Because Internet by Gretchen McCulloch

BECAUSE INTERNET by Gretchen McCulloch is a unique text that deals with fluidity of language and changes in meaning, especially as we continue to produce more informal, internet-based writing. I am looking forward to sending more time with this text, reflecting, for example, on McCulloch’s comments about differences in users: “your experience of the internet and the language therein is shaped by who you were and who else was around at the time that you joined.” After a discussion of the founding population (often more “techy” and users of topic-based tools like Bulletin Board Systems, forums, or listservs), she describes the next wave as split between “Full Internet People” and “Semi Internet People,” differentiated by what they were doing on the internet (daily instant messaging and eventual Facebook users vs. forwarding funny emails). She describes a third wave, calling some “Post Internet People” who are “socially influenced by the internet regardless of their own level of use.” Much more to think about here; subsequent chapters cover emojis and memes. With roughly twenty percent of this text devoted to notes and index, McCulloch also references many researchers like dana boyd (speaker and author of It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens) and states that the purpose of this new book is “to provide a snapshot of a particular era and a lens that we can use to look at future changes.” 

As a linguist and pattern-seeker, McCulloch would undoubtedly be interested in the graphic detail shown about “Ageing on Facebook” and “Teenage Wasteland” recently in The Economist. Taking that a step further, she (and our students) might want to look at the NPR video on how moods spread and other non-verbal clues.  BECAUSE INTERNET was just named a Wired magazine "must read" and also reviewed in The Economist and by in Jennifer Szalai in the New York Times.  

Babel by Gaston Dorren

BABEL by Gaston Dorren is a fascinating trip “around the world in twenty languages.” He notes several lingua francas, languages like Portuguese, Persian, Russian, French, Swahili, Malay or even Turkish, that bridge the gap between people with different mother tongues. In addition, he points to a number of languages (German, Japanese, Javanese, Korean, Bengali, Punjabi and Tamil) that make the top 20 due to the common characteristic of being spoken in compact but densely populated regions.  Dorren indicates that “the figures are debatable, but it’s safe to claim that at least 75 percent of people on this planet are able to communicate in one of the Babel Twenty.” Each of those languages is covered in a single chapter, ordered by size beginning with Vietnamese (85 million users) and continuing through the top 5 (Arabic, Hindu-Urdu, Spanish, Mandarin and English).  Each chapter provides a brief overview with a chart on characteristics such as script, sounds and exports; then, roughly ten to fifteen pages delve into the specific language, exploring culture, geography and history through a fairly academic lens. Dorren’s website, Language Writer, contains a section about BABEL, including a page filled with sound files to help with clarifying pronunciation. BABEL received a starred review from Publishers Weekly and will certainly appeal to many readers, particularly those intrigued by linguistics, travel and vocabulary trivia.   

The Prodigal Tongue by Lynne Murphy

THE PRODIGAL TONGUE by Lynne Murphy is subtitled: “The Love-Hate Relationship between American and British English.” And Murphy, born and raised in New York State, but now a Professor of Linguistics at the University of Sussex, is awesome/brilliant at describing differences and analyzing the impact of time, environment, and social class on language.   She is very good at finding amusingly relevant quotes, too: “There is no such thing as American English.  There is English. And there are mistakes.”

Murphy provides a series of extensive notes and references as well as some fun quizzes about word origins.  Debrief, for example, came from the Royal Air Force in WWII while ear muffs are a mid-19^th century American invention.  Have fun with THE PRODIGAL TONGUE – writers for The Guardian and The Wall Street Journal  and The Boston Globe certainly did  - and you will be surprised at all you learn! Starred review from Library Journal.