Michelle McSweeney, "OK" (Bloomsbury, 2023)

Summary

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Podcast Summary

Episode Overview

Podcast: New Books Network
Host: Dr. Miranda Melcher
Guest: Dr. Michelle McSweeney
Book Discussed: OK (Bloomsbury, 2023), part of Bloomsbury’s Object Lessons series
Date: November 17, 2025

This episode explores the fascinating history, significance, and evolution of the word “OK.” Dr. Michelle McSweeney, linguist and data scientist, delves into the surprising origins, rapid global spread, and enduring adaptability of “OK,” showing how this simple word encapsulates both human creativity and the intertwining of language and technology.

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Introduction & Author Background

[01:31–04:04]

• Dr. Miranda Melcher opens the discussion by highlighting how ubiquitous yet under-examined “OK” is in daily life.
• Dr. Michelle McSweeney introduces herself (data science lead at Brilliant, teaches at CUNY; background in linguistics and chemistry).
  • Motivation: Her dissertation on text messaging and the proliferation of creative acronyms led her to deeper questions about how words spread—landing on “OK” as a fascinating case study.

    “Humans are incredibly creative. And seeing that come to life through all of these words led me to understanding OK…” (McSweeney, 02:59)

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Origins of ‘OK’

[04:04–08:32]

• “OK” originated in 1839 as a joke in the Boston Morning Post—editor wrote “OK” for “all correct” to poke fun at rural speech.
• The word’s adoption reflected a democratization of language: newspapers proliferated, citizens played with words and abbreviations.
  • “OK” became part of in-group vs. out-group dialogue, similar to private family or friend-language now.

    “People were taking ownership over language. And they were playing. It was amazing.” (McSweeney, 05:58)

• Newspapers fostered “inside jokes” that readers recognized, just as teens or families invent shared words now.

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How ‘OK’ Went National

[08:32–11:21]

• Key event: 1840 U.S. presidential election—Democrats used “Old Kinderhook” (Martin Van Buren) and started “OK clubs.”
• Extensive media coverage and campaign pins with “OK” spread its use rapidly—linking both “all correct” and Van Buren’s nickname.
• Within a year, “OK” had entered nationwide political and popular vocabulary due to the interaction of media, marketing, and politics.

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The Gatekeepers: Books vs. Newspapers

[11:21–15:15]

• Despite popularity, publishers excluded “OK” from books—it was seen as lowbrow and too colloquial.
• Serialized fiction and newspapers democratized reading, but publishers tried to maintain boundaries of “appropriate” language.
  • Louisa May Alcott sneaked “OK” into the first edition of Little Women, but it was edited out from subsequent editions.

    “The first edition of Little Women has the word OK, and then the second edition does not...” (McSweeney, 14:48)

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Technology’s Role: Telegraph, Railroad, Telephone

[15:33–20:37]

• Technological advances—railroads and telegraphs—created urgent need for concise, recognizable messages.
• “OK” ideal: 2 letters, easy to understand, and cheap (telegraphs charged by the letter).
• Telephone culture inherited “OK” as a confirmation marker, especially useful on crackly lines due to its distinctive sound.

  “OK is perfect for a static, crackly telephone line... it's very distinct.” (McSweeney, 18:32)

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OK Goes Global

[20:37–23:08]

• OK spread globally via American cultural exports, especially radio and television.
• TV subtitling retained “OK,” making it a recognizable token of American-ness worldwide—became a “safe,” subtle way to signal cultural alignment during the Cold War.

  “OK is known everywhere in the world... and it was this lightweight and ephemeral way to signal alignment with American ideals.” (McSweeney, 21:32)

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Digital Age: Email, Chatrooms, and Personalization

[24:05–29:49]

• Early email creators thought email would be terse, telegraph-like; they underestimated its social uses.
• Corpus studies (e.g., Enron emails) show people using “OK” creatively to manage relationships and signal belonging.
• Online, spelling variations (“k,” “okkay,” “okieee”) serve as markers of identity and community—especially in gaming and fandom spaces.

