What’s in a name? Why the way you say MeFi matters.
This is the presentation that I gave at the Association of Internet Researchers conference (AoIR12) in October, 2011. I was part of a panel of MeFites presenting our MetaFilter-related research. With their permission, I’ll update this post with links to their work/slides in the future. We’ll probably put something together for MetaTalk too, I hope. 11/18 Update: Here’s the MetaTalk post about the panel: Notes from the MetaFilter research panel
What’s in a name? Why the way you say MeFi matters. from Kim Witten on Vimeo.
(Please forgive the nasality and occasional consonant mash-up…I had a fierce head cold when I re-recorded the audio.)
I welcome any feedback on this. I can’t express how helpful it is to hear and how much all the comments inform the direction of my research. Thanks!
This is fascinating, Kim. One of the really interesting factors, to me, is the idea that many members, due to the online nature of the community, may never have to say the “M-set” out loud. This thought extends to other digitally-spawned neologisms like LOL, or OMG (which has clearly made the leap to spoken language). It’s probably a bit early in the game, but is there any kind of big picture pattern emerging in the way these new forms make the transition to spoken language? Is there a precedent for the wholesale development of words in non-spoken or written form like this?
Thanks! I’m glad you enjoyed it. As far as precedents for figuring out how to deal with this mass influx of native words arriving through text…the only two things I can come up with are the telegraph and Shakespeare…both limited in audience scope and genre. This is really new phenomenon…which is why I’m super interested in people’s rationales for why their pronunciation of MeFi (and other ambiguously pronounceable text-based forms – netologisms) “just feels right” to them. I’m finding that the reasons go way beyond dialect background and rules of grammar. It’s a much bigger project than I ever thought it could be. Yikes.
It’s not 100% on topic, but this makes me think of a Woody Allen story called ‘Conversations with Helmholtz.’ I think you’d get a chuckle out of it.