Gretchen McCulloch

@gretchenmcc.bsky.social

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Internet linguist. Wrote Because Internet, NYT bestseller about internet language. Co-hosts @lingthusiasm.bsky.social, a podcast that's enthusiastic about linguistics.

she/her 🌈
Montreal en/fr
gretchenmcculloch.com

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Gretchen McCulloch

Hey. The fragmentation of the social media landscape has been hard on indie #scicomm 🧪 projects So if you'd like to follow a podcast that's enthusiastic about #linguistics, could you check out @lingthusiasm.bsky.social? And if you think your followers might like to, could you give this a repost?

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Gretchen McCulloch

Lingthusiasm is an immediate listen as soon as each episode comes out!

New Lingthusiasm episode and it's the best* one yet! *one where we talk about the word "best"

Have you ever seen a sign saying "The city's best pizza" or a mug saying "World's greatest teacher" and been...skeptical? In this bonus: why comparatives go weird sometimes, why funner is more logical, can you be more unique, and more on comparatives!

Bonus 89: The best and worst comparatives episode | Lingthusiasmwww.patreon.com Get more from Lingthusiasm on Patreon

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Gretchen McCulloch

I love Lingthusiasm very much!

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Gretchen McCulloch

Patrons get access to a bonus episode every month, which are like the main episodes only occasionally spicier (we have bonus episodes about things like swearing and language under the influence of various substances) And bonus episodes come with the same high quality transcripts as the mains!

The fragmentation of social media has been especially hard on indie projects being able to raise money which pays for things like our high quality human editing for both audio and transcripts (no ai!) If you've been vaguely thinking of becoming a patron of Lingthusiasm, consider this a reminder?

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Gretchen McCulloch

They are a good podcast! I say this partly because they do great transcripts. I can't listen well to podcasts at any length. But read 'em? Yes. It's very nice to feel included in this fun-and-informative stuff.

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Gretchen McCulloch

This is an excellent podcast. Full of fun info about language, and also a pleasure to listen to. (And if you write SFF like I do, it will get you thinking about how you approach language in your worldbuilding.)

New favourite example of structural ambiguity

Jesus Christ, the fireflies in Brooklyn walk?!

I'm involved in this and especially in spearheading the fishbowl sessions after they went so well as a format for organized discussions at the @lingcomm.bsky.social conference, happy to take questions on how those work!

LEXING is live! An LSA event for linguists outside academia––we'll have organized sessions, full talks, lightning talks, fishbowl discussions, sessions for linguists considering non-academic careers, and plenty of time to socialize. Join us! www.lsadc.org/content.asp?... 🐦🐦

LEXING: Linguists in Industry, Non-profits, and Governmentwww.lsadc.org LEXING: A symposium for Linguists in Industry, Non-profits, and Government (and other sectors)

Again I must repeat that linguists are not kidding when we say that your knowledge of the systems of language enables you to understand sentences that have never before been uttered

At no point in this sentence could I predict what the next word was going to be

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Gretchen McCulloch

One for the syntax folk 🐦🐦

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Since I adore Robin McKinley, this is going directly into my To Read list!

Just read A Sweet Sting of Salt by Rose Sutherland and I LOVED it, if you like queer fairy tale retellings or were a fan of Robin McKinley back in the day I cannot more strongly grab your lapels and insist you read this book (Link is to the Canadian cover, which I like better)

A Sweet Sting of Salt by Rose Sutherland | Penguin Random House Canadawww.penguinrandomhouse.ca When a young woman in 19th century Nova Scotia uncovers a magical secret about her neighbour, she’ll have to fight to keep the truth—and the woman she loves—safe in this stunning queer reimagining of ...

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Gretchen McCulloch

Today is Everything Happens So Much day, the day on which in 2012 horse_ebooks tweeted "everything happens so much"

The 10-Year-Old Tweet That Still Defines the Internetwww.theatlantic.com A cryptic utterance from a supposed spambot never lost its relevance.

