txt abrvs in speech?

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On Mon, Mar 29, 2010 at 11:05 PM, Neal Whitman wrote:
>
> I've heard of LOL being used in the plural, as in doing something "for
> lols." In particular there was an article about Internet trolls that
> mentioned this.

More commonly spelled "lulz."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/magazine/03trolls-t.html
http://www.doubletongued.org/index.php/grantbarrett/from_lol_to_lulz_to_lolxxx/


> Urban Dictionary gives some examples that could be spoken:
>
> Used when something is too funny to deserve only one lol.
> Person #1: My Grandmother was savaged by wolves today
> Person #2: Lols, sounds fun.
> http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=lols
>
> Neal
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Laurence Horn" <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Sent: Monday, March 29, 2010 9:01 PM
> Subject: txt abrvs in speech?
>
>
> > ---------------------- Information from the mail
> > header -----------------------
> > Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> > Subject:      txt abrvs in speech?
> > -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > A student in our freshman seminar in Varieties of English (Raffaella
> > Zanuttini and I are co-instructors) is interested in tracking down
> > any previous research on the incorporation of texting abbreviations
> > (or, less commonly, acronyms) in speech.  Classic constructed
> > examples appear in the Cingular/AT&T commercials viewable at
> >
> > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nIUcRJX9-o&feature=related
> > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySR3hpieiQc&feature=related
> >
> > The student has already collected material in response to a
> > questionnaire he posted via Facebook but doesn't want to ignore
> > previous empirical investigations when he writes up his results.
> > Thanks for any pointers anyone can provide.
> >
> > LH
> >
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> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
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> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



--
Ben Zimmer
"On Language" Columnist, New York Times Magazine
Executive Producer, VisualThesaurus.com and Vocabulary.com
bgzimmer at gmail.com | bzimmer at thinkmap.com | onlanguage at nytimes.com

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