeroll, rather than a real attempt to inform people that what I just said was meant to be taken sarcastically, not literally. Because if that was your intent, wouldn't you disclaim before you started the statement? We never do that in speech either. ("I'm going to be sarcastic now!")

What do you think of strikethrough as? It can definitely be used for things other than sarcasm, but I'm not sure how to describe it, so any insight is welcome.

[isilya]

Lexicalization of typos! Absolutely. The semantics behind them are interesting, because we haven't just aborbed "teh" as an alternate spelling of "the," but it gets trotted out in specific cases when we want to make a point.

One of my favourite examples: !!!11111!!!

[walkingshadow.livejournal.com]

Yes! Which has obviously been appropriated, because of examples like !!one!, !!1eleven!, (twelve, eleventy, seventeen, etc.). Hee.