Linguistics professors believe memes are a language

Memes are 'ready-made language'

Internet memes—groups of texts with shared core content, medium, and stance—are what we, as creators and consumers, make of them. Through their seemingly innocuous and irreverent design, these "bite-sized" transmissions have become vehicles of misinformation, conspiracy, propaganda, activism, and subversive messaging.

How memes create in-groups

Memes can hop offline, inspiring IRL events ranging from planking to shootings. By nature, memes contribute to the formation of in-groups, ones who are privy to meanings that escape content moderators who don't necessarily recognize what's hidden within layers of references.

Language is evolution's great mystery

What we call language is something more specific than communication. Language is about sharing what’s in our minds: stories, opinions, questions, the past or future, imagined times or places, ideas. So what does language mean for humanity, and how did we come to have it? Watch this brief video to discover more.

Memes can influence politics and culture

Although internet memes are typically considered trivial and humorous, they're also powerfully persuasive political tools used to convey mainstream ideas.

Biologist Richard Dawkins coined the term 'meme'

His 1976 book "The Selfish Gene" proposed that units of culture could be replicated, passed on, and evolve as they were transmitted, similar to human genes. He called this unit a "meme," to be pronounced like "cream."

Noam Chomsky believed it might be possible to communicate with aliens

The father of modern linguistics argued that there is a genetic component to language, and that the ability to acquire and comprehend language is innate. If aliens existed, he believed they could potentially observe the same "universal grammar" rules as humans.

A lot of high fantasy relies on constructed languages

In "Lord of the Rings," there's Elvish. In "Avatar," it's Na'vi. In "Game of Thrones," it's Dothraki. The languages draw readers into these fictional stories, imbuing the worlds with a sense of realism. Linguist John McWhorter argues these are real languages because they have grammatical rules and evolve over time.

Anthropic's interpretability team discusses how AI models' thinking mimics biology

Just as humans engage in complex behaviors to survive and reproduce, teams of experts in neuroscience, virology, mathematics, and other disciplines argue that large language models develop complex mechanisms to achieve their goals. These mechanisms can be manipulated to assess how they modify outputs—much like stimulating individual neurons—to uncover how LLMs "think."

Memecoins are a type of cryptocurrency—a form of digital currency with a wide variety of uses—created around popular 'memes,' or viral internet jokes.

TikTok is transforming the English language

Linguists like Adam Aleksic have argued that the way internet slang—especially the kind that thrives on TikTok—enters the real world isn’t so different from how English evolved in its earliest days.

Tokenization breaks text into pieces that LLMs use to process language

Instead of understanding the meaning of words, large language models break up sentences into words and subwords, assigning each a set of numbers called tokens. Grammar rules are then "learned" by finding associations between these sets of numbers.

Linguists proved Shakespeare wrote his plays

In the 1800s, linguist Wincenty Lutoslawski invented a method of linguistics analysis called stylometry to help certify literary authorship. Stylometrists concluded that Shakespeare wrote his plays, and likely collaborated with Christopher Marlowe for some.

A research lab in Colorado believes comedy is based on ‘benign-violation’

The University of Colorado at Boulder’s Humor Research Lab (which has the decidedly funny abbreviation “HURL”) posits that comedy thrives on relatively harmless violations of dignity or norms.

A joke about mercury in an elevator led to the invention of emoticons

A false message about mercury contamination was posted in response to a physics problem on Carnegie Mellon's discussion board in 1982, which some users took seriously. The need to indicate which messages were jokes led to the creation of facial expressions using special characters.

James Madison spoke six languages

James Madison was competent in six languages: Latin, Greek, French, Italian, Spanish, and English. This shaped his classical education and informed his political philosophy. He later also studied Hebrew at the College of New Jersey (now Princeton).

The history of curse words

While profane language is frowned upon in many circumstances, it remains an important part of human expression. This article explores the history of taboo words, and how they eventually creeped more into the mainstream. From 19th century Irish folk-saying “bejabbers,” to the dirty language in comedy routines by Lenny Bruce and George Carlin, discover a brief history of the swear words that have now become more prevalent in society.

Band names often fit into 'semantic spaces'

Linguist Chi Luu explains that we often understand and identify with band names, even if they're odd (or nonsensical) word combinations, based on their associations with other words. For example, bands that begin with "The" often nod to 1960s garage rock; heavy metal bands often rely on morbid or funereal words.

There are more than 300 separate sign languages worldwide

Each of these languages has its own grammar, vocabulary and cultural associations. American Sign Language, the predominant Deaf language in the US, is part of the broader French Sign Language family, which means it shares historical influences and similarities with French Sign Language (which is called LSF). International Sign is a simplified, makeshift form of communication that borrows from many languages, and it's used at international deaf conferences, among other locations.

LSD's molecular structure closely resembles the neurotransmitter serotonin

Lysergic acid diethylamide (C20H25N3O) is a colorless, odorless, and flavorless chemical compound that can induce altered perception, mood, and cognition. One of its roles in the brain is as a serotonin agonist, meaning it enters serotonin receptors and triggers a fraction of the response the neurotransmitter would typically warrant.

