I'm not a native speaker. If i add a "of", ("because of short attention spans!") that sounds if it was correct in the past aswell, so I'm confused. For me that seems just leaving out the "of", or is there more?
You're exactly right. This is just leaving out the "of". The article interprets this to mean that the word "because" has become a new preposition used in place of the proposition "of". Another interpretation is that "because" retains its grammatical usage but a new sentence structure has become acceptable. I personally interpret it the second way. Each domain has its own grammatical structure.
That's one aspect to it. The article summarizes it well at the end:
> "It means something like 'I'm so busy being totally absorbed by X that I don’t need to explain further, and you should know about this because it's a completely valid incredibly important thing to be doing'"
no, there is more. Take "because yay!". Doesn't necessarily make sense if you put an "of" in there. Yet there is something in common between "because yay!" and "because math" that is not there between "because yay!" and "because of math".
Even "because of short attention spans" is leaving out information... which (or whose) attention spans are we talking about. There is a qualifier or article missing somewhere. A "his", "their", "some" or something.
As I said in another comment, to me it implies the subject is dumb or hasty or something. As in a little bit of caveman speak maybe ("He hit own head because stupid").
i read the prepositional because with a pause, like, because... evolution. as if the ellipsis are placeholders for an actual thought that falls under the umbrella of evolution. so the plural on spans just makes it seem like a typo. maybe, "because ADD" would work better.
> It can be followed either by a finite clause (I'm reading this because [I saw it on the web]) or by a prepositional phrase (I'm reading this because [of the web]).
Seems to me that you are correct, this 'new usage' is merely the latter usage without 'of'.
It means sleep was the cause of lunch being missed. No more details are provided or implied. Off the record, one could guess that the speaker didn't want to remark on oversleeping due to the negative connotations, and is instead leaving the answer vague in the hopes of don't-ask-don't-tell. Depending on the audience, this may also be exactly enough information to be unambiguous with the fewest number of words; a friend may have had prior experiences that set the default interpretation and context of mid-day sleep.
Lossy compression always uses heuristics to guide compression and decompression. In this case, the heuristic is 'my brain works similarly; why would I have written this?'
I think the implication of dumb is there, but it's supposed to be transferred to the subject of the sentence. As in, the person is mocking himself for being lazy.
It means the nature of sleep necessitates the skipping of lunch. This isn't actually true however, as we are all well aware. Sleep and lunch are not at odds with one another.
It's a poor use of the new word, as you've demonstrated. It doesn't mean the new word is therefore universally unclear.
But of course we're going to get into a pedantic and possibly violent argument over such a small and insignificant part of both our lives, because Internet.
Does anyone think that the speaker's accent has something to do with it? Saying these sentences in my Australian accent just sounds plain wrong and slow. Maybe it's faster in the American accent.
The confusion is part of the joke, really; people that are in the same boat, friends of the person that says it, or regulars in the same community (say, Reddit) will go empathic and go "I like totally know what you mean, like". Retweet reblog like favorite pinned shared etc.
Those that aren't in on the joke go "because huh?", which is funny. Because lol internet.
What's fascinating to me is that, unlike so many other language "changes", this isn't caused by laziness or carelessness. This seems to be a rare case where removing words adds information, rather than removing it: "The talks failed because of politics" means roughly what it says, while "The talks failed because politics" means roughly "The talks failed because of politics, which is the kind of thing that always happens when politics are involved".
Any linguists care to comment whether there's a term for this kind of meaning compression? "Idiom" doesn't quite seem to cover it.
Some of this might be caused by increased use of smartphones for posting on the Facebook, tweeting, and texting. I'm not sure laziness is the right word, but conservation of characters is certainly a goal.
As far as laziness, I'll disagree with you. Hardly ever is a "because X" clause well thought out or witty. I think it's safe to assume there is some serious mental laziness happening when you see a "prepositional because" being used.
Interesting that "mental laziness" is the association you have with this construction. It certainly signals a sort of casual tone, but it's easy to fall into the trap of "different than the way I speak" -> "wrong". Certainly not helped by the fact that young people are the ones who generate and adopt language changes at a vastly higher rate.
"Laziness" in language change generally follows the principle of least effort - both in syntax changes as well as phonetic and phonological changes. We're almost certainly beginning to see more sweeping effects of shortened communication media on English, beyond the near-ubiquitous acronyms now in use.
I have nothing against brevity. And I don't think it's lazy because I don't speak that way.
To clarify my thoughts, I think it's one thing to use a prepositional because when referring to oneself. However, it's another thing to criticize someone else with a five syllable simplification. It's impossible to do justice to someone else's thoughts and feelings that way. That lack of understanding and empathy is what I find to be lazy.
Now, a full-length column in the New York Times or a bit on Fox News certainly is not necessarily a fair and coherent argument. But, leaving room for exceptions, pithy "because X" clauses are not fair to third-party subjects.
I think we are in agreement then. I certainly wouldn't use a construction like this in a serious critique. But then there are thousands of other things I wouldn't write or say in a serious context either.
> Some of this might be caused by increased use of smartphones
I actually find it more effort to type full English sentences with a keyboard and mouse; my Android smartphone has voice dictation and swipe gesture typing, and I find that iOS' autocorrect appears to trigger most when you type something that isn't a "standard" sentence.
amazingly, something similar can be observed in Russian language as well. In casual speech, one can explain the reason for something using потому что (because) followed by a noun (e.g. "потому что политика! - "because politics!"), followed by end of sentence. Which I'm not entirely sure is grammatically correct, however it has an effect similar to what you mentioned.
I don't think that's grammatically correct, yeah. The correct version would most likely be "из-за политики", though that's just a bit of a weird thing to say just like that.
I think "idiom" is an apt description. It's a compact phrase that conveys at least two layers of meaning. Most importantly, one of those meanings cannot simply be parsed from the direct syntax & vocabulary that make up the phrase, but relies on the cultural familiarity with the phrase and its common usage.
I do wonder, though, how long this secondary meaning will last. Right now the dismissive connotation comes about because the phrase stands out, because it breaks the rules in order to be overly brief. If the phrase gets used more, and especially as a new generation never grows up not hearing it, it will not stand out anymore as an unconventional. It could just become grammatical. Without that element, it could easily lose its dismissive connotation.
This is kind of exciting to watch, in a nerdy sort of way. Language evolution doesn't really happen much in literate societies like ours, so it's neat that we have an example unfolding before our eyes.
I'm not sure that understanding this is that predicated on cultural familiarity. I'd argue the majority of its meaning comes from the fact that it "breaks the rules in order to be overly brief." The syntax being intentionally wrong, bad, and clumsy coincides with the fact that it's often used to describe absurd things and situations. Clumsy syntax = slightly belligerent rhetoric? I could be wrong, my main idea of a idiom is a proverb or figurative parallel illustrating a concept.
I don't think it's belligerent or simply compressed. AFAICT, it warns the listener that a lot is being left out. It is, in fact, the independent phrase version, using a single noun as the independent phrase. This tells the listener to deduce the rest of the phrase. The verb and object are generally omitted for reasons other than brevity.
"I added bacon to my ice cream because bacon" [is the most awesome thing ever] (and if you don't already know that or don't agree, I don't want to try defending it).
"The project failed because politics" [generally causes everything to fail] (and if I start talking about that I'll start ranting and no one wants that).
"Root beer in a square glass is beer because math" [uses "square" and "root" as opposites] (but if I said that explicitly it would harm the humor of the joke).
Contrast "I added bacon to my ice cream because of bacon", which would suggest that everything you need to know is there and it is the nature of bacon to be added to ice cream.
There's also ambiguity. I didn't think math was funny just because of the pun, but also because of the way people use math to justify homeopathy. It's mathematical, so it must be true. From a similar cultural perspective, I can see something totally different but also valid.
Most popular memes have cross-cultural appeal, and we each add to them.
Off-topic, but just wanted to add that the four comments above exemplify why I still find hope in HN discussions. Each one adds some new insight, refining what was said previously and does it in a constructive way.
> Language evolution doesn't really happen much in literate societies like ours, so it's neat that we have an example unfolding before our eyes.
I believe that we write more than we ever did. But what we write is not literature but a written form of casual conversation (blog comments, forum posts, IM, IRC, email...). It seems to me that it is likely, on the contrary, to favour a faster evolution of the language; especially for international English.
It depends on the parts of language you're referring to. Pre-1600 in the days before widespread mechanized transport, mass media and printing Britain ended up with a lot of regional dialects and ways of spelling the same words [1] as mutations had to conquer a much smaller population to get a secure foothold.
We see minor evolutions in language these days - an extra word or changed usage to keep the dictionary-writers employed - but is there anything comparable to the differences you'd see across Britain in the 1600s?
You probably won't see this reply, but what I meant was...
