conuly

I have a midterm for my sociolinguistics class that I'm working on right now, and one of the questions is asking me to note which linguistic variables might be usefully investigated where I am. I was about to go "well, shit, *I* don't know!" when I realized that the internet has linguistic variables too! Big, hulking, obvious ones once you know what you're looking for. Heck, I can tell you what subgroups a person belongs to just by studying their smileys! Well, not quite. But it's true, smileys go in different groups. Somebody who goes is not going to also go ^_^;;. Never gonna happen. Or hardly ever, anyway :)

So I start typing this up, and it's supposed to be half a page, and before I know it I have three times that much and I haven't even gotten to l337 yet!

I have got to get a life. This is embarassing. How am I going to explain this to my professor? "Oh, I meant to do it properly, but, see, I haven't been in the real world since summer of 2002!" Riiiiiight.

On the other hand, it sure is fascinating. I need to save this question and expand it, see if I can do a special project on it, because I need to get a grade for this somehow.