  “That's the thing that defines our modern moment... And one way that we do that is play with words like OK...” (McSweeney, 27:08)

• Words like “OK” perform not just semantic functions (“I got your message”) but phatic ones—maintaining connections.

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Body Language: The OK Gesture

[29:49–31:42]

• The “OK” hand sign likely emerged from universal “ring” gestures associated with precision, but its direct origins are unclear due to the lack of recorded evidence.
• Recently, the gesture has been co-opted for negative connotations (white supremacy), showing how meanings shift over time.

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OK as a Technological Marker

[31:42–35:23]

• “OK” is extraordinary as a word that began in writing rather than speech—a product of 19th-century print technology.
• Every era and new technology (telegraph, telephones, email) sparked new uses and spellings (“OK,” “O.K.,” “okay,” “k,” etc.).

  “OK doesn't even exist without technology because writing is our original...communication technology... and all these junctures, it's gotten a new spelling, a new purpose...” (McSweeney, 33:01)

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Broader Reflections: What OK Teaches About Human Connection

[35:23–37:00]

• The staying power of “OK” isn’t top-down; it persists because people find it expressive, adaptable, and useful in forging connections.
• OK highlights the interplay of creativity, technology, and human need for community:

  “It gained momentum the way all other words gain momentum. People used it between each other—they were creative together...” (McSweeney, 36:19)

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Author’s Next Projects

[37:27–39:02]

• Two new books in progress:
  • A history of the word “data,” from ancient philosophy to modern “data culture.”
  • A children’s book about a bird learning its song, inspired by linguistics and animal language.

    “[One book] walks us through, from its origins, the points where [data’s] meaning kept shifting to get us to this moment today...” (McSweeney, 38:01)

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Memorable Quotes

• “Humans are incredibly creative. And seeing that come to life through all of these words led me to understanding OK...”
  — Dr. Michelle McSweeney [02:59]

• “It was this moment where people were, like, playing with language. It was so rampant that people would go to the bar and order, like, WB for wine bitters…”
  — Dr. Michelle McSweeney [06:20]

• “Louisa May Alcott like succeeded [in publishing 'OK'] and then it still got taken out.”
  — Dr. Michelle McSweeney [14:34]

• “OK is perfect for a static, crackly telephone line... it's very distinct sonority, right?”
  — Dr. Michelle McSweeney [18:32]

• “OK is known everywhere in the world... it was a lightweight and ephemeral way to signal alignment with American ideals.”
  — Dr. Michelle McSweeney [21:32]

• “That's the thing that defines our modern moment... we are trying to communicate who I am through the way that I write things and the way that I spell things.”
  — Dr. Michelle McSweeney [27:08]

• “OK doesn't even exist without technology because writing is...one of the earliest communication technologies humans have invented.”
  — Dr. Michelle McSweeney [33:01]

• “OK didn't gain momentum because it was this top-down thing. It gained momentum the way all other words gain momentum. People used it between each other and they were creative together…”
  — Dr. Michelle McSweeney [36:19]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Author Introduction / Motivation: 01:31–04:04
• Origin Story: 04:04–08:32
• Political Spread: 08:32–11:21
• Books vs. Newspapers: 11:21–15:15
• Telegraph, Rail & Telephone: 15:33–20:37
• Going Global: 20:37–23:08
• Digital Use / Online Communities: 24:05–29:49
• Gesture & Meaning Shifts: 29:49–31:42
• OK as Written Technology: 31:42–35:23
• Human Connection Reflection: 35:23–37:00
• Future Projects: 37:27–39:02

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This episode is a lively, insightful exploration of one little word—its journey through print, speech, technology, and across the globe—and how it serves as a lens onto the inherently creative and connective nature of human language.

Transcript

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[Dr. Michelle McSweeney]

To the New Books Network.

