Lingthusiasm - A podcast that's enthusiastic about linguistics

– Would you like some coffee? – Coffee would keep me awake. Does that mean yes coffee, or no coffee? It depends! Is it the morning or the evening? Is the person trying to pull an all-nighter or take an afternoon nap? A computer looking strictly at the meanings of the words would be confused, but we humans do this kind of thing all the time without even noticing it. In episode 11 of Lingthusiasm, your hosts Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne talk about the hidden assumptions of cooperation that we bring to every conversation. They were formulated by the linguist Paul Grice, and are known as the Cooperative Principle or Grice’s Maxims. Not only does stating these assumptions explicitly help us understand conversations where we exchange messages beyond the literal meaning of our words, but it also explains a lot of humour – many jokes rely on creative flouting of Gricean Maxims! This month’s Patreon bonus was about language play: games like Pig Latin, rhyming slang, and Verlan, as nominated and voted on by our patrons. You can get access to it and previous bonuses about hypercorrection, the doggo meme, swearing, teaching yourself linguistics, and explaining linguistics to employers by supporting Lingthusiasm on Patreon. http://patreon.com/lingthusiasm We hit our next funding goal shortly after recording this episode, which will allow us to start bringing on guest linguists, so stay tuned for more info on upcoming interviews! For the links mentioned in this episode, check out our shownotes page at: http://lingthusiasm.com/post/164303700686/lingthusiasm-episode-11-layers-of-meaning

Some linguists work with multiple languages, while others focus on just one. But for many people, learning a language after early childhood is the thing that first gets them curious about how language works in general and all the things in their native language(s) that they take for granted. In episode 10 of Lingthusiasm, your hosts Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne talk about how learning languages can feed into linguistics and vice versa. We also explore the power dynamics that affect learning languages, and the importance of learning about the rules of interaction as well as the rules of grammar. This month’s Patreon bonus was about hypercorrection, where you try so hard to follow a linguistic rule that you end up overshooting. You can get access to it and previous bonuses about the doggo meme, swearing, teaching yourself linguistics, and explaining linguistics to employers by supporting Lingthusiasm on Patreon. http://patreon.com/lingthusiasm Gretchen’s new recorder in this episode is thanks to the support of our patrons! For more information, and links to things mentioned in this episode, visit the show page: http://lingthusiasm.com/post/163226798571/lingthusiasm-episode-10-learning-languages

How do we get from knowing words to making brand-new sentences out of them? In episode 9 of Lingthusiasm, your hosts Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne talk about how words form groups with other words: constituency. Once you start looking for it, constituency is everywhere: in ambiguous sentences like “time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana”, in remixed films like “Of Oz The Wizard”, and even internet dog memes. This month’s Patreon bonus was the backstory about the linguistics of the doggo meme and its connection to Australian slang, which grew out of this NPR article about doggo. You can get access to it and previous bonuses about swearing, teaching yourself linguistics, and explaining linguistics to employers by supporting Lingthusiasm on Patreon. For more information, and links to things mentioned in this episode, visit the show page: http://lingthusiasm.com/post/161859273886/lingthusiasm-episode-9-the-bridge-between-words

Dictionaries: they’re made by real people! In episode 8 of Lingthusiasm, your hosts Lauren Gawne and Gretchen McCulloch talk about Word by Word, a recent book by Kory Stamper, a lexicographer at Merriam-Webster, about how dictionaries get made. (Spoiler: we liked it.) We also talk about how dictionaries get made for languages that don’t have any yet, the changing role of dictionaries on the internet and with social media, and how words often have a longer history than we expect (’g-string’, for example has been in use since at least 1878). Our latest Patreon bonus is about selling your linguistics skills to employers. (Previous bonuses: swearing and how to teach yourself linguistics.) Go to http://patreon.com/lingthusiasm to check them out! For more information, and links to things mentioned in this episode, visit the show page: http://lingthusiasm.com/post/160811944696/lingthusiasm-episode-8-people-who-make

There are some pretty funny quotes of historical people complaining about kids back then doing linguistic things that now seem totally unremarkable. So let’s cut to the chase and celebrate linguistic innovation while it’s happening. In episode 7 of Lingthusiasm, your hosts Lauren Gawne and Gretchen McCulloch explore how far back we can trace complaints about the language of Kids These Days, why linguistic discrimination is harmful, and why “be like”, hyperbolic “literally”, and other modern innovations are actually signs of something awesome. We also announce a Patreon to keep the podcast sustainable! You can support us there to listen to a bonus episode about swearing and future monthly bonus content, and help decide the topics of future episodes. Even if you’re not sure about pledging, do check out the Patreon goals to see some of our future plans and our video to see a totally realistic and not at all staged cameo from our producer. Check out http://patreon.com/lingthusiasm For more information visit the show page: http://lingthusiasm.com/post/159796192161/lingthusiasm-episode-7-kids-these-days-arent

English writing is hugely inconsistent: is “ough” pronounced as in cough, though, through, thought, rough, plough, or thorough? And once you start adding in other languages with different conventions and writing systems, things get even more complicated. How’s a person supposed to know whether to pronounce “j” as in Jane, Juan, Johan, Jeanne, or Jing? In the 1800s, linguists decided to create a single alphabet that could represent any sound spoken in any human language. After several revisions and competing standards, we now have the modern International Phonetic Alphabet with 107 letters, 52 diacritics, and a surprisingly passionate fanbase including linguists, musicians, and people who like cool symbols. In episode 6 of Lingthusiasm, your hosts Lauren and Gretchen talk about the history of the IPA, how it works, and some of the fun linguistics games and stories that have arisen around the IPA. For more information visit the show page: http://lingthusiasm.com/post/159237203511/lingthusiasm-episode-6-all-the-sounds-in-all-the

