Talk The Talk

The definition of white supremacy: is it expanding, or are we just getting better at recognising it and its reach? How does white supremacy show itself in language and in linguistics? Kelly Wright talks about her work in sociolinguistics, and how we all can do better.

Aboriginal English has been around a long while, but linguists have not taken the opportunity to really listen to the voices of Aboriginal people. Two researchers are changing that. They're gathering stories to find out what Aboriginal English is like, and how it's changing. Daniel sits down with them for a wicked long yarn on this episode of Because Language.

These cute critters, once part of a pioneering study in child language acquisition, have become an unofficial mascot of linguistics. But now they’re part of a tussle over intellectual property. We do our best to talk through the Wug test and the surrounding struggle.  

OzCLO is the Australian Computational and Linguistics Olympiad, where Australian high school students compete with others around the world by solving language puzzles. This week, we've invited some of Australia's best students to test their linguistic knowledge against us! Who will prevail?

Blog post: http://becauselanguage.com/8-how-translatable-are-languages/ Patreon: http://patreon.com/becauselangpod/ Language and culture are intertwined, and a new research project discovers that the meanings of words diverge as culture does. But this big-data experiment is attracting the ire of anthropologists. Why the friction? Researcher Gary Lupyan joins us for this episode of Because Language.  

Our ever-popular Mailbag is bursting with questions, so let’s get to them! How do you communicate expressively with a mask on? Which was the first language with a set spelling? Why is the word caterpillar so long? Did it come later? Why are some news outlets writing “since the pandemic begun“? As prescriptive linguists, can we reasonably disagree with someone’s definition of a word, if that definition is being used by people?

Linguistics as a discipline has some work to do when it comes to examining and eliminating the legacy of colonialism. How do we do it? And how do we feel about the overtly evangelical agenda of a lot of linguistic work? Dr Hannah Gibson joins us.

An open letter to the LSA has ignited a furious debate among linguists and the wider public about who represents public linguistics — and who gets to set the terms of acceptable public debate. The establishmentarians say it’s about free expression. We think it’s about power. If you’re wondering what’s going on, this bonus episode is for you.

We’ve heard a lot about the cognitive benefits of bilingualism. But then we’ve also seen a lot of the supposed benefits get walked back. What are the facts? Does being bilingual provide any cognitive advantage? What factors does this depend on? What is bilingualism anyway? We’re talking to researcher Iryna Khodos on this episode of Because Language.

Show notes: http://becauselanguage.com/3-lets-talk/ Subscribe: http://becauselanguage.com/listen/ How does conversation work? Why are videoconference calls so awkward and terrible? Why can we say goodbye multiple times in a conversation, but good morning only once? And how do we get good at being a conversationalist? David Crystal tells us about his book Let’s Talk on this episode of Because Language.

Time to get to this Mailbag! Why are flip-flops called 'thongs'? When people write the date as '7 April' or 'April 7', do they also say it that way? Why do we add 'up' to verbs like 'cut up' or 'eat up'? Why do some words have opposite meanings?

For our first episode, we asked some of our linguist and lingo-pod friends what their favourite thing is about language. We are joined by: Ben Zimmer Carrie Gillon (The Vocal Fries) Ellen Jovin (Grammar Table) Grant Barrett (A Way with Words) Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne (Lingthusiasm) Jane Solomon (The Dictionary of Difficult Words) John McWhorter (Lexicon Valley) Nicole Holliday (University of Pennsylvania) Ryan Paulsen (Lexitecture) Much gratitude to all our friends for their kind support.