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juggerl | 4 months ago

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quotemstr|4 months ago

It's funny how the all-lowercase style started as a Bay Area in-group signifier (especially in AI circles), became an "acrolect (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-creole_continuum) after these circles gained clout and profit, and has now diffused through mimicry to such an extent that you see posts written in this style expressing viewpoints anathema to its originators.

aesh2Xa1|4 months ago

That's interesting, and I think I've seen that writing style before, although it might have been in infosec circles. What do you mean by the mimicry and viewpoints?

It does seem to be used to signal prestige more than in-group membership in general. I perceive it as mildly haughty.

Also, I don't think acrolect is the right term here, because the all-lowercase style is both not a creole and is not a closer approximation to standard English than some lower form of all-lowercase.

If you need a linguistics term call it a register.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Register_(sociolinguistics)

yieldcrv|4 months ago

what an astute observation — you've picked up on an important undercurrent of the lexicon