Gretchen McCulloch: The Internet is Making English Better

Join Internet Linguist Gretchen McCulloch in conversation with Linguistics Prof. Claire Bowern. Casual internet language is often portrayed as “bad grammar” or “breaking language rules”. Yet in many ways language use on the internet is just like language use elsewhere - it has conventions that vary across groups, that people use, largely without being deliberately taught.

The discussion will explore some of these ways people use language, how linguists analyze language, from why ending your texts with a period is “good style” to some but “shows you’re angry” to others, to new words and grammar that started online (lol) but have ended up in general use. This event is part of the Model Research Collection at Bass Library, “Language is Everywhere: The Linguistics of Biology, Culture and Society across Time and Space” and is cosponsored by the Department of Linguistics.