Lingthusiasm - A podcast that's enthusiastic about linguistics

• 103: A hand-y guide to gesture

  Gestures: every known language has them, and there's a growing body of research on how they fit into communication. But academic literature can be hard to dig into on your own. So Lauren has spent the past 5 years diving into the gesture literature and boiling it down into a tight 147 page book. In this episode, your hosts Lauren Gawne and Gretchen McCulloch get enthusiastic about Lauren's new book, Gesture: A Slim Guide from Oxford University Press. Is it a general audience book? An academic book? A bit of both. (Please enjoy our highlights version in this episode, a slim guide to the Slim Guide, if you will.) We talk about the wacky hijinks gesture researchers have gotten up to with the aim of preventing people from gesturing without tipping them off that the study is about gesture, including a tricked-out "coloured garden relax chair" that makes people "um" more, as well as crosslinguistic gestural connections between signed and spoken languages, and how Gretchen's gestures in English have been changing after a year of ASL classes. Plus, a few behind-the-scenes moments: Lauren putting a line drawing of her very first gesture study on the cover, and how the emoji connection from Because Internet made its way into Gesture (and also into the emoji on your phone right now). There were also many other gesture stories that we couldn't fit in this episode, so keep an eye out for Lauren doing guest interviews on other podcasts! We'll add them to the crossovers page and the Lingthusiasm hosts elsewhere playlist as they come up. And if there are any other shows you'd like to hear a gesture episode on, feel free to tell them to chat to Lauren! Click here for a link to this episode in your podcast player of choice: https://episodes.fm/1186056137/episode/dGFnOnNvdW5kY2xvdWQsMjAxMDp0cmFja3MvMjA4MDgzMjc2MA Read the transcript here: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/781132632536793088/transcript-episode-103-a-slim-guide-to-a-slim Announcements: We've made a special jazzed-up version of the Lingthusiasm logo to put on stickers, featuring fun little drawings from the past 8.5 years of enthusiasm about linguistics by our artist Lucy Maddox. There's a leaping Gavagai rabbit, bouba and kiki shapes, and more...see how many items you can recognize! This sticker (or possibly a subtle variation...stay tuned for an all-patron vote!) will go out to everyone who's a patron at the Lingthusiast level or higher as of July 1st, 2025. We're also hoping that this sticker special offer encourages people to join and stick around as we need to do an inflation-related price increase at the Lingthusiast level. As we mentioned on the last bonus episode, our coffee hasn't cost us five bucks in a while now, and we need to keep paying the team who enables us to keep making the show amid our other linguistics prof-ing and writing jobs. In this month’s bonus episode we get enthusiastic about linguist celebrities! We talk about start with the historically famous Brothers Grimm and quickly move onto modern people of varying levels of fame, including a curiously large number of linguistics figure skaters. We also talk about a few people who are famous within linguistics, including a recent memoir by Noam Chomsky's assistant Bev Stohl about what it was like keeping him fueled with coffee. And finally, we reflect on running into authors of papers we've read at conferences, when people started recognizing us sometimes, and our tips and scripts for navigating celebrity encounters from both sides. Join us on Patreon now to get access to this and 90+ other bonus episodes. You’ll also get access to the Lingthusiasm Discord server where you can chat with other language nerds: https://patreon.com/posts/125728510 For links to things mentioned in this episode: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/781132385944322048/103-a-hand-y-guide-to-gesture

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• 102: The science and fiction of Sapir-Whorf

  It's a fun science fiction trope: learn a mysterious alien language and acquire superpowers, just like if you'd been zapped by a cosmic ray or bitten by a radioactive spider. But what's the linguistics behind this idea found in books like Babel-17, Embassytown, or the movie Arrival? In this episode, your hosts Lauren Gawne and Gretchen McCulloch get enthusiastic about the science and fiction of linguistic relativity, popularly known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. We talk about a range of different things that people mean when they refer to this hypothesis: a sciencey-sounding way to introduce obviously fictional concepts like time travel or mind control, a reflection that we add new words all the time as convenient handles to talk about new concepts, a note that grammatical categories can encourage us to pay attention to specific areas in the world (but aren't the only way of doing so), a social reflection that we feel like different people in different environments (which can sometimes align with different languages, though not always). We also talk about several genuine areas of human difference that linguistic relativity misses: different perceptive experiences like synesthesia and aphantasia, as well as how we lump sounds into categories based on what's relevant to a given language. Finally, we talk about the history of where the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis comes from, why Benjamin Lee Whorf would have been great on TikTok, and why versions of this idea keep bouncing back in different guises as a form of curiosity about the human condition no matter how many specific instances get disproven. Click here for a link to this episode in your podcast player of choice here: https://episodes.fm/1186056137/episode/dGFnOnNvdW5kY2xvdWQsMjAxMDp0cmFja3MvMjA1OTQ5MDMwOA Read the transcript here: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/778588696756846592/transcript-episode-102-the-science-and-fiction-of Announcements: In this month’s bonus episode we get enthusiastic about two sets of updates! We talk about the results from the 2024 listener survey (we learned which one of us you think is more kiki and more bouba!), and our years in review (book related news for both Lauren and Gretchen), plus exciting news for the coming year. Join us on Patreon now to get access to this and 90+ other bonus episodes. You’ll also get access to the Lingthusiasm Discord server where you can chat with other language nerds. https://patreon.com/posts/123498164 For links to things mentioned in this episode: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/778588215614603264/lingthusiasm-episode-102-the-science-and-fiction

