Purrieties of Language

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Meowza hooman,

In an earlier newsletter (Si apre in una nuova finestra), I already told you about purrieties as “purr varieties of language”. Purrieties exist because people talk differently as their cats depending on the cat community they are in and on the social media platform they are on. Whether it’s Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, or X (Twitter), differences are out there waiting to be discovered and described.

So hop into your cardboard box 📦 and get your catnip 🌿 out. There’s a book 📖coming your way.

You might ask yourself the question if one can actually write a whole book about purr varieties and those differences. The answer is yes, one can and one already has, namely me. What started as a few shorter papers has culminated in a big book, namely in Purrieties of Language: How We Talk about Cats Online published by Cambridge University Press in 2023. And as you’ll see, it’s sciency without being too sciency. No real jargon in sight — I wanted you to understand and enjoy the read. Check out the first chapter “The Cativerse (Si apre in una nuova finestra)”.

You might also want to know what to expect from reading Purrieties of Language. It’s about cats and it’s about language. It’s actually an introduction to how you go on about studying language by using online cats as the unifying theme. You know, “Purrieties of Language” has got many cat pictures and chapter headings (Si apre in una nuova finestra) to prove this: lots of meows and purrs to satisfy any enthusiast of cat-inspired words and phrases.

Whatever field of language you are interested in, you’ll find something to check out. Well, what about etymology or dictionary making? It’s there. Or perhaps the study of word meanings is more up your street? Meowy word formations abound. How are words formed? Yep. It’s there. How do people talk to each other? It’’s in the book. Want to do your very own study? You’ll find a how-to and you’ll see it’s easy to follow.

Maybe you just want to go online and have your very own cat account for your cat. You’ll get inspired by the many different words and phrases that I have collected in my research from cat afficionados, who have contributed a lot with their purrfectly pawsome creations.

And if you are interested in linguistic terms, an especially catified clawssary (glossary) gives you the terms with explanations from A to Z. There are cats everywhere. And to round everything up, why don't you check out the index (Si apre in una nuova finestra), from 4chan to Zoom.

PS: Just click on the links in the text to get directly to the actual book contents, available on the publisher's site.

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