Tag: storify

May 2018: Babel interview, meme culture, and a teal tree scarf

Gretchen McCulloch

I did an interview with Babel Magazine about Lingthusiasm with Lauren Gawne for their Meet the Professionals series.

I was also interviewed for an article about How Star Trek: The Next Generation predicted meme culture in Twin Cities Geek.

The main Lingthusiasm episode this month was about speaking Canadian and Australian English and the book the Prodigal Tongue about British and American national varieties of English, and the bonus episode about what you should know if you’re thinking about applying to linguistics grad school. We also announced the artist for art goal, new video episode goals, and posted a quote about the connection between first, second and minute, second.

I did social media for the McGill Symposium on Indigenous Languages: see the Twitter Moment summarizing the livetweeting here.

It was my 6-year blogiversary on All Things Linguistic! Here’s a link roundup of my favourite posts from the past year.

I archived my livetweets of several linguistically interesting books from Storify, since it was shutting down, into Twitter Moments:

Selected tweets:

Selected blog posts:

 

This month’s featured image is the teal tree diagram scarf (prototype version: see the cream scarf for the updated size of the diagrams) hanging out in a yellow forsythia bush.

Maker:S,Date:2017-11-21,Ver:6,Lens:Kan03,Act:Lar02,E-Y

March 2017: #SXSW Words panel, #ICLDC5 #lingwiki, Princeton talk, Lingthusiasm Patreon

Gretchen McCulloch

Many talks and travel in March! I began the month in Hawai’i, where I ran several lingwiki editathons at the International Conference on Language Documentation and Conservation (#icldc5) and also got to attend the Hilo Field Study and learn about Hawaiian language revitalization.

I then headed directly to South by Southwest, where I moderated a panel called Word Curation: Dictionaries, Tech and the Future with Erin McKean (Wordnik), Jane Solomon (Dictionary.com), and Ben Zimmer (Wall Street Journal).  We also stayed in a house together and played word games, and Erin, Jane, and I judged an emoji spelling bee organized by Jenny 8 Lee and other people from EmojiCon.

While the conferences themselves were very different, fortunately the weather in Hawai’i and Texas was very similar – warm and sometimes rainy!

My final talk of the month was at the Princeton linguistics department, where I gave a colloquium talk entitled How I Became An Internet Linguist. I also livetweeted Kory Stamper’s new book, Word by Word, and then got to hang out with her and several other cool lexicography people in NYC on the way to Princeton.

In the meantime, I was quoted in two articles in the New York Times, on Snapchat and phatic communication by Farhad Manjoo and on The communicative function of emoji (Gaymoji) in Grindr by Guy Trebay. The first episode of Lingthusiasm was also featured in NY Mag’s Science of Us and on #SciFriLive (Science Friday on NPR).

The sixth episode of Lingthusiasm came out, about the International Phonetic Alphabet. Listen to the episode on SoundCloud (or wherever you get your podcasts), read the transcript, or check out the links in the shownotes. My cohost Lauren Gawne and I also launched a Patreon to help keep the podcast growing, with a bonus episode about swearing and a video featuring a cameo from our producer.

Selected tweets:

Selected blog posts:

This month’s featured image is from playing word games at the words house at SXSW. This particular game is known as Codenames and it was great fun.

sxsw word game

September 2016: Second book draft, #Wulf4Ham, linguistics jobs interviews

Gretchen McCulloch

I hit a book milestone: I finished the second major draft! Details and sneak peaks into the writing process. I also made a central information page for the book.

I was quoted in two articles, That time when “That time when” took over the Internet (Washington Post) and the evolution of emoji from emoticons (Japan Times). I also storified the Beowulf/Hamilton crossover, #Wulf4Ham.

I restarted the series of interviews for the linguistics jobs series on All Things Linguistic, with the help of Elena Russo, and also created a handy linguistics jobs overview page. New interviews: with a book publicist, science fiction writer, and policy analyst.

I’m currently heading to Dawn or Doom, a conference at Purdue University about technology and culture, where I’ll be giving a talk about the linguistics of emoji, so you can keep an eye on #DawnOrDoom for livetweets! I also announced this month that I’ll be giving a workshop at EmojiCon in November in the Bay Area.

Selected tweets:

Selected blog posts:

This month’s bookshelfie is a photo I took when I stopped in Reykjavik briefly on my way back from the UK in May. Mál og Menning didn’t have much of a linguistics section, but the balcony and hanging bird cutouts were charming anyway.

reykjavik-bookshelfie

February 2016: Fansplaining podcast interview, #lingchat, TV in Singapore

Gretchen McCulloch

I did a nice long interview on internet language and fandom language on the podcast Fansplaining, episode 15 ~fanspeak, which you can listen to on soundcloud or read the transcript of on tumblr. Key quote: “Your language is not my language but your language is okay.”

I was also the featured guest for a twitter #lingchat on internet language, which you can read on storify. I also storified my twitter comments about the novel The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin. And linguist twitter had some fun riffing on the “Champagne toasts for my real friends” chiasmic toast, also storified.

I did several interviews:

This month was a pretty quiet book-writing month, but I’ve got a lot of travel lined up for the spring, starting with South by Southwest in Austin, Texas in March where I’m giving a talk about the linguistics of emoji.

Selected blog posts:

This is a picture that I took in Trident Books in Halifax a while back. They didn’t have a linguistics section, but I was struck by them having an entire label for “impermanence”.

impermanence bookshelfie

October 2015: SXSW accepted, Polyglot Conference, NELS & NWAV editathons, and storifies

Gretchen McCulloch

My SXSW panel with SwiftKey about the linguistics of emoji was accepted!

I did three Wikipedia editathons, at NELS in Montreal, NWAV in Toronto, and at Queen’s in Kingston. Here’s a summary of all three editathons. The NELS editathon was my last under my Inspire grant from Wikimedia, and it also got picked up in Concordia’s news service which led to me doing an interview about it with CBC Homerun.

I attended Polyglot Conference in New York City, which I’ve storified the livetweets from. I also storified my livetweeting of Rainbow Rowell’s new book, Carry On, as well as a linguistic parody of Taylor Swift’s Blank Space that I wrote a while back.

Articles for Mental Floss:

I did interviews for a number of articles:

And several of my previous articles got picked up elsewhere:

Selected blog posts:

I took so many cute wugshots this month I couldn’t pick just one. Here’s a series of crocheted wugs which Concordia linguistics student Caitlin Stahl made and brought to NELS, a wug I drew on a children’s magnetic toy in a store in NYC, and a line of marching wugs from a blackboard in the University of Toronto linguistics department.

crocheted wugs wug toy wugboard