Category: monthly

September 2015: Ship names, radio Drive interviews, swearing in GDocs, and Linguists@Montréal

Gretchen McCulloch

I did two radio interviews this month, both of which happened to be national Drive programs, in Canada (CBC), talking about emoji and Australia (ABC), talking about language on twitter. You can listen online at their respective links.

I had a Toast article go up about the linguistics of ship names — how names like Johnlock and Brittana and Dramione get put together.

Articles for Mental Floss:

I wrote an article for Strong Language about how the new voice transcription feature in Google Docs is censoring some swear words, which got picked up by a lot of news outlets: Wired, Gawker, The Register, Fusion, The Daily Dot, and Business Insider.

One of my blog posts on All Things Linguistic, about “you’re welcome” versus “no problem” and phatic communication, got picked up by Buzzfeed and turned into a gif-post.  The Quartz article I wrote last month about young women’s speech also got picked up in an article at New York University.

I started a linguistics meetup group, Linguists@Montréal, loosely inspired by Linguistics in the Pub, and we had our first few inaugural events. If you’re a linguist living in or visiting Montreal, feel free to join the Facebook group or check it out to see if there’s an event happening when you’re around! (There will be a pub night the Thursday before NELS.)

Selected blog posts on All Things Linguistic:

Upcoming: I’m going to three conferences in October, Polyglot Conference in New York City, NELS in Montreal, and NWAV in Toronto. Details here, but I’ll be livetweeting using the hashtags: #pcnyc15, #nels46, and #nwav44 if you’d like to follow along!

Here’s a bookshelfie I took at Powell’s in Hyde Park when I was in Chicago in July, with some fancy filters:

linguistics bookshelf powells bw

August 2015: SXSW proposal, language disruptors, vintage internet slang, back-to-school link roundup & linguistics + X

Gretchen McCulloch

I’ve started working with SwiftKey, a mobile keyboard app company, on analyzing some of their extensive data on how people use emoji. We’ve got a panel proposal up for South by Southwest Interactive which you can see more details about and vote for, if you’re so inclined.

I wrote my first piece for Quartz, about how young women have been disrupting language ever since Shakespeare, and it got picked up by the Smithsonian Magazine.

I revisited the classic handbook of cutting-edge 90s internet language, Wired Style and wrote about its retro internet slang and how I became a descriptivist for The Toast and then explored further vintage slang from it in a follow-up on Mental Floss. I also wrote for Mental Floss about the two kinds of hashtags, index and commentary.

I livetweeted my thoughts about an advance copy of David J. Peterson’s The Art of Language Invention, which I’ve summed up in a Storify (with sneak peeks of the book).

I published a back-to-school link round up on All Things Linguistic, as well as a career advice post, Linguistics + X.

Selected blog posts:

Here’s a picture of my paper copy of Wired Style that I hunted down secondhand since it’s now out of print. wired style

July 2015: Lingstitute, four #lingwiki editathons, and stub sorting

Gretchen McCulloch

In July 2015, I attended the month-long LSA summer institute (aka lingstitute) at the University of Chicago. My primary purpose there was to run four, weekly editathons to improve linguistics-related articles on Wikipedia. There were a total of 76 participants and 50 articles improved in 5 languages — for more details, see the report here. Many thanks to everyone involved!

We also had a tumblinguist meetup at lingstitute, and here’s a picture of our hands with wugs drawn on them. I livetweeted many other lingstitute events, which can be found on twitter. Plus, a lingstitute-inspired survey about what your favourite vowel is.

Shortly before lingstitute, Emily Temple-Wood (Wikipedia User:Keilana) and I created a wug-tastic linguistics stub sorting guide, for those who may be interested in contributing to linguistics-related articles on Wikipedia but don’t know much about linguistics — and it’s already seen some use at the editathons!

Articles:

Selected blog posts:

I took this picture at the Seminary Co-op bookstore at UChicago. The linguistics and Marxism sections are right next to each other — I was told it’s so that all the Chomsky can be together.

seminary coop bookshelf linguistics+marxism

June 2015: Bab.la Top 25 blogs, Internet sarcasm on The Toast, emoji interviews & more videos

Gretchen McCulloch

All Things Linguistic made Bab.la’s list of Top 25 Language Professionals Blogs.

I’m back on The Toast, writing about internet sarcasm. I also started writing for Dictionary.com – my first article was about ingressives: Can an inhaled word mean something? 