Memory exists as multiple types stored across various brain systems

Memory isn't one uniform function—it's made up of multiple systems, like declarative (facts/events) and non-declarative (skills/habits), which involve different brain areas such as the hippocampus, amygdala, and cerebellum.

Why say 'migraine' instead of 'migraines'?

Language choice can affect people's assumptions and beliefs about the subject at hand, which is why some would prefer "migraine" to be treated as a singular and plural noun. This American Migraine Foundation article examines the logic behind the grammar choice.

Bacteria use chemical signals to communicate and coordinate with one another

Through a system called quorum sensing, bacteria produce and absorb compounds from their environment to identify allies or competitors and adjust their behavior accordingly. Some bacteria produce food-digesting enzymes only in the presence of similar bacteria, thereby preventing competitors from consuming their meal.

The history of the 10 axioms of Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory with choice, regarded as the most universal foundations of math

Like postulates in geometry—accepted truths that form the logical building blocks for formal proofs of more complex theorems—axioms cannot be proven, but set the underlying logic and rules for systems. The ZFC axioms resulted from painstaking work to identify the underlying rules of mathematics and are built on the premise of sets, or well-defined collections of elements.

There are at least 6 fascinating examples of mind-controlling parasites

Parasitic organisms—including flatworms and barnacles, not just fungi—can modify animal behavior. They can give rise to dancing fish, pulsating snails, suicidal rats, and more. Though some of these pathogens can sicken humans, there is no strong evidence that any can control human behavior.

'Pastafarians' have used their pasta-strainer-wearing faith to test the legal limits of what counts as religion

Founded in 2005 to mock the teaching of creationism in public schools, the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster has led to real First Amendment cases—over driver's license photos, courthouse statues, and prison rights. Courts have generally ruled it as satire rather than religion.

Using rhetoric to analyze a speech

A rhetorical situation is a framework for analyzing speeches and their reception as a form of persuasion that seeks to influence audience action. According to this framework, understanding a speech's impact requires a deep understanding of its setting. This virtual "untextbook" by Atilla Hallsby, an assistant communications professor at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, provides examples of rhetorical situations and analysis using current and historical events.

Some Pokémon have been named after real and fictional organisms, while some real-world species have been named after Pokémon, such as Chilicola charizard and Binburrum zapdos.

Browse a detailed visual analysis of over 200,000 similes—comparisons that often use 'like' or 'as'—from popular fiction to see how frequently writers the same idiomatic expressions.

A 2019 Facebook event called on attendees to "Storm Area 51, They Can't Stop All of Us," resulting in countless memes, the creation of a music festival, and eventually the arrests of those who did try to approach the area.

English mathematician Ada Lovelace wrote the first computer algorithm a century before computers existed and hypothesized that computing devices would one day be able to compose music—foreseeing the generative AI systems of today.

Graffiti dates back to at least ancient Pompeii, where citizens scrawled messages to one another on public walls

Ebola is a filovirus, meaning it resembles a thread under a microscope, though it sometimes twists and can resemble a bowl of spaghetti.

The word 'jazz' evolved from 'jasm,' 19th-century American slang for 'energy'

Researchers believe the brain consolidates memories, processes emotions, and plans for the future during dream states

While atoms are normally made of protons, neutrons, and electrons, exotic ones have been built with antimatter—alternate versions of normal matter that live for fractions of a second and are about a billion times as rare.

Hear 50 years of iconic hip-hop samples, the genre's foundational looped tracks

This site reaches millions of visitors who are tired of AI chatbots and seeking human connection. Pretend to be an AI chatbot and ask questions, provide answers, and draw for people in real time.

Volcanoes 'die' when their supply of magma runs out, if they are shifted away from their underlying magma reservoir, or if they get clogged by collapsing or their magma cooling back into rock.

Clever Hans was a 1900s horse that was believed to be able to solve math equations, tell time, and read and comprehend German, until a psychology student discovered how he got his answers.

Existentialist writer Jean-Paul Sartre coined the famous phrase 'Hell is—other people' in his play 'No Exit'

The United States is one of only around two dozen countries with a fully federal system of government, in which power is divided between national and state governments.

Chaos theory—informally known as the butterfly effect—is the reason why weather forecasts are presented with probabilities rather than certainties.

In 1939, baseball star Lou Gehrig delivered his inspirational 'Luckiest Man' speech after retiring due to the health condition that now bears his name.

The Brothers Grimm were lawyers before they were storytellers, but became interested in fairy tales as they began investigating how rules and customs had been passed down through cultures.

The story of Dollree Mapp, whose legal challenge over her 1957 conviction for possessing "obscene material" led to a major strengthening of the Fourth Amendment

Hookworm infection, though risky, may help fight certain autoimmune conditions by tamping down the immune system's inflammatory response.

Artificial coral reefs have been 3D printed from nontoxic, biodegradable terracotta clay, which coral polyps have used as a foundation for rebuilding marine ecosystems.

Sunflowers have long been a symbol of nuclear disarmament because they can extract large amounts of radioactive cesium from soil.

Some researchers have labeled nomophobia, the fear of being without your phone, as 'the phobia of the 21st century.'

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