[Dr. Miranda Melcher]

Hello, and welcome to another episode on the New Books Network. I'm one of your hosts, Dr. Miranda Melcher, and I'm really looking forward to this conversation. And we have a very cool author with us today, Dr. Michelle McSweeney, who wrote a book titled, okay, literally one word, very succinct title. This book is part of Bloomsbury's Object Lesson series. It's one of the newest installments in 2023. And obviously, as you might expect, the book is about the word okay, which is fascinating in its own right. Anyone just thinking about it goes, hang on a second. I use that word all the time and yet I've probably not thought much about it. But there's actually even more to this story as one reads in the book. So, Michelle, I'm very pleased to welcome you in the podcast to tell us all about it.

[Dr. Michelle McSweeney]

Awesome. Thanks. I'm so happy to be here.

[Dr. Miranda Melcher]

Before we dive into all things okay, though, could you maybe introduce yourself a bit and explain why you decided to write this book?

[Dr. Michelle McSweeney]

Definitely. So, I work in data science. I currently manage the data science content team at Brilliant. I teach data visualization at the City University of New York. But my academic background is in linguistics and chemistry, so a little bit of everything. And I wrote this book because about 10 years ago, I was starting on my dissertation research, and I wrote my dissertation about text messaging. And I was tracking all of these fascinating words, like lol, wya, which is an acronym for where you at for everyone who doesn't speak, like that, and other, like, really cool acronyms. And I was doing, like, all this work about, like, networks and the spread of words through networks, which was all very interesting, but it, like, told this story about creativity and, like, human creativity, which was way more interesting to me because, you know, I think the theme that runs through everything that I do is, like, you know, humans are incredible creative. You know, humans are incredibly creative. And seeing that come to life through all of these words led me to understanding okay and, like, looking at. Okay. And looking at how words throughout history have gone through the language like wildfire. So that's kind of my background and, like, what led me to this book.

[Dr. Miranda Melcher]

I'm really fascinated now by the combination of linguistics and chemistry, but I promise I will stay focused on the book and the word okay because it does have. It does really reveal that idea of creativity and things spreading really quickly and very interestingly. So we obviously have to start from kind of the origin point. Where does the word okay actually come from?

[Dr. Michelle McSweeney]

Totally. So there's the direct answer to that, and then there's, like, more existential answer to that. So the direct answer to that is that in 1930 or in 1839, one of the editors of the Boston Morning Post was making fun of the editor of the Provincetown Journal. And, you know, Boston was this, like, urbane place, and Provincetown was kind of rural. And the editor wrote the word all correct. Okay. Right. And we all know that all correct should be ac. But he wrote it, okay? And he was doing that to really pick on how they spoke, and he was just. He was trying to call them backwards. And it caught on, right? And this was this moment in American history when, like, penny presses were everywhere. So, like, everybody was reading. It was this incredible explosion of reading and writing that was happening across the country. In tandem with that was also this, like, new market for journalists to start writing. More and more people to become journalists, you know, you didn't have to have the same kind of pedigree in order to become a writer. So it was opening this up and, like, democratizing the space. And, you know, okay was not the only acronym that day. There were so many acronyms in the newspaper that day. Because as the language was being democratized, you know, people were starting to take more ownership of it. So the existential, like, philosophical reason that okay got started had nothing to do with this joke between the editors and had a lot more to do with the fact that people were taking ownership over language. And they were playing. It was amazing. You read through papers of this time, and people are asking, people are using OFM for our first men. Right. And it's everywhere. And, like, depending on what kind of paper you're reading, it has this, like, second meaning. And, you know, we can get into all the politics of it, but it was just this moment where people were, like, playing with language. It was so rampant that people would go to the bar and order, like, WB for wine bitters. I have no idea what wine bitters is. You know, that's also been lost to the sands of time. But it was not only happening in newspapers, but it was also just happening in the wider culture of, like, really changing how people communicated. Right. In addition to that, because there were all of these newspapers and all of these penny presses coming up, you know, people were really committed to their newspaper, and this kind of created a world where you had this in group language and this out group language. So if you were a reader of the Boston Morning Post, you had been reading the Boston Morning Post every weekday for however long, Right. So you were kind of, like, in the in group. And you would know that on this day, the word okay was used as a joke for all correct. And tomorrow you would reference, you'd be able to read okay without the gloss, without the, like, all correct written beside it. So as people are starting to take more ownership of language, people are also developing this in group language where, like, oh, we have these, like, inside jokes. And I know exactly what you're saying, and you know exactly what I'm saying. Same way that teenagers do when they make new friends and they have inside jokes and, you know, same way you do with toddlers and you have, like, home language where you've, like, made up words like, oh, go wash your paws, you know.