Articles for Mental Floss:

I’m quoted in this article on emoji by the Canadian Press, which appeared in CTVnews, Metro, and many other newspapers in Canada. I also did radio interviews about emoji for ABC (Perth, Australia) and CKTB 610 (Niagara, Canada), although I don’t think they’re online yet.

The three remaining videos that I co-wrote with Tom Scott went up:

The fourth video in LingVids went up, about reflexive pronouns and anaphora:

Selected blog posts:

In July, I’m heading to the LSA summer institute in Chicago where I’ll be running four linguistics Wikipedia editathons, on Wednesday afternoons. Follow the #lingstitute hashtag for general updates and the #lingwiki hashtag for the editathons — and feel free to participate from online!

Here’s a picture of the linguistics section at the Montague Bookmill, which was originally where I took the cover photo I use everywhere and which I revisited a while back:

montague bookmill linguistics shelf redux

May 2015: Emoji interviews, 3rd blogiversary, Language Files videos, and CLA #lingwiki

Gretchen McCulloch

I did several interviews on emoji this month: for Youth Radio on NPR, for The Fader, and for CNET, plus a few tweets about emoji that got quoted on News.Com.Au:

emoji language tweet

I organized the third #lingwiki editathon at the annual meeting of the Canadian Linguistics Association / Association canadienne de linguistique (ACL|CLA). We had 32 participants who edited a total of 43 articles – you can see the full report here. Many thanks to the sponsors, Wikimedia and the ACL|CLA, and of course to all the participants.

I launched a series of linguistics videos with YouTuber Tom Scott. We co-wrote five videos as a third season of his Language Files series — the first two went up in May, and the next three will go up in June.

The third video in LingVids, my previous collaborative videos project, also went up this month.

Articles for Mental Floss: Does this sentence sound incomplete, or?, “You” versus “u” as a formality distinction, and 15 ways to laugh online.

It was my third blogiversary on All Things Linguistic, so I posted a roundup of my favourite posts from the past year. Selected blog posts from this month:

And finally, here’s a photo of the linguistics section in Strand Books, from when I visited New York City this month. I’m especially pleased that they have separate sections for linguistics and etymology!

strand bookshelf

April 2015: Wikimedia #lingwiki grant, language is open source talk, resources for high school teachers, and IPA Scrabble

Gretchen McCulloch
IPA Scrabble set

I received a grant from Wikimedia to fund the upcoming #lingwiki editathons in May (at the CLA in Ottawa), July (at the LSA summer institute in July), and October (at NELS in Montreal). You can see the grant information here: Linguistics Editathon series: Improving female linguists’ participation and representation on Wikipedia. The grant was funded through Wikimedia’s Inspire campaign to improve the gender gap in Wikipedia editing, which was a great fit considering that a lot of fantastic female linguists have participated in previous lingwikis, and many articles about notable female linguists have already been added. I’m excited to see more articles in that area as well as our other two categories of under-documented languages and linguistics stubs improved in the three upcoming lingwikis.

I gave a lightning talk called “Language is Open Source” at AdaCamp Montreal, a conference for women in open source and open culture. You can read the full text here. I also facilitated a round-table session about linguistics at AdaCamp — turns out there are a quite a lot of former linguists in tech!

I wrote two articles for Mental Floss:

I compiled a resource post for high school teachers who want to do linguistics activities with their classes. Feel free to share with any high school teachers in your life!

The second episode of Ling Vids came out, on what “wanna” tells us about how sentences fit together:

Selected blog posts:

I also posted some gorgeous photos of an IPA Scrabble set that the Yale Undergraduate Linguistics Society made (see all the pictures here):

IPA Scrabble set
IPA Scrabble picture courtesy of YULS

March 2015: internet language on Mental Floss & interviews, second #lingwiki, LingVids

Gretchen McCulloch

In March I started writing a new series on internet language for Mental Floss. My first post takes a look at your ability to even: Is “even” turning into a verb? Why is it so hard to “can even”?

I also did interviews for two articles on internet language: That Way We’re All Talking Now on Matter (follow-up comments here) and no capitalization is funnier on HuffPost Books.

I organized the second #lingwiki Wikipedia editathon, for which the central event took place online via the Twitter hashtag, but with in-person satellite editathons in Singapore (organized by Lauren Gawne), Canberra (organized by Hedvig Skirgard) and Madrid (organized by Manuel Alcántara Pia). A total of 24 participants from four continents participated, creating or improving 54 articles in 7 languages. Full details here, including a list of all articles edited. I also attended and helped facilitate at my local Art+Feminism editathon earlier in the month.