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It was especially neat for me personally to read this book as someone who also grew up in rural Nova Scotia like the author, about 80% of the surnames in the book were like "oh yeah I went to high school with someone with that surname" But this was more of a fun easter egg for a very gripping book

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Adult language features vision verbs frequently, followed by hearing, but rarely touch. In young children's language, we find vision verbs do appear first and more frequently, but touch appears before hearing, consistent with embodied accounts of meaning. doi.org/10.1111/cogs.13469

Vision Verbs Emerge First in English Acquisition but Touch, not Audition, Follows Seconddoi.org Words that describe sensory perception give insight into how language mediates human experience, and the acquisition of these words is one way to examine how we learn to categorize and communicate se....

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I was very delighted to talk with Jacq about their cool research involving outfit selfies along with sociolinguistic audio recordings! Plus, (gently!) poking yourself with a toothpick to find out which of the two English R movements you're making

Voice is one part of how we express identity, and we can use it differently in different situations, depending on things like who we're talking to and what we're wearing We talk with Jacq Jones about how nonbinary and binary people talk!

93: How nonbinary and binary people talk - Interview with Jacq Jonessoundcloud.com There are many ways that people perform gender, from clothing and hairstyle to how we talk or carry ourselves. When doing linguistic analysis of one aspect, such as someone's voice, it's useful to als

I'm excited to see the lingcomm conference happening again next year! lingcomm.org/conference/ #lingcomm25

🚨🚨 SAVE THE DATE 🚨🚨 #LingComm25 is happening, 7–10 April 2025. It's an online conference for linguistic communicators. with panels, how-to sessions, and meetups where you can get ideas, meet people, lift your game, and form the future of ling comm To be followed by #LingFest25

Conferencelingcomm.org International Conference on Linguistics Communication7–10 April 2025online The International Conference on Linguistics Communication (LingComm25) will bring together lingcommers from a variety of back...

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Somehow the baby has confused “bat’riq” (Arabic for penguin) with “bless you”—but she also knows that “saha” is what you say in Arabic when a person sneezes. So, logically, she’s deduced that the English post-sneeze salutation is to heartily say “penguin!”

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Gretchen McCulloch

For anyone who wants more kiki/bouba content, check out this @lingthusiasm.bsky.social episode about what goes wrong when you try to do kiki/bouba in more languages and other questions of cross-sensory perception lingthusiasm.com/post/1751274... #linguistics 🧪

21: What words sound spiky across languages? Interview with Suzy Styleslingthusiasm.com Lingthusiasm Episode 21: What words sound spiky across languages? Interview with Suzy Styles Most of the time, a word is an arbitrary label: there’s no particular reason why a cat has to be assoc...

Woo it's been a while since I've seen such an obvious Google Translate fail (With the knowledge that épeautre is a grain it's pretty easy to figure out what went wrong here)

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Gretchen McCulloch

Just learned the Spanish version of "righty tighty, lefty loosey" translates as "the right oppresses, the left liberates" and holy shit that goes hard.

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Oh I see, I had to both like and subscribe to the bouba kiki labeller, apparently I am bouba (Personally I think I'm bouba in appearance, kiki in personality)

I MUST KNOW

introducing @kiki-bouba.mozzius.dev like the labeller to find out if you're kiki or bouba (wip, still working out the prompt)

This paper is excellent and I am thinking about how it applies to lingcomm

I started flipping through some of Daniel Chambliss' (*) articles, and wow: (*) He wrote "The Mundanity of Excellence", which I lean on to an embarrassing degree. academics.hamilton.edu/documents/bi...

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Lingthusiasm

Missed the previous episode? Check out our episode about smooshing words together here:

Can you identify which two words each of these words comes from? brunch smog mizzle Kenergy motel wonut fozzle brinkles This month: these portmanteaux and more linguistic smooshing!

92: Brunch, gonna, and fozzle - The smooshing episodesoundcloud.com Sometimes two words are smooshed together in a single act of creativity to fill a lexical gap, like making

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Lingthusiasm

This month's bonus episode is about three of our favourite kinds of linguistic mixups: spoonerisms, mondegreens, and eggcorns! Help us keep the show running and get access to over 80 bonus episodes by becoming a patron:

What do Starbucks lovers, a well-boiled icicle, and damp squid have in common? They're all kinds of linguistic mixups, which we talk about in this month's bonus episode!

Bonus 88: Linguistic mixups - spoonerisms, mondegreens, and eggcorns | Lingthusiasmwww.patreon.com Get more from Lingthusiasm on Patreon