i chose her tweet on september 12th that says:

screaming BRING ME THE HALO TOP BRING ME Flips table THE flips another table" HALOOOOO TOPPPPPbirthday halo top appears* NOT THIS ONE

McCulloch states that when someone uses all caps, they are conveying strong emotion. repeating letters are also an "expressive tool" (233). the way she writes this tweet portrays the idea that she is feeling VERY strong emotions about halo top. she needs that halo top. but she does NOT want the birthday cake halo top, because duh. she's obviously meaning to be funny, but i think she's also a little serious and wants us to know that? she obviously feels really strongly about halo top, and that is nothing to joke about. she also creates this idea of an "in-joke" about how birthday cake halo top sucks. she knew a certain audience would understand her joke, so she said it. she also uses asterisks to add irony to the tweet.

however, we see her do a complete 180 in a series of other tweets, where she says "I want to fucking quit." and It's all a fucking boy's club." in these, especially in the first one, using the period at the end of the sentence conveys that she is very serious. she's not the silly, fun girl who wants halo top. something has obviously upset her to the point of using grammatically correct sentences--no capitalizing words, no cheeky comment, nothing. her tone is completely different because her tweets are devoid of effort, just like she is feeling as she types it. the simple sentence structure and complete lack of her fun, usual things shows that she is upset. overall, she seems like a smart, funny, intelligent individual who is incredibly relatable.

the following terms are from the arkansas department of health: family planning

"prevent unwanted pregnancies" = abortion "lifestyle behaviors" = having sex "prevent unintended pregnancies" = birth control "infants born too early" = premature babies for some insane reason, all of these things are still considered taboo. the website is using euphemism (and for the infants one, orthphemism). these terms like "unwanted pregnancy" are way "softer" than saying that a woman has become pregnant and wants an abortion. they don't use abortion once on the entire website. the goal is to seem neutral and clinical, so there is no room for emotions. birth control is somehow also still considered taboo by many, so it is much easier and clinical to say "contraceptives." i think the website does an amazing job of making it very clear what family planning can do without giving the haters any room to be dumb.

the other website, "the order of the good death," uses a lot of orthphemisms. words like "bacteria," "decomposing bodies," and "decomposition" describe exactly what is literally happening. it uses clinical words to explain what a dead body goes through during decomposition, like "autolysis" and "rigor mortis." because of my own person idealogy concerning death, i wanted to read this website and deem it dysphemistic, but i think it really is just very literal, clinical diction. the website does a really good job of ecplaining important questions that i'm sure a lot of people have who are afraid to ask. this also seems like something i would research at 3 am after skipping out on my zoloft for a few days. in that situation, i would need clear, concise answers to my questions. death is often really taboo and emotional, and the interworkings of death are something that we as a society NEVER talk about. i think this website just wanted to answer our questions.

the website i used had over forty examples of grammatical errors. here are the ones i chose.

1. "first come, first serve." this sentence sounds right when i say it, but the website says that the word is actually supposed to be "served" and not "serve." the lack of the d making it past tense makes the sentence "lose its meaning." this is obviously just verbs losing their endings, which is a sign of language change.

2. using "me" to start a sentence. grammatically, the website says, we are supposed to list ourselves second and the other noun first. the author of this website obviously has very strict views on subject pronouns and object pronouns (blech). i think this is language becoming less formal. i think (in my world at least) language is much less written and much more frequently spoken. starting a sentence with me just makes sense to me verbally.

3. overuse of apostrophes. the website states that the only times we are to use apostrophes are when there are missing letters or we are showing possession. in this case, "the johnson's" would be wrong, because it is neither showing possession nor is it making up for missing letters. however, again, i believe it just makes sense to a lot of us to add an apostrophe.

my website didnt talk about this, but it felt wrong to not include the idea of subject-verb agreement a great many people i know feel much more comfortable being referred to as "they," but they should not lose their personage just because they do not want to use he/she pronouns. gendered pronouns are truly a thing of the past and "they" is just as singular as he or she.

i think mcculloch gets it perfectly when she says that the "old" rules are about using language to "demonstrate intellectual superiority," while the "new" rules are about using language to "create a connection" between a group of people. she also states that the words we use are often an expression of the society we are in. i think it is also important to note that as technology advances, "so [does] dialectology" (40). this is glaringly obvious in the rendition of lord baron's "fare thee well." the change of the title from "fare thee well" to "i just think it's funny how" is not only hilarious but also incredibly witty in today's context. it comes across (dare i say) perfectly. overlooking the obvious (that the new and certainly improved version is much easier to read), Instead of saying "fare thee well! and if for ever" we just start off with a good "fuck you." PERFECT translation, because that's exactly what he meant. as a general rule, most of what we write is informal. we are used to "quick" and "controversial" writing (11). The entire poem is an example of the evolution of writing and how we no longer bother to use correct, edited words. in the first stanza, when the author writes "i just think it's funny???" means that nothing about this is funny--like, at all--and that the conversation about what is definitely not funny is just about to start. i also really enjoyed that mucculloch acknowledged that formal writing expends a lot of effort into making the words flow. i find this interesting because, to most people, "fare thee well" flows very well. it follows an ABAB pattern and uses alllllllll the right words. ironically enough, the adaptation of the poem flows even better in my mind. the 20+ "like" additions and words like "augh" and capitalized words (personal favorites being "SO MANY," "SOMEbody," "N O N E," and (MOURNING") make the poem that, at its genesis, made no sense to me, make PERFECT sense. long live the keysmash.

in the website about teenage slang, we learned about words like "dank" and "OC." i think it's imortant to note before even beginning this conversation (as mucculloch does) that we owe a lot of our "slang" to african american dialect. almost every word on that list derives from words individuals in the african american culture use. i also thought it was HILARIOUS that the site gave a list of words that were a-okay and words to "keep an eye on," as if these words fit into any specific category. overall, i believe mcculloch does an amazing job trying to explain and give context for the linguistic black hole that we currently live in.