Red, orange, yellow, grue, and purple? Not so fast – while many languages don’t distinguish between green and blue, it’s unlikely that a language would lump these two together while also having distinct words for “orange” and “purple”. But how do we know this? What kinds of ways do different languages carve up the colour spectrum? Why does English say “redhead” instead of “orangehead”? How do colour words interact with smells, reading, and the human brain? In episode 5 of the podcast that’s enthusiastic about linguistics, your hosts Lauren and Gretchen talk about what linguistic typology and psycholinguistics can tell us about colour words. We also chat about Lauren’s archiving work, and the iGesto gesture conference, and Gretchen’s upcoming ICLDC conference adventures. For more information, transcript, and links mentioned in this episode, visit the show page: http://lingthusiasm.com/post/157327666801/lingthusiasm-episode-5-colour-words-around-the Listen to bonus episodes, suggest future topics, and help keep the show ad-free by supporting us on Patreon: http://patreon.com/lingthusiasm

Every January, hundreds of linguists gather in a conference room somewhere in the US to discuss and vote for the Word of the Year. It’s the longest-running and most public WotY proceedings, and it’s part of the annual meeting of the American Dialect Society, a sister society of the Linguistic Society of America. Gretchen was there this year and the past few years, while Lauren has never been (but actively reads the #woty16 hashtag on twitter!). We discuss what the ADS Word of the Year vote feels like from inside the room where it happens, the categories and politics around selecting a WotY, look at the different offerings from other organizations that also name a WotY (Lauren is pretty pleased that Australian Word of the Year was “democracy sausage”, while Gretchen would like a Canadian Word of the Year for 2017, thank you), and end up wondering what even is a word. We also respond to finally going live! Thanks for all your comments so far, and if you have a sec to rate us on iTunes or wherever else you’re listening, we’d super appreciate it. Update: In the show we said that 'Trump’ was selected as sign for the year for Netherlands Sign Language. It was actually the Swiss Deaf Association, in Switzerland. For more information visit the show page: http://lingthusiasm.com/post/155962380426/lingthusiasm-episode-4-inside-the-word-of-the Listen to bonus episodes, suggest future topics, and help keep the show ad-free by supporting us on Patreon: http://patreon.com/lingthusiasm

Lingthusiasm Episode 3: Arrival of the linguists - Review of the alien linguistics movie Linguists are very excited about the movie Arrival, because it stars a linguist saving the day by figuring out how to talk with aliens. Which, if you compare it to previous linguists in film (being obnoxious to poor flower girls, for example) is a vast improvement. In this episode of the podcast that’s enthusiastic about linguistics, Gretchen and Lauren come to you having just watched Arrival, to tell you what it got right and wrong about life as a linguist, how linguists have been reacting, and the linguists who consulted on the film. We also talk about some other books and films that feature linguistics, if Arrival caught your interest. We also discuss what we’ve been up to lately. Gretchen is busily writing the latest draft of her book about internet English, and Lauren has just published a grammar of a language spoken in Nepal. For more information visit the show page http://lingthusiasm.com/post/154520817516/lingthusiasm-episode-3-arrival-of-the-linguists Listen to bonus episodes, suggest future topics, and help keep the show ad-free by supporting us on Patreon: http://patreon.com/lingthusiasm

If there are pronouns, why aren’t there connouns? What’s the point of these little words? In this episode of the podcast that’s enthusiastic about linguistics, your hosts Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne take a look at the many functions of pronouns. We discuss the vastly different pronoun systems in different languages, how you’d need to change English pronouns to make it easier to write gay polyamorous fanfiction, and why everyone is getting excited about singular ‘they’ these days (despite the fact that it’s really old). We also talk about the Lingthusiasm logo, the three things that the squiggle stands for, and why it had to be green. For links to things mentioned in this episode, check out the shownotes page at http://lingthusiasm.com/post/154520062361/lingthusiasm-episode-2-pronouns-little-words Listen to bonus episodes, suggest future topics, and help keep the show ad-free by supporting us on Patreon: http://patreon.com/lingthusiasm

Wouldn’t it solve so many problems in the world if everyone just spoke the same language? Not so fast! Lingthusiasm is a brand-new podcast that’s enthusiastic about linguistics, hosted by Lauren Gawne of Superlinguo​ and Gretchen McCulloch of All Things Linguistic. In this first episode of Lingthusiasm, ​Gretchen and Lauren discuss the “one language equals peace” fallacy, and whether speaking the same words means that people will necessarily agree with each other (spoiler: no). But the history of how people have tried is still really interesting, from constructed and symbolic communication like Blissymbols and emoji to the way astronauts communicate in the high stakes environment of the International Space Station. For links to things mentioned during this episode visit http://lingthusiasm.com/post/154520059101/lingthusiasm-episode-1-speaking-a-single-language Listen to bonus episodes, suggest future topics, and help keep the show ad-free by supporting us on Patreon: http://patreon.com/lingthusiasm