Change in our language is slowed because we have high exposure to how the language was used decades, or generations, in the past. This exposure 'anchors' our language to a much greater extent than societies that do not have a high rate of written or audio records.
We acquire language in the form that it is used around us. In the absence of records, this means that the last generation's "slang" becomes our "normal speech," and whatever was spoken sixty years back is something we've never heard. This makes for a high rate of linguistic turnover, and four generations of separation will usually result in mutual incomprehensibility.
In modern times, I'm regularly being influenced by English that's 50 years old via Star Trek, Star Wars, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and Silver Surfer comic books. Because I still have exposure to generations-old versions of English, my speech will continue to resemble them.
Somewhat related to the concept of "deixis" or "indexicality" - phrases whose meaning can vary depending on contextual information. "Because politics" could mean one thing in a dysfunctional country, and entirely another in an extremely well-run one.
I'd call it a grammatical construction. Your brain already knows how to "typecast" a noun to a reason ("Why didn't the bill pass?" "I don't know. Politics."), it's just not usually grammatically "licensed" in this case. If you've been infected by the "because [noun]" meme, however, you have a construction in your vocabulary (we could say in your idiolect) that can be invoked to explain any instances of "because [noun]" you come across, with all the associated connotations you learned along with it.
It's similar to "Suddenly, bananas!" or "I accidentally the whole thing." I wish I could remember all the strange grammar I heard at MIT. Communities like the hacker community and 4chan are fertile ground for new grammatical constructions because people pick up and repeat the ones they hear while trying to preserve their meaning and connotations.
I still occasionally burst out laughing when I hear a funny turn of phrase at Meteor (which has a lot of MIT people).
I just came across a variant in the wild -- a Quora comment -- which puts the noun as the thing to be explained rather than the explanation:
That was the point if the question, though. "If God does not exist, then how come physics?" And the answer is, "You can just leave off the 'God' part and just ask 'how come physics?'"
I wonder why "how come [noun]" is recognizable as sort of the same thing.
The closest thing I can think of to the removed word is not "of" but the Spanish "hay" (pronounced like "I"), which has no clear English analogue, but it means roughly "there is" or "the present state of affairs includes". The talks failed because hay politics (there is politics), the sandwich is delicious because hay bacon (it has bacon), you should go to the planetarium because hay space (there is [the profundity of our relationship to the cosmos]), where in the last case we also consider the context of the word "space" (nobody would here say "because cosmos!").
>>"The talks failed because of politics" means roughly what it says, while "The talks failed because politics" means roughly "The talks failed because of politics, which is the kind of thing that always happens when politics are involved"
Well, no. It actually alludes to the fact that politics was the hand-wavy excuse used to describe why the talks failed.
It goes back to "X happened because aliens." As in, we can't explain why it happened, therefore we'll just say it was aliens that did it.
Actually you're both right. (and you're therefore both wrong, because contradictions).
The "because ___" construct has the nice effect of making the listener associate multiple connotations of the ___ word. So in the case of politics, it means "handwavy politics without explanation" and "because this is always the excuse" and "politics fucks everything up" and all the other things you associate with the term. Similary because aliens invokes what you said, since we know that aliens are just a lazy excuse commonly used, and also they are basically magical beings (in common vernacular) so anything can be attributed to them (like fairies).
Interesting, we seem to be reading it differently. I don't think there's any real basis to say one reading is more valid than the other.
The way I read the construct, which the article touches on, is as shorthand to refer to universal properties of a subject that both the writer and the reader understand. "Because politics" = "because politics usually results in stupid outcomes", "because bacon" = "because bacon is delicious and should be in everything", "because racecar" = "because racecars throw out the rules of what you would expect in a regular car", etc. Used this way it becomes self-referrential as an obvious explanation - "of course talks failed, politics was involved". "Of course I put bacon, bacon is delicious". "Of course there's no interior, it's a race car".
Of course, different people may read different implied properties based on their own views, that may not be the same as what the writer had in mind...
I think it acknowledges a failure in explanation -- you start with, "The talks failed because...", but there is no easy reason why the talks failed. So you just put a word in there. "Politics." It's an aborted attempt at explanation. It implies extensive context and a truly complex or even incomprehensible explanation.
The grammatical failure is the kind that would happen in speech, when the speaker suddenly realizes he's bit off more than he can chew, and truncates his explanation with a pause, a word, a shrug, and a rueful smile. "because, you know... politics."
> This seems to be a rare case where removing words adds information
Words aren't being removed, but the word because is being added to a very old speech pattern.
