You don't usually get a compound word where the first part is a slang thing and the second part is a rather ordinary or formal thing - they don't usually mix - but 'gobsmacked' is a perfect exception to that rule.
Every usage, no matter how bizarre or nonstandard, fascinates me, as it tells me something about the way language is evolving.
The main effect of the Internet on language has been to increase the expressive richness of language, providing the language with a new set of communicative dimensions that haven't existed in the past.
It hasn't been a problem with Ben, I think we worked together very well, we don't have rows.
At any one time language is a kaleidoscope of styles, genres and dialects.
Vocabulary is a matter of word-building as well as word-using.
Sending a message on a mobile phone is not the most natural of ways to communicate. The keypad isn't linguistically sensible.
The death of a language. The word has the same kind of reluctant resonance as it has when we talk about the death of a person. And indeed, that's how it should be. For that's how it is. A language dies only when the last person who speaks it dies.
Academics don't normally manage to alter people's way of thinking through their strength of argument.
There's nothing unusual about a single language dying. But what's going on today is extraordinary when we compare the situation to what has happened in the past. We're seeing languages dying out on a massive scale.
It's very difficult to find even one or two criteria that you will find in every Internet situation, and the reason is that the technology constrains language in individual ways.
A feature of English that makes it different compared with all other languages is its global spread.
Spellings are made by people. Dictionaries eventually reflect popular choices. And the Internet is allowing more people to influence spelling than ever before.
Language has no independent existence apart from the people who use it. It is not an end in itself; it is a means to an end of understanding who you are and what society is like.
Online, you show how brilliant you are by manipulating the language of the Internet.
What turns teenagers on more than the Internet these days? If you can get a language out there, the youngsters are much more likely to think it's cool.
English does have a larger vocabulary than other languages because of its history as the primary language of science and its global reach.
As I get older and I get a few more years experience I become more like Dad, you know, King Lear.
Spellings are made by people. Dictionaries - eventually - reflect popular choices.
The one thing about internet language, people join it, and what quickly evolves is an 'internet dialect,' as it were.