[Dr. Miranda Melcher]

Yeah. I think every family probably has their own sort of adaptation to things. But of course, the language that we have in our families doesn't then become a global sensation. Right. Not all of these acronyms. You know, we don't still order WB and mean wine bitters. So how does okay start in this sort of thing and become something not just widespread throughout the United States, but quite literally across multiple languages?

[Dr. Michelle McSweeney]

Totally. This is where it gets so cool, because for whatever reason, the Democrat. Okay, let me back up a little bit. So in 1840, there was a presidential election, right? So OK had been around for a few months. You know, a few little pockets of people were using it, but the Democrats were putting up their candidate, Martin Van Buren. And Martin Van Buren was getting all kinds of pushback for being, like, way too highbrow and, like, not accessible to the people. So the Democratic Party comes up with this idea. They're going to give him a nickname, Old Kinderhook. There's more to that story. But the short of it is they give him this nickname, Old Kinderhook. They're kind of humanizing him, making him more accessible. And it's the first presidential election since the penny presses have come in, right? So there's so much more media around this election than ever before. So the Democrats start saying that they're going to have meetings of the okay club, right? The Old Kinderhook Club. But they don't call it the Old Kinderhook Club. They're just like, oh, it's going to be the okay club making a play on Old Kinderhook and All Correct. Like, we are the okay at the All Correct group. So they start putting it in the newspapers and it spreads across the country. So that by the end of that election cycle, most Americans had heard of okay and, like, could see the double meaning of All Correct and Old Kinderhook. And it was like, not just limited to the newspapers. They were making pins that had okay on it. So even after the election, there's accounts of people wearing the okay pin and it meaning opposition to the Whig Party, because, you know, around 1840, it was Whigs, not Republicans, but they lost. You know, the Democrats lost and Van Buren did not become president. But those okay pins were still around for, like, quite a while. So it was really just like, good timing with this election that, like, pushed it across the country. Whereas, you know, the Democratic Party wasn't talking about wine bitters.

[Dr. Miranda Melcher]

Shocking. Absolutely shocking that they could have missed that out. Despite this, though, I thought it was really interesting how you discussed that OK was spreading really rapidly in some respects, including in this example, high politics. And it was in newspapers. People were talking about it, but it wasn't in books. Like, on purpose. Why not?

[Dr. Michelle McSweeney]