"The talks failed because politics" is an expansion of "The talks failed: politics", with a pause between failed and politics, and politics spoken like a new one-word sentence, usually at a slightly different pitch level than The talks failed. It's meaning and intonation pattern is quite different to "The talks failed because of politics".
When saying "The talks failed because politics" out loud, we still put a pause before politics, and use the same intonation pattern as "The talks failed: politics". The word because replaces the terser colon in the written form.
It could also be interpreted as a short form of: "The talks failed because politics happened". Now we're just dropping the obvious verb at the end, because obvious is obvious.
Maybe it's just me, but the "prepositional because" is usually deprecative of the subject. The article details the implications of the prepositional because:
"It conveys focus... It conveys brevity... But it also conveys a certain universality."
People use it when they're busy, drunk, or absent-minded to be self-deprecative. As in:
"Maxed out my credit card because too much beer!"
But people also use it to disparage someone else:
"Uptown a*&%$# voted against prop B because racism."
The article briefly hints at this when it says, "So we get comments like these, with people using 'because' not just to explain, but also to criticize, and sensationalize, and ironize...".
In fact, I'm having a hard time coming up with an example of a "because X" clause that has complimentary implications.
However, it's possible that the implications of this preposition has softened recently and I'm out of the loop. Or maybe I'm just overthinking it.
EDIT: Maybe it's just me but "because bacon" and "because awesome" do not imply that the subject of the sentence is a person with qualities worth aspiring to. Not that bacon isn't awesome.
This is close to being complimentary, but it comes across as more of a compliment to Joss Whedon than the subject. At best, it's a neutral expression of fandom. At worst, it's an admission of fanboy (or fangirl) proclivities. Some sort of context is needed to clarify which one.
To me, something about the brevity implies idiocy, hastiness, or half-bakedness. Despite this, some of the examples here are celebratory in tone (because bacon, because beer).
Prepositional because is generally used in the same sense as "shut up, he explained." That is, it's not so much intended as an explanation as a conversation ender.
I don't think this is a likely construction because it's too precise. It's too close in meaning to "maxed out my credit card because of too much beer." A more likely one would be "maxed out my credit card because beer" or even "maxed out my credit card because priorities," in which the context ironically implicates overspending on beer."
it's usually used in non-sequitur situations where a rational explanation for an individual or entity in power is lacking. For example. "Q: why does the TSA allow me to 20 miniature scope bottles but not one big scope bottle to get past security? A: Because, f-you, that's why." It seems like in most of these "because, X" constructs, there is an appeal to an agent that has a higher authority or extremely potent, or surprising effect: Eg, "because, MATH" or, "because, yay!", or "because, tiny subatomic particles!" but you probably wouldn't use it for the mundane. "because, that's what I do every day" doesn't feel like the same cotstruct even though it has roughly the same form, unless you put a strong emphasis on it, e.g. "because, THAT'S WHAT I DO EVERY DAY". Which elevates the mundane to something omnipresent. Anyways, I'm not sure what constitutes "explicitly ironic", but in the situations where "because, fuck you" are called for seem pretty explicitly ironic to me.
> in the situations where "because, fuck you" are called for seem pretty explicitly ironic to me.
I'm not sure, about that.
I can hardly imagine a situation where "because SCIENCE" and "because MATH" are ironic at all, except (and not implying you) to internet hipsters that never understood science or math.
Why did it rain on my wedding day? Because IRONY!
Why a black fly in my chardonnay? Because IRONY!
Why 10,000 straws when I needed a spork? Because IRONY!
There's other ways of expanding the "because-noun" construction. I've occasionally posted a link to Facebook with a comment like "This is incredibly awesome and you should read this, because SPACE." In this case, the construct expands to something like "...because it has to do with space, which I consider to be inherently awesome."
"Because-noun," it would appear, can be construed multiple ways, and a lot of the meaning is contextual.
Or it could expand to something like "because it has to do with space, which I find boring, but I remember that you're a space nut, therefore you might find it interesting". Or even "because it will help with your school project which is about space".
On one hand, this doesn't bother me much because it's mostly just a mutation of "because of" which I already avoid using. You can usually rework "because of <noun>" into "because <phrase>" and produce a sentence that, in my experience, better expresses what the speaker actually intends.
On the other hand, "because <noun>" is extremely inexact:
> English Has a New Preposition, Because Internet
What about the Internet caused English to gain a new preposition? Unless you already understand, "because <noun>" adds little, if any, explanation. I can see its use as a handy short-hand when your audience does already understand though.