I jointly launched a new collaborative project, Ling Vids, a series of videos about linguistics. You can watch the first video below, on whether a sentence is more like a bracelet or a mobile:

Selected posts from All Things Linguistic

February 2015: On writing, Unravel interview, and March & July editathon plans

Gretchen McCulloch

I wrote about the differences between teaching, pop linguistics, and pop science, in which I also bid farewell to editing for Lexicon Valley, although you’ll still see my writing popping up there occasionally.

I did an interview in Unravel Magazine about popularizing linguistics and writing about internet language.

Lingstitute editathon news

The second #lingwiki will take place online on the last weekend of March, the 28-29, with the peak online hours being 7-10pm US/Canada-EDT = 7-10am Singapore time, etc. Lauren Gawne of Superlinguo is also organizing an in-person editathon in Singapore, and Hedvig of Humans Who Read Grammars is organizing one in Canberra, Australia. I’m also in touch with organizers in Spain, who are translating my original slides (benefits of Creative Commons licenses!) and planning an editathon for the first weekend of April.

For more in-person events, I confirmed with the organizers of the 2015 summer institute in Chicago that they’re interested in hosting some #lingwiki events. So we’ll be having four editathons, one each Wednesday afternoon, and I’ll also be running a seminar on guiding your class to edit Wikipedia during the first week, in case any Lingstitute instructors want to take advantage of it. If anyone who’s not going to be in Chicago wants to take advantage of the July linguistics energy around Wikipedia and edit yourself or organize an editathon, you can follow along the #lingwiki hashtag and do feel free to get in touch with me for organizing tips.

Selected posts from All Things Linguistic:

I also finally finished my linguistics in Cabin Pressure series, with a post on the final episode, Zurich.

A giant outdoor wug brite, courtesy of Montréal en Lumière.
A giant outdoor wug brite, courtesy of Montréal en Lumière.

January 2015: Tumblinguists, LSA editathon report, WOTY, interviews, and an excellent shelf of books

Gretchen McCulloch
Powell's linguistics section, continued

I started the year at the Linguistics Society of America’s annual meeting in Portland, Oregon, where I spoke on a panel about popularizing linguistics in online media. I represented tumblr and tumblinguists, and you can view my slides online here; I’m told there will also be a video online eventually, so I’ll link to that whenever it’s up. I also organized a Wikipedia editathon to improve linguistics-related articles, which had 27 participants and improved at least 41 articles. Editathon links:

I’m currently organizing a second editathon to take place online around the #lingwiki hashtag. Please fill out the doodle poll here if you want your time preferences/timezone to be taken into consideration when scheduling it.

Several interviews with me (and various other linguists) are now online:

And I’m not interviewed, but I’m one of the many linguists that you can spot in this Word of the Year newsclip from Al Jazeera.

I also wrote several posts about the American Dialect Society’s Word of the Year vote on Lexicon Valley:

Selected blog posts

[Update: I forgot to mention that All Things Linguistic also now has a new theme, with a large header image like all the cool kids these days.]

Here’s a picture that I took in Portland at Powell’s Books — I’ve never seen such a large linguistics section at a general-audience bookstore (and this picture doesn’t even include all of it!). The linguistics section was pretty picked-over by the time I got there on Sunday, but I heard that several linguists found some good deals!

Powell's Portland linguistics section
Part of the linguistics section at Powell’s Books in Portland. They even separate out linguistics from usage guides and “fun facts about language” books. I’m a fan.

December 2014: Swearing, explaining linguistics, and more Cabin Pressure

Gretchen McCulloch

I wrote an article on the syntax of fuck for The Toast, reviving the classic paper, “English Sentences Without Overt Grammatical Subject”. I also joined Strong Language, a new blog about the language of swearing, and wrote a post about this delightful bilingual sticker that I snapped a photo of in Montreal. The comments on both the original wordpress post and my subsequent cross-post to tumblr are very much worth it for further commentary.

Il est interdit de faire smashy-smash. It is forbidden to fuck shit up.
Il est interdit de faire smashy-smash.
It is forbidden to fuck shit up.

I made a link round-up with resources for how to explain linguistics to your friends and family this holiday season, which was resoundingly popular on facebook (perhaps from linguists hinting to their friends and family!)

I continued my blog series on the linguistic aspects of Cabin Pressure, which ultimately came to the attention of John Finnemore, who writes and acts in the show.

For Lexicon Valley highlights, see this list of the top posts of 2014.

Selected blog posts:

Upcoming: Wikipedia editathon and panel about popularizing linguistics online (I’m representing tumblr) at the Linguistic Society of America annual meeting in Portland, Oregon next week.