Gifs as Language

This lightning talk was given at RICON East 2013. It was derived from a short essay of mine from October 2012: http://abe.is/meditation-on-the-gif/

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RJ24YSiKTI&t=70m30s

Transcript

1. GIFS AS LANGUAGE
   ABE STANWAY
   

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2. First things first.
   

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3. gif /ˈdʒɪf/
   Noun
   Not fucking pronounced ‘gif’.
   See also: giraffe, gin, giant, gerbil, geology
   

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4. Let’s talk Chaucer.
   

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5. 1343 - 1400
   

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6. He wrote the Canterbury Tales.
   

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8. Canonical example of Middle English literature.
   

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9. Also completely impenetrable.
   

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10. “I wol nat letten eek noon of this route,
    Lat every felawe telle his tale aboute
    And lat se now who shal the soper wynne
    And ther I lefte, I wol ayeyn bigynne.”
    

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12. Middle English was spoken, not written.
    

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13. Let’s talk Shakespeare.
    

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14. Let’s talk Shakespeare.
    

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15. Lived from 1564 to 1616.
    

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16. Not impenetrable!
    

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17. “To be, or not to be, that is the question:
    Whether 'tis Nobler in the mind to suffer
    The Slings and Arrows of outrageous Fortune,
    Or to take Arms against a Sea of troubles...”
    

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19. 1600
    1400 ?
    --------- ---------
    

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21. Printing press catapulted into widespread use around 1500.
    

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22. English started
    CHANGING
    

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23. Blackletter was let go
    

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24. Standard spellings brought in.
    

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25. The semicolon was invented.
    (1494)
    

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26. More words.
    

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27. STREAMLINED
    COMMUNICATION
    

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29. Fast forward five hundred years.
    

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30. COMMUNICATION,
    ART
    The book as
    not as
    It’s 1985...
    

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31. ...and written media
    hasn’t really changed.
    

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32. English hasn’t really changed either.
    

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33. Thirty years later...
    

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35. An explosion of new written media!
    

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36. emails, forums, text messages, tweets, status
    updates, yahoo answers, gchats, DMs, youtube
    comments, hovertext-a-la-xkcd, reddit threads, blog
    posts, listservs, inline code comments, jira tickets,
    white house petitions, ios notifications, stupid
    startup about pages, facebook groups, pastebins,
    

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37. English is
    CHANGING
    

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38. English is
    CHANGING
    

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39. It’s streamlining itself again.
    

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40. New words.
    (the smallest semantically meaningful grammatical unit. retains meaning in isolation.)
    

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41. sms-speak, memes,
    smiley faces,
    emoji, gifs
    a word.
    

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42. New morphemes.
    (the smallest grammatical unit, period. may or may not be used in isolation.)
    

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43. un · break · able
    signifies "not" root signifies “can be done”
    

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44. # · yolo
    signifies...something. not really sure how to articulate
    it. pretty nuanced. some kind of "meta-irony" with a
    dose of contextual satyr chorus, if i had to guess.
    root. signifies douchebaggery.
    

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45. Likes and favorites are morphemes too.
    

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46. New, independent grammars.
    

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47. New, independent grammars.
    don’t like your own
    facebook post
    captain picard must say, “why the
    fuck,” not “what the fuck.”
    lol is never spelled
    uppercase
    hashtags are only appropriate in
    levity, unless they are meant to
    signify inclusion in a broader trend.
    the “me gusta” rageface
    signifies a specific type of
    shameless satisfaction.
    conspiracy keanu
    must ask, “what if” full sentences are
    appropriate in text
    messages
    a gif response generally
    contains a degree of snark
    

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48. A new, efficient literacy.
    

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49. Anyway, this is my point:
    

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50. Written language is
    like a goldfish.
    

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51. It grows (and shrinks) to
    fill its container.
    

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52. With so many different
    containers for the written word...
    

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53. ...and with the velocity that
    humans are communicating
    between each other...
    

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54. ...the language is metastasizing...
    

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55. ...developing new, efficient linguistic
    tools that allow it to fit into smaller
    and smaller spaces...
    

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56. ...in order to enhance the
    frictionless transfer of information.
    

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57. It will continue to do so as long as we
    shove it into ever-shifting media.
    

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58. Thanks!
    

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59. Sources:
    Marotti, Anthony. Manuscript, Print and the English Renaissance Lyric, p. 284 bit.ly/128FI6s
    Pitcher, Lindsay, Cerasano. Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England, p. 100 bit.ly/13hXWBW
    Murphy, Andrew. Shakespeare in Print: A History and Chronology of Shakespeare Publishing, p. 30 bit.ly/17Zz86o
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semicolon
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morpheme
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printing_press
    

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