Yes. It's an invocation, rather than an explanation. That's one of the interesting things about it; it's effectively a reversal of the original meaning of the word "because".
It has a different meaning than because of though. Two examples:
Bacon milkshake because bacon.
Bacon milkshake because of bacon.
The second one doesn't carry the flippant implication of the unquestionable awesomeness of bacon. You don't get to argue the point with the first one. The second one might be up to debate. There's far more to communication that just facts. There's emotional content that gets captured as well.
Which is actually a merger of two words (van wege), which roughly translates to 'because of'. Lots of words are pronounced as if they are one (or always together), and in this case they were eventually written as one.
It's not really a new preposition, per se. It's a type of joke. Every occurrence cited here is using it in a jokey fashion. It seems to me you may as well say potatoes are a common topic of conversation on the Internet because of Latvian jokes.
Every occurrence cited here is using it in a jokey fashion.
That's how it feels to me, too. It works because people are in on the deliberate "misuse" of language. Sort of like when people say (or said) the single-word sentence "Sadness."
Should it become common parlance then that cool "in-joke" feel goes away, and while it would still have some meaning it wouldn't be the same meaning it has right now.
It might simply become another way to say "because of."
Or, articles like this one might lead people to make more of it than it was every intended, thereby becoming correct by virtue of asserting a claim that people then follow as if it already true.
This is how the word "OK" started out; it was a joke abbreviation of "all correct": Oll Korrect. You never know when a joke is going to take over the world...
Huh. This new form of "because" in an actual, intended-to-be-grammatically-correct sentence sounds weird to me and I don't think I personally use it at all. Isn't it just "because of" without the "of" when people are in a rush, typing on a tiny keyboard or just plain lazy? Or when the intent is to construct a witty, purposefully broken sentence?
You know they're hurting when The Atlantic is reporting on trends in Wonkette, Daily Kos, and Jezebel. At least Slate, in their ridiculous "where's the journalism now?" pieces, aims up at the NY Times.
The intent is often to construct a purposefully broken sentence, mirroring the broken logic that comes next. The word after because would only satisfy the question "why?" if you're a moron.
I put bacon in my salad. [why?] Because bacon.
That explains absolutely nothing, the implication being that if you're asking why, you're a moron and nothing more can be explained to you because bacon is so overwhelmingly and obviously self-justifying. Other interpretations abound as well.
My favorite word that's picked up a new meaning (for me, anyway) is trespass, as in "trespassers will be trespassed"[1].
Apparently, using the word trespass as a intransitive verb is correct (albeit archaic) and was used as such in the New Testament, as in forgive those who trespass against us.
The grammatical class of prepositions changes considerably more slowly than other classes.
We need new nouns and new verbs all the time, because what occupies and what occurs in our environment changes so fast. Interestingly, despite that rapid change, the set of prepositions, the set of conceptual relationships we've chosen to concisely express, stays pretty steady.
It's fascinating to read about a new preposition entering into common usage, because it makes me wonder what new pressures we're collectively facing in describing conceptual relationships. Certainly it could just be Twitter's character limits causing people to drop the "of" in "because of", but maybe other forces caused this construction to have utility now.
My bet would be on an increased expectation that our conversational partners share our context, and our models for understanding why things happen the way they do, because internet.
I first heard this construct in a Deep Thought by Jack Handey, from the mid-nineties I believe:
"After I die, wherever my spirit goes, I'm going to try to get back and visit my skeleton at least once a year, because, 'Hey, old buddy, how's it going?'."
I still laugh about it, and the main reason it was funny to me was the odd (but humorously apropos) use of the word "because."
You still run a risk of sounding like an idiot if you use this construction. Personally, I would wait a few more years before adopting it in all situations.
I am not so sure internet idioms are of the same class as professionally written English structure. Otherwise UrbanDictionary and RapGenius should serve as the sources for today's written English.
These are two different genres. It's interesting to ask when something becomes so widely accepted that it is considered fine to use in "proper" english writing. If "because X" is, then so is LOL.
LOL was added to the OED a couple of years ago [1]. The point of this article is that there have been enough sighting of "because [noun]" in the wild in enough different contexts that it is starting to make that leap into the mainstream, beyond just UrbanDuctionary and it's ilk.
161 comments
[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 212 ms ] threadNot many comments here, because short attention spans!
I wouldn't worry too much - this is just a fad.
People get bored and do weird things.
