Meaning of Twitterese | Babel Free

Definitions

The type of language used on Twitter.

uncountable

Examples

“To learn⟳ Twitterese, review⟳ the tweets of other users to see⟳ how they’re condensing messages. Just remember⟳ to turn⟳ off Twitterese when you send⟳ an email to someone or compose a letter.”

“Responding to a woman I’ve never met who works in book publishing, I type⟳ in the language of 140-character Twitterese: “I want⟳ Mr. T GPS voice! How abt James Earl Jones? He says turn⟳ left you *turn⟳* left. Or Norah Jones? Plaintive directions.””

“The role of celebrity is to anchor a group (known in Twitterese as ‘followers’) into present-tense meaningfulness or future-facing conditions, which may be why newly minted celebrities are ever younger in the most prominent international popular-culture systems (Hollywood; music; social media).”

“We might say⟳ that moving through all three languages from Shakespeare to Twitterese involves imaginatively going beyond the givens, creating a startling and novel declaration: “horses go all cannibal . . .””

“Based on the internet linguistics research⟳ (cf. Crystal 2006, 2008), we propose⟳ a unitary analysis of “paralinguistic devices” such as hashtags and punctuation devices found in Twitterese which ascribe “tonal colouring” to utterances, serving to express⟳ humour, sarcasm, irony, and self-deprecation.”

“On second look⟳, the mainstream media resisted reporting the Anti-Theory story (~atoe in Twitterese) because it seemed so catastrophic.”

CEFR level