Yeah, so we have this, like, nice, calm, early 1830s homeostasis situation. The publishing houses have control of all prints. In come the penny presses, in come these, like, cheap, widely accessible newspapers, and they're starting to lose control very quickly, right? So the penny presses are printing These serial novels, the serial fiction. And suddenly everybody could afford to read, to read novels, to read fiction, to read newspapers, to read everything that they couldn't afford to read, you know, 10 years ago. So the publishing houses are looking at this and they're like, we are losing the grip on culture. We are not going to be able to survive unless we have some sort of value add in the books that we're publishing. So the they crack down very, very hard on what language is highbrow, what language is high culture, what language is appropriate versus what language is colloquial, low brow and for the quote unquote, common people. And one of the words that really gets onto this blacklist is okay, right? It is banned from books because if they start allowing things like okay, even in its like hyper corrected okay form, then they're just continuing on with common language and they're getting swept up into whatever is happening right now as opposed to holding on to culture and saying, this thing is durable, this book is durable, this is going to stand the test of time. And therefore it's worth investing in it much more than you're going to invest in these newspapers. Louisa May Alcott makes like a very important appearance in this, right? Because it's not that authors didn't try because at this time, you know, authors are writing quote unquote dialect into books. But it is very marked as being like this is the dialect of someone who speaks a non standard form of English. And that is very othering. But there were some authors like Henry David Thoreau, Louisa May Alcott that were trying to get okay into their books. Louisa May Alcott like succeeded and then it still got taken out. So in the first version of Little Women, Beth, when she's talking about like getting married, says that she's going to make everything okay. Okay, right. And that's interesting because okay is a hyper correction. It's the same thing like if you want to have multiple octopus, it's octopuses, it's not octopi. But we hyper correct and sometimes we say octopi. So Louisa May Alcott was like, okay, I'm going to hyper correct this thing and I'm going to get it in there. And she did. And the first edition of Little Women has the word okay and then the second edition does not because it was very clearly edited out because again, it was seen as being just inappropriate for long term durable culture.

[Dr. Miranda Melcher]

So that is an interesting decision on the part of the publishers and doesn't exactly put them on the right side of history or progress. Which perhaps says concerning things about publishers today, who knows? We shall see.

[Dr. Michelle McSweeney]

We're talking about 150 years ago. They're great today.

[Dr. Miranda Melcher]

Yeah, no, that's fair. I mean, you can have a whole book now about, okay. Not just whether or not to put it in one sentence in one book. So that makes a lot of sense to kind of think about how publishers were worried about the march of progress, because of course there were a whole bunch of other things going on that very much were in favour of. OK. And if we're talking about the 1800s, we can literally hear them. Telegraphs, railroads, telephones, all the precursors to the fact that I can currently interview you with a whole ocean between us, I'm assuming. So how do those things, those three things in particular, the telegraph, the railroad and the telephone, you argue in the book that they, quote, create a perfect environment for the spread and evolution of. Okay, how.

[Dr. Michelle McSweeney]

Oh yeah, talk about modernity, right? Like the telegraph, the railroad and the telephone. I think about this all the time of how head spinning it must have been to live when these things were coming to fruition, right? So the railroad and the telegraph have this, you know, they were tied up very, very closely together because the railroad is changing the shape of the world. And that changing the shape of the world means that there's this immediate and like pressing need to communicate and coordinate across very long distances. People needed to be able to communicate basic information and they also needed a way to confirm that they got that basic information. And OK was perfect, it's two letters, it was widely understood, widely used, and you know, telegraphs, unlike all the technology we live in today, telegraphs were billed per letter, per word, right? So OK is so perfect because not only is it widely understood and super efficient, but it's also cheap. So you can send a short, cheap telegraph that says, okay, I know what time the train is departing, I know what time the train is coming in, I know that this train can't leave today for whatever reason. I know there's a crack in the track. So okay is like the perfect word for that. But right on the heels of the telegraph comes the telephone. And it's the same thing that like railroads are needing this extra communication and they were the first to adopt the telephone, right? So they're adopting this new technology, they're starting to communicate faster. And there's already this tradition is probably overstating the case, but there's already this semi tradition of using okay to say, hey, I understood what you're saying to me, we can move forward to the next step, right? So, so they just import that into the telephone. But there's this side process going on that okay is perfect for a static crackly telephone line. Because the O in okay if everyone listening at home, if you put your two fingers at the front of your throat and you say O, you can feel a vibration and then you say k. The start of the K is completely silent. There's no vibration. So it's very different sonority, right? So it's perfect if you're talking on a super crackly line, you have this very distinct sound to be able to say okay, okay. And so the train engineers start using okay when they're talking on a telephone to say, okay, I understood the instructions, move on to the next thing. And at that time, all of this is so modern and so shiny and so exciting that it's like everyone kind of wanted to be a little bit affiliated with the railroads or you didn't or you wanted to completely not. But whatever it was, you know, you have this important place for the railroads and the telegraphs and the telephones. So as the telephone starts coming into individual people's homes, they still need a way to say okay, move on to the next topic that you're going to tell me about. And at that time, telephones were like, not as clear as they are today at all. We are on crackly lines. So people needed this discourse marker to keep the conversation going. And okay was perfect for that. It's short, it's quick, and it says okay, keep going. Move on to the next topic. So it really starts with this like high technology of the railroads and the telegraph. And the railroad engineers, they pick it up in the telephone. And then the telephone spreads across the country and we get all of these new functions for the word ok.

