Hollerin'
"This Whole Thing Smacks Of Gender," i holler as i overturn my uncle's barbeque grill and turn the 4th of July into the 4th of Shit
June 16th 2012 22,126 Retweets 33,207 Likes
HELLO, interj. I have spent most of this week reading Gretchen McCulloch’s brilliant exploration of how language is used on the internet, Because Internet. This book has enough cool word origins in it to sustain six months of Word Suitcase, but I’m just going to talk about one here and encourage you all to read Because Internet for the rest of them.
This is from a chapter of McCulloch’s book about the nature of conversation, where she covers the term “phatic expression.” A phatic expression is a sort of conversational ritual: how are you, what’s up, how’s it going. It doesn’t actually matter what the words are. We’re just using them to acknowledge each other’s presence.
But sometimes these rituals change, and sometimes they change because of new technologies. McCulloch’s chapter focuses on email, but she pauses to examine the effect of the telephone, something I had never really thought about. Here’s what she says:
The greetings popular in the 1800s were based on knowing who you were addressing and when you were addressing them: “Good morning, children.” “Good afternoon, Doctor.” But when you pick up a ringing telephone, you have no idea who’s calling (during many decades before caller ID), and you can’t even be sure whether you share a time of day with them. The teleconnected world desperately needed a neutral option. The two most prominent solutions were “Hello,” championed by Thomas Edison, and “Ahoy,” championed by Alexander Graham Bell. At the time both had a similar meaning: they were used to attract attention rather than as a greeting (“hello” has the same origins as “holler”). Why would you need to attract attention? Some early phones were set up as a line that was just open the whole time, with no bell to ring when someone was calling, so “hello” was like calling out to someone in the room next door. Even though we did end up with call bells, early phone books provided model dialogues to new phone customers unsure about proper phone etiquette. One early manual suggested beginning with “a firm and cheery ‘hulloa’” or “What is wanted?” and closing with “That is all.” Perhaps unsurprisingly, “What is wanted?” and “That is all” didn’t catch on, but “hello” did and quickly spread beyond the phone as an all-purpose greeting.
This is so cool! The Online Etymology Dictionary tracks forms of “hello” as a shout for attention, with various spellings, back to the 14th century, and Wiktionary connects it to the French exclamation “holà !”, which is “whoa there,” with “là” being “there” in French.
So basically we’re all hollering at each other all the time now and we’ve become so numb to it that we’ve forgotten. McCulloch gives 1950s-era examples of (British) people suggesting that “hello” is less proper than “good morning/afternoon/evening,” but a good rule of thumb in linguistics is that by the time you can record old people complaining about how rude young people are for [saying “hello” instead of “good afternoon”/saying “no problem” instead of “you’re welcome”/insert linguistic quirk], it’s too late. Future generations are gonna holler.
Also, please pause here to imagine the alternate worldtrack in which Alexander Graham Bell’s idea caught on and we all say “Ahoy” every time we greet each other.
Because Internet has been such a great read partly because McCulloch is championing the new forms of speech—or informal writing—that have arisen on the internet. There are sections on minimalist typography (all lowercase, few periods, perhaps some Ironic Capitals), emoji, and memes. She delights in every variation. It’s such a good antidote to the constant barrage of articles about how nobody knows how to spell or write or speak properly anymore, you know, Because Internet. McCulloch’s thesis in the first chapter is that the internet has brought about an age of informal writing, something that was previously confined to postcards and sticky notes but is now all over our social media feeds. If your kids or your students are writing in textspeak, it’s not that they’re incapable of learning or applying the rules, it’s simply that they need to be taught that some writing is formal, and some is informal.
Anyway, McCulloch is funny and warm and informative throughout, whether you’re a huge linguistics nerd (hello) or a n00b. I could write a lot more words about Because Internet, because it’s fantastic, but it’s late and I am *checks notes* supposed to be writing a novel that people will eventually pay me for?
