When Tony Thorne first started researching slang, he was largely on his own. This was in the ’80s, when, according to Thorne, the academic community “virtually ignored” slang as a part of linguistics.

Have you ever been texting and thought, "idk" to a question? Or has someone made a statement that made you say "smh." Maybe you are confused by all these acronyms and Internet slang examples. New ...