This thesis explores the new language fad, Because, X, which originated on the Internet and was named the American Dialect Society’s Word of the Year in 2013. Since the construction is relatively recent, there has been little formal research conducted on it beyond Internet articles and discussions. The research presented in this thesis aims to understand this new construction through detailed syntactic, semantic, and quantitative analyses. This includes investigating instances of the Because, X construction from its origins in 2011 to recent occurrences as well as gathering participant judgments on the construction from two different studies conducted for this work
