Gretchen McCulloch

Gretchen McCulloch is an internet linguist. Check out her new book ‘Because Internet: Understanding The New Rules Of Language’.

Guest Appearances

July 7, 2019

You: “Emoji are killing the English language.” Me: “eMoJi ArE kIlLiNg ThE eNgLiSh LaNgUaGe” plus a specific screencap of SpongeBob Squarepants acting like a chicken.

If you understand the above text, this might be your favorite episode of The Cracked Podcast. If you don’t understand that text, this WILL be your favorite episode of The Cracked Podcast, because everything you read online is about to make more sense. 

On this week’s show, Alex Schmidt is joined by linguist Gretchen McCulloch for a dig into her revelatory new book ‘Because Internet: Understanding The New Rules Of Language’. They’ll explore how the past few decades contain several distinct generations of Internet users, each contributing to a worldwide linguistic sea-change. You’ll discover which online generation you’re a part of. You’ll learn how 4 billion people work together to remake our writing and speaking every day. And yes: you WILL discover why emoji are a valuable format that makes our writing richer.

Footnotes: https://www.cracked.com/podcast/how-very-online-people-revolutionized-english-language