[Dr. Miranda Melcher]

It spreads across the country and also, of course, across the world. Right. OK is not just an American thing. How did it go global?

[Dr. Michelle McSweeney]

Yeah, totally. Okay is the. So Coca Cola did a study a while back about like the most widely used words. And okay is known everywhere in the world, right. So obviously it was born as like this American word, but particularly in like radio and television. And it's television that like really exported okay, around the world. Because you can translate a lot of American television, right? But you can give subtitles and that's great. But there's some words that just stand out. And they're words that are either like super strong sonority difference, so like okay or words that have like a very specific meaning that doesn't really translate well. Like okay, Right. So especially during the Cold War, as American culture was being, like, exported around the world, and there was a lot of motivation to export American culture around the world. You see English being exported and okay following along with it, you know, and it's this, like, particularly then, you know, we're talking, like, 1960sish. It was this really lightweight and ephemeral way to signal alignment with American ideals. Right. So doing something like wearing blue jeans might have been a very visual and very, like, durable way to signal alignment with American ideals. But using okay is much safer because you can say okay, and you're showing that, like, oh, you have this international orientation and you, like, know about American English and you're using it and no one can really call you out on it in the wrong context. So that didn't really help it spread. But it was one side effect of okay being pushed around the world through this, like, pushing of American culture that gave it kind of this, like, privileged status in a lot of ways.

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[Dr. Michelle McSweeney]

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[Dr. Miranda Melcher]

And of course, it doesn't hurt that it's easy to say it's short, it's sweet. You know, all the things that made it popular across America very much translate. And I really love that idea of kind of the safety of it. Right. It's signalling, but in a less intensive way and therefore more accessible way. All right, so moving on from kind of the progress of okay, we've gotten to the point where it has now swept the world. Everyone uses it all the time. We don't think about it, and we certainly don't think about sort of any of the impacts of kind of the Internet and those technologies that we're so familiar with now. I guess going into the book, I wasn't that surprised to find you Talk about the telegraph and the telephone. I didn't know the story, but I was kind of like, okay, you know, this makes sense, right? I was not really expecting you to talk about early email and how it impacts our use of the word as well. So could you help us excavate this part of shaping the word?

[Dr. Michelle McSweeney]

