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4.15 AVERAGE
4.15 AVERAGE
funny
informative
reflective
medium-paced
funny
informative
reflective
medium-paced
It is too easy for experts in a field to be humorous and boring, Gretchen McCulloch certainly isn’t one of them. She manages to communicate her ideas on linguistics in a way palatable to most readers while still expressing interesting ideas for those more acquainted with linguistics. Her dives into internet linguistics: it’s origins, uses, features, and reasoning is a must read for anyone interested in communication and/or the internet.
Highly readable popular science analysis of casual written discourse on-line. Lots of fascinating information from an author who nicely threads the needle between academic research and writing for a general audience with a genuine passion and excitement about the field.
funny
informative
lighthearted
medium-paced
funny
informative
lighthearted
reflective
fast-paced
funny
hopeful
informative
lighthearted
reflective
medium-paced
funny
informative
medium-paced
funny
informative
slow-paced
A lot of the ideas discussed in the book are very interesting and the book provided academic insight/intellectual analysis of internet culture in a way that was intriguing/thought-provoking. I didn't give this 5 stars because there's just something about it that feels overly casual to me? I think I would have liked it more if there were visible citations instead of the "Notes" section where key phrases are bolded. It's a frustrating way to fact-check and leads me to just having to accept the narrative McCulloch puts forward. The book has more anecdotal evidence than a typical "research" book, so perhaps that's why she chose this reference format, but there's also quite a bit of data taken from academic papers. The way this is written without citations made me question her logic at times because there was no easy way for me to double-check, say, the results/methods of a linguistic survey that she uses to make her argument. I found that she was good at explaining the possible limitations of the data she was sourcing, but overall I felt it was a bit too narrative-y and doesn't lend itself to critical analysis.