More for Commencement Weekend: a Bizarro on spoken emoticons…
A borrowing-back from the written language to the spoken language, along the lines of the spoken obscenicons in this cartoon.
Some Language Log postings on emoticons:
ML, 1/31/06: All your emoticons are belong to Cingular? (link)
ML, 2/2/06: Invention of the supine round bracket (link)
ML, 9/29/06: Secrets of the BBC sexes (link); use of emoticons by women
BZ, 9/21/07: The prehistory of emoticons (link)
ML, 1/26/09: Emoticons as skin care (link)
BZ, 3/20/09: Oh no, it’s ngmoco:) (link)
CP, 1/16/10: Sarcasm punctuation mark sure to succeed:-! (link)
June 12, 2010 at 12:59 pm |
hmmm… reminds me of a friend of mine who regularly says OMG. The letters, not the words.
June 12, 2010 at 4:20 pm |
[…] Arnold Zwicky's Blog A blog mostly about language « Spoken emoticons […]
September 23, 2011 at 6:29 am |
[…] Don’t forget, punctuation can be fun too. These bands certainly thought so, as does the State Library in New South Wales, which uses an interrobang as their logo. Wired gave us 11 secret meanings behind text punctuations, including emoticons, which supposedly mean “you want to bring the conversation to life,” but use too many and “you look immature.” ASCII-based emoticons turned 29 this week, while emotional typographical symbols have been with us long before computers or texting, as per both Jennifer 8. (yes, numeral eight) Lee at The New York Times and Ben Zimmer at Language Log. Hiroette taught us the difference between Japanese and English emoticons, and Arnold Zwicky reminded us emoticons are not to be spoken. […]