That the internet homogenizes language is a matter of debate–but that it provides vast quantities of state-of-the-nation linguistic data is not. I was curious about linguistic diversity among American Twitter users–specifically, about whether that diversity, should it exist, could be regionally based. MacLuhan thought electronic communications would fashion a global village; I looked through one…

When everything else has gone from my brain—the President’s name, the state capitals, the neighborhoods where I lived, and then my own name and what it was on earth I sought, and then at length the faces of my friends, and finally the faces of my family—when all this has dissolved, what will be left,…