I have been thinking a lot about how language is used on the internet, and I was wondering if any of you have any thoughts or have read anything interesting about it. Some things that interest me:

--Threading. Interacting via text lets us hold more than one conversation at a time, sometimes even multiple conversations with the same person (in IM, or what have you--I'm talking about fast-paced, simulataneous conversations, not just forums like this one). That seems really cool to me...it's interesting that our brains are able to do it very easily, even though it's a skill that verbal communication just doesn't let us use. This is kind of a CogSci/Pragmatics issue in my mind.

--The appropriation of orthgraphic conventions for completely new uses. Punctuation etc. to convey tone and add meaning. There is a weird one in the fanfic community right now--if someone has written a story in which, say, Harry Potter is portrayed as jealous, then someone might write in response, "I loved your jealous!Harry." Isn't that weird? How did that come about? How do these things become conventional?

--The endlessly intersting topic of online communities--how we borrow conventions from other communities, like 1337 (haxx0r, pr0n, etc.). How this is similar to or different from borrowing in regular speech.

Anyway. Food for thought. :-p