memes – Page 3 – Gretchen McCulloch

September 2017: Lingthusiasm liveshow, line edits on the book, and aliebn-speak

October 7, 2017 Gretchen McCulloch

We had a Lingthusiasm liveshow at Argo Bookshop in Montreal, because my cohost Lauren Gawne was in town for a conference. We sold out the bookshop (in fact, we had to buy them a couple extra chairs!). It was great to meet so many new listeners and to introduce Lauren to friends I already know! If you missed out on the liveshow due to the vicissitudes of geography, you can now listen to it online: So like, what’s up with, um, discourse markers? Hark, a liveshow!

This month’s Lingthusiasm main episode was about sounds you can’t hear – babies, accents, and phonemes, and the bonus is about linguistic research and how to become the go-to person among your friends for language questions. We also made a snazzier website for the podcast.

Book update: I’ve progressed into line edits for my book on internet language. (Not sure what line edits are? I’m really happy with the metaphor I came up with to explain them.)

I was interviewed in an episode of the World in Words about “aliebn-speak” or the linguistic style of jomny sun.

I was also interviewed on the Macquarie Dictionary podcast about the history of singular “they” and how “language is an open source project”.

Selected tweets:

Selected blog posts:

How to teach yourself linguistics online for free
A French idiom about very good wine
Linguistics jobs interviews with a librarian and digital humanities librarian
Prescriptivism takes on the expanding brain meme
When does maluma/takete fail? The language’s sound system matters
Even racists got the blues – a tale of translation gone awry
“Linguists are interested in your intuitive sense of grammaticality”
How to type IPA on your computer or phone
OK is a fossilized meme
Sign languages have accents
Is your child texting about minimalist syntax? (meme)
Jean Berko Gleason with a very large wug
You’ve heard of Elf on the Shelf, now get ready for…phonemes on the memes

Here’s a photo from the liveshow at Argo Bookshop!

August 2017: #SpaceWitchCon, Planet Word beginnings, Al Jazeera TV & your ability to even

September 8, 2017 Gretchen McCulloch

I went from Lingstitute to Washington DC, where I did some internet linguistic consulting work, and met up with some DC linguists, including Ann Friedman and several members of the Planet Word Advisory Board, which I am now on as well! I’m excited to be getting involved with this project to create a linguistics museum.

I then went to SpaceWitchCon, in the woods of North Carolina, where I ran a very fun session about internet linguistics (and also did a lot of singalongs and crafting and other excellent nerdery).

Later in the month, I was on live TV with Al Jazeera’s The Stream, talking about emoji (watch here), and a post of mine, about how to talk with your academic heroes and other people you admire, was featured on Thesis Whisperer.

This month’s Lingthusiasm episode was about Layers of meaning: Cooperation, humour, and Gricean Maxims, and the bonus episode was about language play. We also reached our Patreon interview goal, so you can look forward to hearing guest linguists on Lingthusiasm shortly!

Selected tweets:

“What is the kind that your book is the first of its?”
One of the many ways in which my name is NOT spelled
Coming up with a clever/nerdy wifi network name
Novel sentences: bats in a fiberglass triceratops
Partial eclipse of the heart
A timely case for not calling yourself a “grammar nazi”
Linguistics versions of the distracted boyfriend meme: “I’d tap that” and “Arrival“
Anyone know of work on autocorrect affecting regionalisms?
I have a new favourite French idiom
The history of dictionary lookup trends

Selected blog posts:

This month’s photo is a sign from SpaceWitch: the rooms were divided into even and odd sections, so I took this picture for those times when you can’t even anymore: here’s some even!

June 2017: Internet tilde, meme formatting, and doggo syntax

July 8, 2017August 5, 2017 Gretchen McCulloch

I was quoted in this article in NY Magazine: The Internet Tilde Perfectly Conveys Something We Don’t Have the Words to Explain. I was also in an episode of CBC Spark about digital tools revitalizing minority languages.

I spent a bunch of time behind the scenes working on the book: here’s an #amwriting tweet about meme formatting.

Lingthusiasm posted its ninth regular episode: The bridge between words and sentences – Constituency and a bonus episode about the linguistics of the doggo meme. I made a page about the podcast for this website and we put the Space Pidgin quote on Medium for easier reading. Lingthusiasm hit our equipment goal and bought a new recorder: here’s a picture of it!

I also announced a class twitter account @LingComm and class hashtag #lingcomm for the course on linguistics outreach/communicating linguistics that I’m teaching at the Linguistic Summer Institute (Lingstitute) in the month of July. Feel free to follow along!

Selected tweets:

Selected blog posts:

This month’s featured image is a photo of the new linguistics section at Argo Bookshop in Montreal, which was just reopened by linguists Moti Lieberman and Adele-Elise Prevost, from when I went to their opening party this month.