Totally. This is where it gets so cool. So I like have a soft spot in my heart for interviews with the early, the people who are working on the early versions of email, right. Because they are so sure that it is going to be used in this, like completely terse, like it's basically going to be used like a telegraph but faster and more durable and you can add an attachment. Right. So like, cool. Their idea was that it was going to be used to send short instructions and very clear, quick communication and that we wouldn't need any quote, unquote formalities. I love listening to their interviews because it's like they created this technology that has completely reshaped the world and they were completely wrong about the social side of it. And like that dichotomy is just jarring because they're thinking about it like a telegraph because that's the mental model that they had. But once email got into the hands of like large numbers of users. And you can actually see this in the Enron corpus, which is a collection of emails sent between executives and, you know, managers at Enron before the all the Enron collapsed, right. And they're publicly available, you can just look up the corpus and you can see, okay, being used for everything. Because it's cheap to send an email, it's basically free and we use it much more socially. So you can send me something like, see you at 6. Which, you know, I might not send a telegram back for because like, it costs money, but I'll send an email, okay? And then if we're really close and I'm like kind of being cutesy, I might say K. Or if I'm really being cutesy, I might say, okay, ieee. You don't see a lot of that in Enron corpus, but you do see it in other corpora. But it's this like moment where we just have this explosion again in communication, right? And people are like connecting in email and chat rooms and all of these places that they had never connected before. Which also means that they need to perform their identity in writing. And this is, I think, the thing that defines our modern moment where we are communicating and writing all day long. You know, I use Slack and email and text message and that's How I spend my day. And all of those are in writing. On all of those, I'm trying to communicate who I am through the way that I write things and the way that I spell things. And you know, one way that we do that is play with words like okay, or we play with words like good morning or good night or bye, or these words that their purpose is not necessarily to communicate information like see you at 6. Their purpose is to, you know, confirm receipt, check in with someone. It's called phatic communion. Things that don't really carry semantic meaning, but that are important for our social relationships, and things that don't really communicate semantic meaning but are socially important are the perfect candidates to hang your identity on. Right? And we see this moment with like email and chat rooms where people are coming together that might not have come together before and they're creating new communities. And one way to signal that, hey, I'm a member of that new community is to spell something like okay or good morning in a particular way. One example of this that I periodically see and then I always ask people, I'm like, do you, like, are you involved in gaming? Do you read manga? Things like this is when someone writes, ok, IEEE or some number of E's. Pick however many E's you want because it's such a. It's so tightly associated with people who've organized around those interests. It's really interesting watching this across the Internet, all of these different forms of. Okay.

[Dr. Miranda Melcher]

Thank you for explaining that. And kind of the signaling of it. I found that section of the book unexpected and fascinating and of course the signaling piece of it that we've talked about so far in terms of, okay, keep the conversation going or yeah, I've got it or I'm part of this community translates as well to the physical realm. Right. Okay, has a gesture.

[Dr. Michelle McSweeney]

Yeah.

[Dr. Miranda Melcher]

How did that happen?

[Dr. Michelle McSweeney]

That is such a good question. Honestly, like, no one's really documented very well how it got a gesture. The best idea is actually the. So all of the hand gestures where like your index finger is touching your thumb or your middle finger is touching your thumb, all of these are called ring gestures. And around the world there's this gesture for precision that is, you know, the index finger and the thumb very close together and it's a ring gesture. This like, class of gestures that have been around forever. And the best idea is that okay came out of that. But no one really knows because unlike writing, gesture doesn't get recorded as well. That's all I got. Okay, fair enough.

[Dr. Miranda Melcher]

Yeah, I can Imagine that. Obviously physical gestures are probably harder to track than linguistic ones.

[Dr. Michelle McSweeney]

Totally. And recently there's been, you know, okay has been used in less appropriate ways. You know, it's been used to symbol white supremacy, but it's also still used to symbolize okay, all correct. And, you know, that has actually a better documentation than the history of OK or as a gesture.

[Dr. Miranda Melcher]

Yeah, that makes sense. One thing that's obviously kind of been an implied theme throughout this is the relationship between okay and technology. I'd like to make that a little bit more explicit as we come to the second half of the interview, because you actually argue in the book, more than any other word, OK exemplifies how technology is written into language. Can you tell us about what you mean there?