> "It means something like 'I'm so busy being totally absorbed by X that I don’t need to explain further, and you should know about this because it's a completely valid incredibly important thing to be doing'"
Because brevity and wit.
As I said in another comment, to me it implies the subject is dumb or hasty or something. As in a little bit of caveman speak maybe ("He hit own head because stupid").
"Not many people read the whole thing because HN."
Now, you could add the "of" and just leave it at that, and take it literally. But the implication is so much more than just saying "because of HN."
"People are so fat here because 'merica."
It cites a single blog post by one linguist and twitter and image macros.
That hardly constitutes linguists. It hardly constitutes linguist. This feature was longer than the original post.
(I find the evolution of languages quite interesting, especially when technology seems to be involved.)
"I forgot to feed my kids because Warcraft."
"My server melted because Slashdot."
As for Hacker News being a time sink in your life, I don't know that there's a phrase short enough to fit.
"I sunk all my time into innernet forums because single."
> It can be followed either by a finite clause (I'm reading this because [I saw it on the web]) or by a prepositional phrase (I'm reading this because [of the web]).
Seems to me that you are correct, this 'new usage' is merely the latter usage without 'of'.
> Skipping lunch today because sleep.
What is that supposed to mean? You need to take a nap during lunch; you got too much sleep the night before and are groggy, etc.
Why not add a few more words to make the sentence understandable (in this case non-ambiguous).
TL;DR: Don't mistake dumb for compression.
It's a poor use of the new word, as you've demonstrated. It doesn't mean the new word is therefore universally unclear.
But of course we're going to get into a pedantic and possibly violent argument over such a small and insignificant part of both our lives, because Internet.
I want to say exactly what I mean to say, neither more nor less.
Those that aren't in on the joke go "because huh?", which is funny. Because lol internet.
Any linguists care to comment whether there's a term for this kind of meaning compression? "Idiom" doesn't quite seem to cover it.
"Because politics" is like saying "because politics are just crazy like that."
It's a flippant way of saying something is simply absurd. Or an issue is pretty much binary.
Some of this might be caused by increased use of smartphones for posting on the Facebook, tweeting, and texting. I'm not sure laziness is the right word, but conservation of characters is certainly a goal.
As far as laziness, I'll disagree with you. Hardly ever is a "because X" clause well thought out or witty. I think it's safe to assume there is some serious mental laziness happening when you see a "prepositional because" being used.
"Laziness" in language change generally follows the principle of least effort - both in syntax changes as well as phonetic and phonological changes. We're almost certainly beginning to see more sweeping effects of shortened communication media on English, beyond the near-ubiquitous acronyms now in use.
To clarify my thoughts, I think it's one thing to use a prepositional because when referring to oneself. However, it's another thing to criticize someone else with a five syllable simplification. It's impossible to do justice to someone else's thoughts and feelings that way. That lack of understanding and empathy is what I find to be lazy.
Now, a full-length column in the New York Times or a bit on Fox News certainly is not necessarily a fair and coherent argument. But, leaving room for exceptions, pithy "because X" clauses are not fair to third-party subjects.
I actually find it more effort to type full English sentences with a keyboard and mouse; my Android smartphone has voice dictation and swipe gesture typing, and I find that iOS' autocorrect appears to trigger most when you type something that isn't a "standard" sentence.
Because Katz.
I do wonder, though, how long this secondary meaning will last. Right now the dismissive connotation comes about because the phrase stands out, because it breaks the rules in order to be overly brief. If the phrase gets used more, and especially as a new generation never grows up not hearing it, it will not stand out anymore as an unconventional. It could just become grammatical. Without that element, it could easily lose its dismissive connotation.
This is kind of exciting to watch, in a nerdy sort of way. Language evolution doesn't really happen much in literate societies like ours, so it's neat that we have an example unfolding before our eyes.
"I added bacon to my ice cream because bacon" [is the most awesome thing ever] (and if you don't already know that or don't agree, I don't want to try defending it).
"The project failed because politics" [generally causes everything to fail] (and if I start talking about that I'll start ranting and no one wants that).
"Root beer in a square glass is beer because math" [uses "square" and "root" as opposites] (but if I said that explicitly it would harm the humor of the joke).
Contrast "I added bacon to my ice cream because of bacon", which would suggest that everything you need to know is there and it is the nature of bacon to be added to ice cream.
Most popular memes have cross-cultural appeal, and we each add to them.
This is really just a slightly more grown up version of lolcat. Because cats.
