I can haz language play: The construction of language and identity in LOLspeak (original) (raw)
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"ZOMG! Dis iz a new language": The case of Lolspeak
I can has cheezburger? ('Can I have a cheeseburger?') is probably the most famous example of Lolspeak (also known as Kitty Pidgin), a variety of English attested on the web since 2006 that can be labeled as a Special Internet Language Variety. The general features of Lolspeak concern nonstandard orthography, morphology and syntax. The creativity and playfulness of people who write Lolspeak can give the impression of extreme variability. In this paper I will examine some of the characteristics of Lolspeak, relying on data collected from the website icanhascheezburger.com and particularly focusing on verbal morphology, in order to establish whether it is possible to find any regularities in such a peculiar language variety.
Language in Internet Memes: The Standardization of LOLspeak
Language in Internet Memes: The Standardization of LOLspeak, 2019
This paper examines LOLcat Language, or LOLspeak, a Special Internet Variety (short: SILV) found in online memes. Following a short introduction to the origins and context of LOLcat memes, the variety’s most frequent features are described. Two methods of analysis have been utilized. First, a revision of previous research results in a list of most frequent linguistic features based on quantitative analysis. Second, verification of the features in comparison with current corpus data gathered for the paper at hand gives an overview of the varieties’ features in its entirety. Both steps in combination present a diachronic overview of LOLspeak, as well as its status quo. This combination of approaches describes a method heretofore disregarded in the existing literature.
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Self, Language, and World: Problems from Kant, Sellars, and Rosenberg: In Memory of Jay F. Rosenberg, 2010
A recurring, Sellarsian theme in Jay Rosenberg's work, from his first book, Linguistic Representation, to his last, Wilfrid Sellars: Fusing the Images, concerns the uniqueness of human linguistic and mental representation and its distinctness from all other forms of animal communication and mentation. Full-fledged human language and thought, so the theme goes, is compositionally structured, intentional, rational, and subject to social norms. It is not merely patterned behavior that is goal-or need-driven, world-directed, and subject to modification via behavioral control or manipulation by co-communicators. Human linguistic communication is different from any known form of non-human communication in being the province of rational agents who act and think within the space of reasons. Consequently, all application of our concepts of meaning, semantic content, propositional attitudes, etc. to non-human creatures is at best a matter of analogy or metaphorical extension.
2011
This paper reviews the book Living Language: An Introduction to Linguistic Anthropology which is a distinct and almost flawless study of the essential theoretical disputes in linguistic anthropology and an accessible and easy-to-use reference for students pursuing the study of linguistic forms in real-life contexts around the world. Merging classic studies on language in social context and pioneering modern scholarship, Ahearn offers a uniting synthesis of research in linguistic anthropology and seeks future research in this field. The book, Living Language, treats language as indistinguishably twisted with cultural and social relations and merges theory with instances of modern language use to study the process that language makes, sustains, experiments, and how language changes social chains. This book tries to address the relationship between language and different cultures, ethnicities, people and the usage of language in different contexts.
Lire Journal (Journal of Linguistics and Literature)
J.K. Rowling and her Harry Potter series, published from 1997 to 2007, have been globally acclaimed as one of the most popular novels with the most varied target readers. A lot of reviews have been made and by far, they focused more on the literary aspects. This research offers a different way of reading Harry Potter novels since it will focus more on language play as Rowling’s style of writing, which is believed to contribute to the comprehension of the literary elements. Language play is a means of foregrounding – linguistic forms that stand out in a text. The research is done to find out the language play forms contained in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone and how these forms support the understanding of the literary elements. The research employs the descriptive qualitative method; various linguistic forms of language play are taken as the data, which are then investigated further in terms of the types of linguistic features. Afterward, these are connected with the liter...
Do me a syntax: Doggo memes, language games and the internal structure of English
Ampersand, 2019
(E. Butler). 1 Laycock (1969, fn. 36) contrasts the term 'ludling', introducing it with the more general term 'play-language', which he finds "too broad". For him, a ludling involves a "systematic deformation of ordinary language". As evidenced throughout this paper, the Doggo language game certainly falls within Laycock's definition of a ludling. A reviewer notes that playful language is generally not systematic, while language games are. As shown throughout this paper, Doggo exhibits the properties of a language game.
English and Leetspeak: A Step Towards Global Nerdism?
2013
It is common for any language to develop different speech styles that are to be used depending on the situation. Different groups of people, be it a professional milieu or a city district, tend to create new modalities of the language. We call those slang or jargon. According to the Cambridge Dictionary, a jargon would be "special words and phrases which are used by particular groups of people", and its main difference with slang would lie in the familiarity of this last one, as well as in the use itself of this speech: Cambridge Dictionary states very clearly that slang "is usually spoken rather than written". However, this definition is somehow incomplete if we think of the greatest phenomenon of our era, that is, the Internet. In this Research Article, a special jargon born on the Web and its possible influence on English will be the main focus.
Ludic Strategies in Modern English-Language Mediatext
2018
The article is devoted to the comprehensive study of the phenomenon of language play in modern English, performed in the substantiated in the article realization of the ludic intentions of the language personality are singled out. In the current research, the division of the main operating methods of creating language play was worked out for the purpose of target tasks. These meanings and their connotations, their motivation, as well as various transformations of meanings. Consequently, the two types of depending on their grounding grammatical ludisms, and the second is represemted by ludisms. The conclusion is made that from this perspective, language play appears as a process and result of the conscious linguistic playful level of Language play is a manifestation of linguocreative thinking, which realizes the possibilities laid down in the linguistic sign. The basic principle of language play is the ability to establish associative relationships, which is an indicator of the creat...
Learning to Play, Playing to Learn: FL Learners as Multicompetent Language Users
Applied Linguistics, 2007
In line with recent critiques of communicative language teaching , this paper considers how instances of spontaneous, creative language play can afford access to a range of linguistic practices that are often devalued or ignored in classrooms. To this end, it examines how university students in an advanced Spanish conversation course jointly manipulate linguistic forms, semantic units, and discursive elements for the amusement of themselves and others. The analysis suggests that these humorous moments provide opportunities for new and more varied forms of participation and language use, contributing to the expansion of learners' overall communicative repertoires. That is, it illustrates how co-constructed episodes of unscripted language play can destabilize institutionally-sanctioned assumptions about what counts as a meaningful or legitimate act of language use, momentarily reconfiguring the definition of linguistic expertise and broadening the possibilities for acceptable language use. Following , the authors advocate a view of learners as multicompetent language users (V. , whose language knowledge is grounded in the actual linguistic practices in which they engage.