flatland 's review for:

Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language by Gretchen McCulloch

5.0

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What I liked most about this book is that it doesn't just explain how language is used and is changing on the internet, but also helps the reader understand language variation and change more broadly. I think when most people talk about internet language it's like looking at animals in a zoo, and commenting on how interesting and weird it is. In this book, the author explains how the variation we're seeing is interesting for sure, but definitely not weird - when we see people "breaking rules" with language on the internet, it's actually not so different from when those same rules were broken previously in a different medium. So, the book manages to simultaneously expose the reader to new linguistic territory, while showing how language has been working all along right under our noses.