Bio

I pronounce my name /ɡɹɛtʃn̩ məkʌlɪk/, but feel free to adapt it to the phonology of your native language. Please do, however, double check that you’re spelling it correctly. Longer notes on my name. 

Short bio:

Gretchen McCulloch is an internet linguist and author of the New York Times bestselling Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language. She’s been the Resident Linguist at Wired and The Toast and is the co-creator of Lingthusiasm, a podcast that’s enthusiastic about linguistics. She lives in Montreal, but also on the internet.

Longer bio:

Gretchen McCulloch is an internet linguist: she explores the language of the internet for the people of the internet. She’s the co-creator of  Lingthusiasm, a podcast that’s enthusiastic about linguistics, which the New York Times calls “fascinating” and Buzzfeed calls “joyously nerdy”. McCulloch is the author of the New York Times bestselling book Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language, which was published by Riverhead (Penguin) in 2019 and has been reviewed in the New York Times, the New Yorker, the Economist, TIME, the Atlantic, NPR, and Science Magazine. Because Internet has been translated into four languages and was named a Best Book of 2019 by TIME, Amazon, and the Washington Post.

McCulloch has written Resident Linguist column at Wired and has also written for the New York Times, the Atlantic, New York Magazine, Slate, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and The Toast. She has a master’s in linguistics from McGill University and has spoken for South by Southwest, YouTube, Duolingo, Princeton, Facebook, Sotheby’s, Yale, and the Unicode Consortium. McCulloch is the creator of the linguistics blog All Things Linguistic, co-writer of the video series Crash Course Linguistics on youtube, and co-founder of LingComm, the International Conference on Linguistics Communication. In 2021, McCulloch was the recipient of the Linguistic Society of America’s Language, Linguistics, and the Public award. She is Canadian and lives in Montreal, but also on the internet. She likes novel ice cream flavours, fancy hats, and books that do weird things with language.

You can follow her on Bluesky @gretchenmcculloch.com, Instagram @gretchen.mcculloch, or through her newsletter.

Author photo in three different sizes.

Gretchen McCulloch author photo

Author photo credit: Yvon Huynh

Lingthusiasm cohost portrait (with Lauren Gawne), in three sizes. Credit: Malyar for Covatar.