I believe that we write more than we ever did. But what we write is not literature but a written form of casual conversation (blog comments, forum posts, IM, IRC, email...). It seems to me that it is likely, on the contrary, to favour a faster evolution of the language; especially for international English.
We see minor evolutions in language these days - an extra word or changed usage to keep the dictionary-writers employed - but is there anything comparable to the differences you'd see across Britain in the 1600s?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dialects_of_the_Englis...
Change in our language is slowed because we have high exposure to how the language was used decades, or generations, in the past. This exposure 'anchors' our language to a much greater extent than societies that do not have a high rate of written or audio records.
We acquire language in the form that it is used around us. In the absence of records, this means that the last generation's "slang" becomes our "normal speech," and whatever was spoken sixty years back is something we've never heard. This makes for a high rate of linguistic turnover, and four generations of separation will usually result in mutual incomprehensibility.
In modern times, I'm regularly being influenced by English that's 50 years old via Star Trek, Star Wars, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and Silver Surfer comic books. Because I still have exposure to generations-old versions of English, my speech will continue to resemble them.
It's similar to "Suddenly, bananas!" or "I accidentally the whole thing." I wish I could remember all the strange grammar I heard at MIT. Communities like the hacker community and 4chan are fertile ground for new grammatical constructions because people pick up and repeat the ones they hear while trying to preserve their meaning and connotations.
I still occasionally burst out laughing when I hear a funny turn of phrase at Meteor (which has a lot of MIT people).
Funny language is funny.
That was the point if the question, though. "If God does not exist, then how come physics?" And the answer is, "You can just leave off the 'God' part and just ask 'how come physics?'"
I wonder why "how come [noun]" is recognizable as sort of the same thing.
It took me a few seconds to get my head around that one.
Well, no. It actually alludes to the fact that politics was the hand-wavy excuse used to describe why the talks failed.
It goes back to "X happened because aliens." As in, we can't explain why it happened, therefore we'll just say it was aliens that did it.
The "because ___" construct has the nice effect of making the listener associate multiple connotations of the ___ word. So in the case of politics, it means "handwavy politics without explanation" and "because this is always the excuse" and "politics fucks everything up" and all the other things you associate with the term. Similary because aliens invokes what you said, since we know that aliens are just a lazy excuse commonly used, and also they are basically magical beings (in common vernacular) so anything can be attributed to them (like fairies).
The way I read the construct, which the article touches on, is as shorthand to refer to universal properties of a subject that both the writer and the reader understand. "Because politics" = "because politics usually results in stupid outcomes", "because bacon" = "because bacon is delicious and should be in everything", "because racecar" = "because racecars throw out the rules of what you would expect in a regular car", etc. Used this way it becomes self-referrential as an obvious explanation - "of course talks failed, politics was involved". "Of course I put bacon, bacon is delicious". "Of course there's no interior, it's a race car".
Of course, different people may read different implied properties based on their own views, that may not be the same as what the writer had in mind...
The grammatical failure is the kind that would happen in speech, when the speaker suddenly realizes he's bit off more than he can chew, and truncates his explanation with a pause, a word, a shrug, and a rueful smile. "because, you know... politics."
Words aren't being removed, but the word because is being added to a very old speech pattern.
"The talks failed because politics" is an expansion of "The talks failed: politics", with a pause between failed and politics, and politics spoken like a new one-word sentence, usually at a slightly different pitch level than The talks failed. It's meaning and intonation pattern is quite different to "The talks failed because of politics".
When saying "The talks failed because politics" out loud, we still put a pause before politics, and use the same intonation pattern as "The talks failed: politics". The word because replaces the terser colon in the written form.
"It conveys focus... It conveys brevity... But it also conveys a certain universality."
People use it when they're busy, drunk, or absent-minded to be self-deprecative. As in:
"Maxed out my credit card because too much beer!"
But people also use it to disparage someone else:
"Uptown a*&%$# voted against prop B because racism."
The article briefly hints at this when it says, "So we get comments like these, with people using 'because' not just to explain, but also to criticize, and sensationalize, and ironize...".
In fact, I'm having a hard time coming up with an example of a "because X" clause that has complimentary implications.
However, it's possible that the implications of this preposition has softened recently and I'm out of the loop. Or maybe I'm just overthinking it.
EDIT: Maybe it's just me but "because bacon" and "because awesome" do not imply that the subject of the sentence is a person with qualities worth aspiring to. Not that bacon isn't awesome.
"Now put x with y, because awesome!"
"I have breakfast for all three meals because bacon."
