Language Log

One theory, anyhow:

This is an old SMBC comic, now available as a poster.

The most recent Tom The Dancing Bug:

In yesterday's Doonesbury, Earl and Duke discuss possible angles for a PR campaign in favor of Texas secession:

The most recent xkcd:

Mouseover title: "Collaborative editing can quickly become a textual rap battle fought with increasingly convoluted invocations of U+202a to U+202e."

Zits for 11/7/2012:

But it's not just land lines — "In Constant Digital Contact, We Feel Alone Together", Fresh Air 10/18/2012:

Terry Gross: You had said before a lot of parents complain that their children will accept the parents' text message and respond to that, but they won't pick up the phone, they won't answer the cell phone.

Sherry Turkle: Yes.

Terry Gross: I'm sure you've spoken to children and teenagers about that. What's the explanation?

A few weeks ago, the same teen language consultant who warned me that abbreviating words in texting (e.g. "u" = "you", "4" = "for") is something that only old people do anymore, pointed out that my habit of ending statement-style texts with a period communicates an affect that I probably don't intend.

I was skeptical, but this morning's PhD Comics confirms the generalization (although it's about email, which obviously skews the sample to an older demographic)…

What xkcd is getting at with the latest comic is about syntax and semantics. I'll show you the syntax below, but as far as meaning is concerned, the point is that cell phone numbers have almost no semantics. The area code part (the first three digits) used to function as a locational marker when phones were in fixed locations in houses, but since Americans not only tend to move every three years or so but they now take phone numbers with them, and cell phone universality only really began to pick up in America five to ten years ago, it really does tend to reflect a former abode. My cool son Calvin, for example, has a number which implies that he lives in Oakland, California; he doesn't, he does his video game programming in the Pacific North West.

And the rest of the number, the other seven digits? Space enough there for some real personal information, but it is not used. It functions merely as arbitrary material to distinguish one cell phone's location point in the information universe from all the others.

From the Inland Printer, January 1927:

[ht Daniel Mellis]

Today's SMBC:

Yesterday's Unstrange Phenomena:

Today's Dilbert:

Today's SMBC:

Yesterday's SMBC undertakes to explain