Because Language - a podcast about linguistics, the science of language.
About
Available on
Community
97 episodes
Language authorities. Right-wing politicians. White supremacists and feminists. What do they have in common? They're all working together to fight gender-inclusive language. But why bring language into this fight? What extra does this give them? Dr CAITLIN GREEN and MAUREEN KOSSE join us to explain on this big episode.
In honour of Grammar Day (4 March), we are joined live by special guest ELLEN JOVIN, who regularly dispenses grammar advice and wisdom from the Grammar Table. Now she's testing our grammatical mettle and answering our questions. YouTube video of this episode: https://youtu.be/C1l8Alk3Ptc?si=7pnGnuKcy9YY-mhR
What are your eyes doing when you describe a scene? It may depend on your language. New research from Dr RACHEL NORDLINGER and team shows that we do a lot of planning and scanning very quickly, and it follows the requirements of our language. She's studied Murrinhparta, an Australian Aboriginal language, to see what its speakers do.
We’re talking words, and no one has a way with words like GRANT BARRETT. He’s here to tell us what it’s like at Dictionary.com http://dictionary.com, and what went down at the annual American Dialect Society Words of the Year 2023 vote. And perhaps he can help forestall Hedvig’s planned mass human extinction. Also: World Endangered Writing Day is upon us! It’s a fantastic initiative, and author TIM BROOKES of Endangered Alphabets is here to lay out the case for preserving writing systems.
The public has voted, and a winner has been decided! We're looking all the words chosen by the various dictionary bodies, and counting down our Words of the Week of the Year. And there's a very special interview with author, blogger, activist, and inventor of words CORY DOCTOROW.
What is a woman? Or a man? Or a chair, or a sandwich? Or anything, really? "Gender critical" people are making language into a vector to attack the rights of trans people. They treat categories like and as binary and obvious. But cognitive linguistics has a response, in the form of a new paper in . Are categories concrete, or are they mental, social, or something else? How do we categorise objects at all? Author Dr ANDREW PERFORS brings the science on this episode.
Who wrote the Oxford English Dictionary? Sure, James Murray had a very important role as editor, but a small army of volunteers submitted hundreds of thousands of words on slips of paper to get the project off the ground. What were their stories, and why did they have such a relentless sense of mission for the OED? Dr SARAH OGILVIE is sharing her research into their lives and times, and it's startling and wondrous. She's a lexicographer and author of .
Our accents are great! They represent our origins, our languages, our community, and our identity. But too many of us feel like we can't speak with our authentic voice. Accent prejudice is real. Linguist and author Dr ROB DRUMMOND joins us to explain all about accent and accentism. He's the author of a new book . And Dr ROBBIE LOVE is joining us with his research about how the word is changing in the speech of British teens. Spicy!
Our patrons are joining us live to give us their news, words, and stories. That's right, it's a Potluck episode! What's a "girl dinner"? What's the other name of India? And how is AI helping translate an ancient language? Thanks to all our great patrons, and especially those who joined us for this episode.
Women's bodies, women's occupations, women's experiences. So often in history, the discourse about women has been men, women. And that means that women's words have been lost. Dr JENNI NUTTALL has charted the lost history of women's words in her new book , and she joins us for this episode.
Listeners have once again sent us some great questions, and we have answers! __ __ Plus our favourite game, Related or Not!
Daniel Midgley, Ben Ainslie, and Hedvig Skirgård
For decades, forensic linguists have been pushing back on harmful language ideologies, and fighting for better representation for linguistic minorities in the legal domain. We're talking to three legendary linguists who have written the definitive record of how the discipline has developed in Australia. Also: why do male characters get more dialogue in video games? And how can this situation improve? The authors of a pioneering new study share their insights.
How do we make the discipline of linguistics — and our world — a more just, diverse, and equitable place? Why does our personal history and personal perspective matter when doing science? How do we build community? And what happens if we do nothing? This episode is really kind of a mini-conference. We found some new work from linguists we admire, so we put out the word to our patrons and piled into a room! We're hearing work from Dr ARIS CLEMONS, Dr CAITLIN GREEN, and Dr RIKKER DOCKUM on this episode.