But anyway if you like this newsletter, you will probably like the book—especially if you are, as I am, a full time Internet.
As you might know, I am a full time Internet
February 24th 2012 2,753 Retweets 1,844 Likes
I did not read any Capital-R Romance this week but I did translate an elementary school progress report from English into French. That shit was three single-spaced pages long! My well-compensated university professors only ever wrote bien or il y a quelque chose qui vous a échappé (there is something you have missed) on my grad school papers. Meanwhile this poor overworked first-grade teacher is out here composing meticulous fifteen-hundred-word essays about each of the zillion little whirlwind children she has to keep track of for hours every day and whether they “employ counting strategies for numbers under twenty.” Double her fucking salary already.
This week in small-r romance, I read…
Pyre at the Eyreholme Trust (bi cis m/? nb, historical, fantasy, novella) by Lin Darrow. This is fantastic. I love the magic Prohibition-era setting (the city is called Temperance!), the genderfluid protagonist Eli Coello, the unusual magic system (Eli controls ink), and the heist plot. And one character’s grin is described as wild and lopsided, “like a carnival ride that had broken down halfway through,” which I have not stopped thinking about since I read it. This ebook is available for free or a small donation on Gumroad. I will look for other work by Lin Darrow for sure. Content warnings: violence, betrayal.
The Viking Queen’s Men and The Chieftain’s Daughter (bi m/bi m/het f, all cis, paranormal) by Holley Trent. These are about a matriarchal tribe of psychic Vikings in the American Southwest, and like all the best paranormal romances, they are exactly as bonkers as they sound. Content warnings: main character was abducted as a child, parental death in backstory, violence, sex, kink, pregnancy.
And I’m in the middle of Three-Part Harmony, also by Holley Trent, because that’s the mood I was in. It’s the sequel to Writing Her In (het m/bi f/lesbian f, all cis, contemporary), which was a treasure. It’s such a blessing to like someone’s work and then realize they have published many, many books that are now out there, waiting for you.
And a couple more things that are neither Romance nor romance, besides Because Internet, this week I also read and loved the article How to Have a Gratitude Practice That Isn’t Annoying by Edith Zimmerman. It’s about telling people you appreciate that you appreciate them, instead of keeping all your feelings inside because what if people think you’re corny and embarrassing or maybe they’ve secretly hated you this whole time and now you’ve just made yourself vulnerable by being sincere. Obviously, I am still working on this. Early reports suggest that most people like to be told nice things about themselves and are unlikely to respond with scorn.
And, unrelated, this (slightly dated) ArtNews piece In Paris, ‘Black Models’ Show Offers Essential Insights on Figures Excluded From Art History made me wish I could have seen the show.
At least we can all look at this digital image of Marie-Guillemine Benoist’s 1800 Portrait of Madeleine, a painting that depicts a Black woman as a symbol of French liberty (she’s surrounded by blue, white, and red). It was a bold statement at the time and it remains a hell of a painting.
Grateful that the internet makes it possible to see paintings I couldn’t have seen otherwise, in addition to its myriad effects on language.
I should probably mention that the ebook of my novel Thornfruit, which was a 2018 finalist for Best Speculative Fiction at the Bisexual Book Awards, is free right now. It’s about two young women who stumble upon a magical conspiracy and have to fight to save their city. They have a lot of bisexual feelings for each other, and in later books, a third character who’s a genderfluid man (I never want to misrepresent this book as f/f and then have people feel disappointed that the whole series is actually f/f/sorta m, so: be warned). Anyway, they travel all over their strange tidally locked planet trying to save the world, getting into increasingly dire trouble, and flirting at inopportune times.
That’s it for this week. Next Sunday I’ll be back with a list of my favorite reads this year—if making such an agonizing decision doesn’t cause me to throw my hands into the air and abandon the whole idea, that is. If you’re celebrating a holiday this coming week, I wish you a good one, and if not, I wish you a good regular week!