I added bacon to my milkshake because delicious.
I don't normally like superhero movies, but I went to see the Avengers, because Joss Whedon.
Because reasons
* If the cutter asked without giving a reason, they succeeded 60% of the time.
* If the cutter gave a legitimate reason like "I'm late for class", they succeeded 90% of the time.
* If the cutter gave a lame excuse like "I need to make copies", they still succeeded 90% of the time!
So "because reasons" is not necessarily any worse an excuse than any other.
because of X and for all of the usual connotations and implications of X, which the (reader|hearer) surely understands, A happened.
Edit: Oldest usage, as found by google:
http://www.dkvine.com/games/dkl3/ (2001), line 807 in the source; this is probably not the first usage in all of english.
I'm not sure, about that.
I can hardly imagine a situation where "because SCIENCE" and "because MATH" are ironic at all, except (and not implying you) to internet hipsters that never understood science or math.
Why did it rain on my wedding day? Because IRONY! Why a black fly in my chardonnay? Because IRONY! Why 10,000 straws when I needed a spork? Because IRONY!
Sorry Alanis, still not ironic.
"Because-noun," it would appear, can be construed multiple ways, and a lot of the meaning is contextual.
It's too fickle, too context dependent.
On the other hand, "because <noun>" is extremely inexact:
> English Has a New Preposition, Because Internet
What about the Internet caused English to gain a new preposition? Unless you already understand, "because <noun>" adds little, if any, explanation. I can see its use as a handy short-hand when your audience does already understand though.
Bacon milkshake because bacon.
Bacon milkshake because of bacon.
The second one doesn't carry the flippant implication of the unquestionable awesomeness of bacon. You don't get to argue the point with the first one. The second one might be up to debate. There's far more to communication that just facts. There's emotional content that gets captured as well.
That's how it feels to me, too. It works because people are in on the deliberate "misuse" of language. Sort of like when people say (or said) the single-word sentence "Sadness."
Should it become common parlance then that cool "in-joke" feel goes away, and while it would still have some meaning it wouldn't be the same meaning it has right now.
It might simply become another way to say "because of."
Or, articles like this one might lead people to make more of it than it was every intended, thereby becoming correct by virtue of asserting a claim that people then follow as if it already true.
[0] http://www.amazon.com/OK-Improbable-Story-Americas-Greatest/...
Potatoes are a common talk topic on the net because, like, Latvian jokes.
I put bacon in my salad. [why?] Because bacon.
That explains absolutely nothing, the implication being that if you're asking why, you're a moron and nothing more can be explained to you because bacon is so overwhelmingly and obviously self-justifying. Other interpretations abound as well.
The snail use the shell beacause is a fucking faget.
snail got crush so easy, and you can give the slug to ur dog chew and it ll still eat lettuce.
shell is MORE heavy than no shell.
some slug have internal shell because more evolved
Your cousin will not want to stay on your house to play slug.
If you trow the slug on the wall, the wall will go up.
Trow both on water and watch which will come up first.
slug at mate will make a slimecord. The snail will show dribble.
All slug are hermaphrodite. Snail is too but because faget
slug is the name of a bullet. Snail means it is slow.
Slug will eat carrion, slug don't give a fuck
slug didn't needed an upgrade. Slug is perfect
Apparently, using the word trespass as a intransitive verb is correct (albeit archaic) and was used as such in the New Testament, as in forgive those who trespass against us.
[1]http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/dictionary/trespassers-wil...
We need new nouns and new verbs all the time, because what occupies and what occurs in our environment changes so fast. Interestingly, despite that rapid change, the set of prepositions, the set of conceptual relationships we've chosen to concisely express, stays pretty steady.
It's fascinating to read about a new preposition entering into common usage, because it makes me wonder what new pressures we're collectively facing in describing conceptual relationships. Certainly it could just be Twitter's character limits causing people to drop the "of" in "because of", but maybe other forces caused this construction to have utility now.
My bet would be on an increased expectation that our conversational partners share our context, and our models for understanding why things happen the way they do, because internet.
"After I die, wherever my spirit goes, I'm going to try to get back and visit my skeleton at least once a year, because, 'Hey, old buddy, how's it going?'."
I still laugh about it, and the main reason it was funny to me was the odd (but humorously apropos) use of the word "because."
These are two different genres. It's interesting to ask when something becomes so widely accepted that it is considered fine to use in "proper" english writing. If "because X" is, then so is LOL.
Incorporate ALL THE THINGS!
[1] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-12893416