Why does everyone say OOO! when they see someone fall down? Why do we say YUM when we feed a baby? And what's the deal with fillers like UM? For this episode we're talking about non-lexical vocalisations with Dr ELEONORA BEIER and Dr EMILY HOFSTETTER. Also: linguists are diving into Grambank, a database with detailed information about grammatical features in over 2,500 languages. With its release, we're talking to project leaders Dr RUSSELL GRAY and our own Dr HEDVIG SKIRGÅRD. Also, Hedvig gives us our yearly Eurovision language update. Ben's not here, so he won't complain.
How can you tell if a news story is intended to deceive? In one well-known case of journalistic deception, there were tells that required machine learning to trace. We’re talking to author and computational linguist JACK GRIEVE about his new book, .
We're going deep into our Mailbag, and we're going to answer all your questions. __ __
When language was innovated, what happened next? How did it change our abilities — and our responsibilities — to each other? Dr NICK ENFIELD shares ideas from his new book, . Plus: Have large language models (like GPT) disproven a key tenet of the innateness of language? Dr MORTEN CHRISTIANSEN takes us through the implications for nativism and language learning.
Here’s an entire show, curated by one of our most prolific contributors — newly minted speechie PHARAOHKATT! She’s got news. She’s got words. She tries to stump us on Related or Not. She even teaches us how to roll our R’s. Wow. But best of all, she answers all our questions about speech and language pathology.
For this special live LingFest23 episode, we’ll again be voting on tricky language issues, and our votes will be binding on all English users for all time because that’s how language works. __ __ And many more!
We all have freedom of expression, but what are its limits — social and legal? And how have governments tried to curtail it? We’re talking through the implications of free speech with DENNIS BARON. He’s the author of .
The American Dialect Society Word of the Year has been chosen — and it’s a wonderful and terrible pick! Depending on who you’re talking to. In this episode, we’re talking about -USSY and all the words. And we’re getting to our Mailbag, with our most intriguing research project ever: can you spot the pattern in the way Ben pronounces EITHER and NEITHER? Is there one?
In what was meant to be a casual chat, cognitive scientist Dr MARK ELLISON answers galaxy-brain-level questions about how language works. __ __ Fortunately, he helps us keep our eyes on the ball for this episode.
We're counting down our Words of the Year, as voted by you! We're joined by our friends and patrons, and they've brought us some words we missed. And we'll go through all the Words of the Year from dictionaries and language lovers, English and not. Thanks to all our friends who joined us for this show, and to all our great patrons who have supported our work. Video here: https://youtu.be/z1BmUixVNlY
ChatGPT has just landed. It can generate text that seems fluid, plausible, and (surprisingly) not total nonsense. It's got a lot of people wondering what's left for humans — and for the field of Natural Language Processing. Here to help us is computational linguist DAAN VAN ESCH.
Many expressions we use come from the nautical domain. But are they nautical? Are they really? We’ve got CHASE DALTON from the to shine a light on some of these expressions, and in some cases reveal the secret nautical origins of words we use every day. US Naval History Podcast on Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts
A chat with Dr KELLY WRIGHT, who’s been working on… well, really a lot. Kelly is at the juncture of a lot of areas we’re keen on. Oxford’s effort to document African-American English? She’s been there. Doing lexicography with the American Dialect Society? She’s on it. The LSA’s social media committee? She… was on it. And she’s been looking into a new unexplored area: people’s ideas about their own language knowledge. But it’s not all easy. And KELLY is here to tell us about her view of linguistics… from the struggle pile.
Just two words, but they do so much. But what exactly? Here to answer that question is Dr ISABELLE BURKE, who has studied in depth. She’s also going to help us with these Mailbag questions. __ __
Yes, linguistics is all through the world of sci-fi, but science fiction has had a surprising impact on linguistic research as well. Dr HANNAH LITTLE is cataloguing the ways in a new book, and she joins us for this episode.
It’s BEN, HEDVIG, and DANIEL all together in the same place for the first time. We’re talking about the state of the show, the state of linguistics communication, and where we are after all these years.