[Dr. Michelle McSweeney]

Yeah, totally. So, you know, language changes as culture changes, as technology changes. You know, we could get deconstructivist and talk about the boundary between technology and culture. But like, as human communities change, language changes. That's just a fact. But okay is amazing, right? Because it is purely a written word. Most of our words were not born written. Most of our words were born spoken and then they got written down. So that's the first way that like, okay doesn't actually even exist without technology because writing is our original. Actually probably not original, but it's one of the earliest communication technologies humans have invented. Okay couldn't even exist without this technology existing. And then at all of these junctures, it's gotten a new spelling, it's gotten a new purpose, it's gotten a new identity because it was at the right place and the right time and had this purpose that never existed before. So if we think about, like the railroads and the telegraphs, you never needed to communicate that much information across long distances before the railroads and the telegraphs. And that's when OK comes in. And it's really the moment where it loses its dots, right? Like it loses the periods because there's so many okays being sent and you don't want to pay to send a dot. That's silly. So you're just going to send an O and a K, no dots. We see O, K, a Y as this hyper correction, trying to squeeze it into published books. Which is again, this like, moment where the penny presses are putting this pressure on the language and the language is adapting in the same way. Same thing with the email and the chat rooms more generally is that it's putting this pressure on the language. And we get K, K, O, K, I, E, E, all of those forms because there's this Communication pressure, this communication opportunity that is reshaping it and giving it these whole new lives and new identities. And there's other words that have changed and evolved recently, but it's less obvious. Right. So like intensifier. So if I want to say, oh my gosh, it's so hot outside. Right. That kind of so hot. Or I'm so enjoying this movie. That kind of so enjoying. That's a relatively new construction. You know, the. So how are you doing today? That one's a little bit older. We could tie that back to language change, but it's just not as clear of a story as what OK does because it's picking up all of these new spellings and new new functions.

[Dr. Miranda Melcher]

So to then take that further, you talk about, okay, in terms of an alliance between our humanity and technology. What do you think? Ok kind of teaches us about that relationship.

[Dr. Michelle McSweeney]

Totally. So the thing that I think is really most beautiful about OK is that, you know, it has all these like moments in history and I can put down these signposts and say in this year and in that year these technologies were invented. But the only reason that it caught on is because everyone who uses it found it useful. And we have these moments where our technology changes and our opportunities for communication change in response. But it's like ultimately baked into us as humans to be so creative. And it's baked into us as humans to want to connect with each other. And okay, didn't like gain momentum because it was this top down thing. It gained momentum the way all other words gain momentum. That people used it between each other and they were creative together and they created something new together. And you can make the same argument about technology being people coming together and making something new. But you can also make the argument about our language that people communicate and they come up with something new and novel and textured for them in that moment.

[Dr. Miranda Melcher]

That's a very nice thought. Wonderful for ending the main interview with it. Which leaves me with only one final question. The book is out pretty. Pretty much just out really, so people can read it. Which sort of leads me to ask, is there anything you might be working on now or next? Whether or not it's a book, whether or not it's about. Okay. That you'd like our listeners to be aware of.

[Dr. Michelle McSweeney]

Yeah. So I'm actually working on two other books. One is with the publisher, it's in its process. And that one's about the word data, which explores the origins of data with Euclid, 600 B.C. euclid, where it really means, assumptions and through. It's like the starting place for an argument. And then traces it through these various points of history, the advent of computers, to this, like, modern data driven culture where data and facts have become almost synonymous, even though they really shouldn't be. And walks us through like from its origins, the points where its meaning kept shaping and shifting to get us to this moment today. The other book that I'm working on is totally, like, rooted in linguistics. It's a children's book about a young bird who is learning his song. And bird song acquisition is very interesting. It's not, you know, it's not exactly like human language acquisition. It is not human language acquisition, but bird families are very similar to human families with the amount of, like, attention and investment that they put into their young. So just literally for play, I'm working on this children's book about learning a bird song.

[Dr. Miranda Melcher]

Well, those both sound like very fun projects. Best of luck with them both. And while you are off telling people about data and birdsongs, listeners can read the book we've been discussing, which, which I'm pretty sure at this point people will remember the title, but just in case it's titled. Okay. And it was published by Bloomsbury. Michelle, thank you so much for being with us on the podcast.

[Dr. Michelle McSweeney]

Thank you so much. It's truly been a pleasure.