Today, in a not-at-all-shocking turn of events, you’re going to think
about how memes and language use online changes, and have changed.
With these concepts in mind, discuss the following:
Will is outdated (Click in A)
Yes. Busted. My memes are old. I am an ancient Millennial. I’ve come
to embrace this fact, after a long journey and a great deal of balding,
so we can use my plight as a teaching moment. The interesting question
is “How do you know?”
With your group, discuss:
- What feels old about Will’s language use?
- What things does Will say that clearly ‘Date’ him or make him seem
older?
- How is Will’s typing in Discord or class correspondence indexing
‘Millenial’?
- Are these specific to Will, or do you see similar patterns in other
people in his generation (Mid-1980s to Mid-2000s)?
- What feels old about Will’s memes? More
specifically, what has changed in the intervening 20 years about how
memes are made, used, or appear which makes these feel dated?
- Try to identify specific changes in the meme world which make some
(or all) of the memes I’ve shown you this quarter feel dated or
‘old’.
- I probably talk about memes like a boomer, too. Aside from teaching
this class generally, are there specific things I say when
talking about memes or the internet which also make me sound like an
antique?
- Put differently, has the language used to talk about the internet
and memes changed? If so, how so?
- Someday, you’ll be standing in front of a classroom talking about
memes and the internet, and the Metaversals you’re teaching will say “ok
zoomer, you’re showing us memes from ronatimes like a total gonk.
Somebody better hook you up with some preem memes before you flatline.”
But more terrifyingly, this process has already started. Have
you begun to see any changes to the meme and online world which are
surprising, offputting, or make you feel old?
- How has the world changed from underneath you?
Do
memes change like other kinds of language? (Click in B)
As a reminder, in this week’s discussion, we talked about language
changing in terms of…
- Sound change
- Spelling change
- Syntactic and grammatical change
- Lexical change
- Semantic shift
We talked about this change happening due to…
- Changes to the culture
- Moving towards easier, more economic language use
- Language Contact
- Social changes and migrations
- Analogy and reanalysis
- Changes during learning of language
Now, as a group, making reference to each type and cause of
change…
- Which of the above types and causes of language change apply
equally well to memes?
- Try and think of examples of meme change, whether from Task A, or
from your experiences in general, which are caused by or look like the
categories above.
Who leads
language (and meme) change? (Click in C)
“Who leads language change?” is a complicated question, but one of
great interest to linguists. Generally, we agree that younger speakers
are more innovative. Many have argued that young women tend to lead
language change in western society, and the influence of people of color
and the LGBTQIA+ community in leading many elements of language change
in the US is difficult to argue with.
So, with your group, discuss…
- Who leads meme and online language change? Put
differently, who are the innovators? Are there specific people? Groups?
Cultures?
Speed of change (Click in D)
Language can change very slowly (e.g. the Great Vowel
Shift, which took place over 300 years), or very quickly
(e.g. ‘Coronavirus’ became a household term over 2 weeks). With your
group, discuss…
- Do memes change more quickly, less quickly, or about the
same as other forms of language?
- There may not be a hard-and-fast answer here, but talk it over.
- Do you feel like language changes faster online than
offline?
- Is the internet just a more innovative place? Or do we just notice
is faster?
Planting Seeds (Click in E)
Finally, just to plant the seeds, next time, for our last session,
I’ll be asking you…
What have we learned about memes?
What have we learned about language?
What do you wish we’d covered?
What do you wish we’d done differently?
What is the future of memes?
Discuss these things with your group!