From Homer to #hashtags: Our Changing Language

Though always evolving, language is undergoing an unprecedented shift, thanks to the digital age. Emojis, tweets, and hashtags are transforming how we write and converse. Some might argue that language has been diminished, but just as Homer’s epic Odyssey made sense of ancient Greece, a tweet can distill a feeling, a thought, or an idea.

Poet Christine Hemp explores these new forms of communication, connecting them with the language of the past. How do changes in language affect the way we think and feel about our world, our history, and ourselves?

Christine Hemp is an author, poet, essayist and art critic. She received her BA in Humanities from Willamette University and an MA in English from Middlebury College. Hemp is the recipient of a Washington State Artist Trust Fellowship for Literature and teaches poetry and nonfiction at Hugo House in Seattle. A poem of hers has traveled over 1.5 billion miles on a NASA mission to monitor the birth of stars.

Funded project of Humanities Washington, a state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.