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• 101: Micro to macro - The levels of language

  When we first learn about nature, we generally start with the solid mid-sized animals: cats, dogs, elephants, tigers, horses, birds, turtles, and so on. Only later on do we zoom in and out from these charismatic megafauna to the tinier levels, like cells and bacteria, or the larger levels, like ecosystems and the water cycle. With language, words are the easily graspable charismatic megafauna (charismatic megaverba?), from which there are both micro levels (like sounds, handshapes, and morphemes) and macro levels (like sentences, conversations, and narratives). In this episode, your hosts Lauren Gawne and Gretchen McCulloch take advantage of the aptly numbered 101th episode to get enthusiastic about linguistics from the micro to macro perspective often found in Linguistics 101 classes. We start with sounds and handshapes, moving onto accents and sound changes, fitting affixes into words, words into sentences, and sentences into discourse. We also talk about areas of linguistics that involve language at all these levels at once, including historical linguistics, child language acquisition, linguistic fieldwork, sociolinguistics, and psycholinguistics. Plus: why we don't follow this order for Lingthusiasm episodes or Crash Course Linguistics and how you can give yourself a DIY intro linguistics course. Click here for a link to this episode in your podcast player of choice: https://episodes.fm/1186056137/episode/dGFnOnNvdW5kY2xvdWQsMjAxMDp0cmFja3MvMjAzOTAyNTM3Ng Read the transcript here: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/776045991069728768/transcript-episode-101-ling-101 Announcements: To celebrate Lingthusiasm now having more than 100 episodes, we have compiled a list of 101 places where you can get even more linguistics enthusiasm! This is your one-stop-shop if you want suggestions for other podcasts, books, videos, blogs, and other places online and offline to feed your interest in linguistics. Even with a hundred and one options, we're sure there's still a few that we've missed, so also feel free to tag us @ lingthusiasm on social media about your favourites! In this month’s bonus episode we get enthusiastic about what psycholinguistics can tell us about creative writing, with Julie Sedivy, psycholinguist and the author of Memory Speaks and Linguaphile! We talk about moving from the style of scientific writing to literary writing by writing a lot of unpublished poetry to develop her aesthetic sense, how studying linguistics for a writer is like studying anatomy for a sculptor or colour theory for a painter, and how you could set up an eyetracking study to help writers figure out which sentences make their readers slow down. Join us on Patreon now to get access to this and 90+ other bonus episodes. You’ll also get access to the Lingthusiasm Discord server where you can chat with other language nerds. For links to things mentioned in this episode: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/776045579375640576/lingthusiasm-episode-101-micro-to-macro-the

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• 100: A hundred reasons to be enthusiastic about linguistics

  This is our hundredth episode that's enthusiastic about linguistics! To celebrate, we've put together 100 of our favourite fun facts about linguistics, featuring contributions from previous guests and Lingthusiasm team members, fan favourites that resonated with you from the previous 99 episodes, and new facts that haven't been on the show before but might star in one of the next 100 episodes in greater detail. In this episode, your hosts Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne talk about brains, gesture, etymology, famous example sentences, languages by the numbers, a few special facts about the word "hundred" and way more! This episode is both a fun overview of the vibe of Lingthusiam if you've never listened before, and a bonus bingo card game for diehard fans to see how many facts you can recognize. We also invite you to share this episode alongside one of your favourite fun facts about linguistics and help more people find Lingthusiasm in honour of our 100th episodiversary! Whether you pick something new that resonates from this episode, or share the fact you were sitting on the edge of your seat hoping we'd mention, we look forward to staying Lingthusiastic with you for the next 100 episodes. