2019 was a very big year for me.
My book about internet language, which I'd been working on since 2014, finally came out into the world! Because Internet hit the New York Times bestseller list and was one of TIME's 100 books of 2019, plus tons of other media.
I wrote two op-eds for the New York Times and continued writing my Resident Linguist column at Wired, and we made two special video episodes of my podcast, Lingthusiasm.
Book: Because Internet
There were over 200 media hits for Because Internet in 2019, at final count. Here are a few highlights:
Two (!!) reviews in the New York Times, by Jennifer Szalai (NYT Daily) and Clay Shirky (NYT Book Review)
Two reviews in the New Yorker, by Katy Waldman and Mary Norris
Reviews in: The Economist, Time Magazine, Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, Science Magazine, The Times (of London), the Observer/Guardian, BBC Science Focus.
NPR: All Things Considered and Science Friday
Trade reviews: Kirkus, Publisher’s Weekly (starred), Booklist, and Library Journal
Podcasts: The Cracked Podcast, The Allusionist, Grammar Girl, Slate’s “Lexicon Valley”, New York Times Book Review podcast, The Ezra Klein Show
Lists: TIME’s 100 Must-Read Books of 2019, Goodreads Choice Award Semifinalist, an Amazon Best Nonfiction Book of 2019
My publisher made me a special leather-bound version of Because Internet in celebration of it becoming a New York Times bestseller. It's beautiful.
I have a Wikipedia page now and someone dressed up as my book for Halloween!
Short-form Writing
We Learned to Write the Way We Talk (New York Times Op Ed)
How Can You Appreciate 23rd-Century English? Look Back 200 Years (New York Times Op-Eds From the Future)
We Will Have Meme Folklorists (New York Magazine)
How to use irony on the internet (Wall Street Journal)
The Big Idea: Writing towards the future (John Scalzi’s Whatever)
Wired Resident Linguist column:
Fans are better than tech at organizing information online (about the Archive of Our Own)
The meaning of all caps — in texting and in life (excerpt from Because Internet)
I also co-wrote an academic article with Lauren Gawne, Emoji as Digital Gestures in the journal Language@Internet [Open Access].
Events, Talks, and Videos
In January, I did a lingwiki Wikipedia editathon and judged the 5 Minute Linguist competition, both at the LSA annual meeting.
In March, I gave a comic talk at the festival of Bad Ad-hoc Hypotheses (BAHfest) about why we should make English spelling more weird and confusing, which you can watch online. Recommended if you like Unicode jokes.
In May, I recorded the Because Internet audiobook! Here's a thread with my linguistic thoughts about the process and an audio sample of me reading the audiobook.
In July, I went to the LSA Summer Institute in UC Davis, to do a lingwiki Wikipedia editathon focussing on articles about underrepresented languages, a talk about effective communication of linguistics to a general audience, and MC'd the 3 Minute Thesis event. Plus, I had book launch party in Montreal with Argo Bookshop!
In September, I did a book event in Toronto in conversation with Ryan North (of Dinosaur Comics fame), featuring a packed house with many old friends at The Ossington with Flying Booksn. I also went to XOXO fest in Portland, and did two talks about the book in Seattle, with Textio and the Seattle Review of Books and Elliott Bay Books.
In October, I was on a panel about busting language myths through podcasting at Sound Education in Boston. I was also on panels about Using Language for Worldbuilding (moderator) and “What did we say before we said Cool?” at Scintillation, a small speculative fiction convention in Montreal.
I now have a speaking reel! So if you've ever wondered what it's like when I'm giving a talk about internet linguistics, you can now watch a five minute highlights video here!
I collaborated on several Language Files videos with youtuber Tom Scott:
Lingthusiasm Podcast
We celebrated our third year of Lingthusiasm, a podcast that's enthusiastic about linguistics which I make with Lauren Gawne. New this year were two video episodes, about gesture and signed languages, so that you can actually see them!
Here are all 24 episodes from 2019:
The verb is the coat rack that the rest of the sentence hangs on
Why do we gesture when we talk? (also a video episode!)
Pop culture in Cook Islands Māori - Interview with Ake Nicholas
Putting sounds into syllables is like putting toppings on a burger
Villages, gifs, and children - Interview with Lynn Hou on signed languages in real-world contexts (also a video episode!)
Many ways to talk about many things - Plurals, duals, and more
Bonus episodes on Patreon:
How the internet is making English better (liveshow from Melbourne)
How do radio announcers know how to pronounce all the names? With guest Tiger Webb
Talking with dogs, horses, ravens, dolphins, bees, and other animals
The sounds of sheep, earthquakes, and ice cream - Onomatopoeia
We also made new Lingthusiasm merch, including items with the best esoteric Unicode symbols on them, adding socks, mugs, and notebooks in all our prints (IPA, tree diagrams, and esoteric symbols), onesies saying Little Longitudinal Language Acquisition Project, greeting cards that say “thanks” or “congrats” on them in IPA; the pun-tastic “glottal bottle” and liquids for your liquids bottle/mug; and shirts/mugs/bags that say Linguistic “Correctness” is just a lie from Big Grammar to Sell More Grammars. (See photos of all the Lingthusiasm merch here.)
I celebrated my seventh year blogging at All Things Linguistic and wrote a series on Weird Internet Careers.
[Substack says that this full Year in Review post is too long for email, so if you’d like to see the twitter thread and blog post highlights, see the web version here.]
Missed out on previous years? Here are the summary posts from 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018. If you’d like to get a much shorter monthly highlights newsletter via email, with all sorts of interesting internet linguistics news, you can sign up for that at gretchenmcc.substack.com.
Thanks for coming along,
Gretchen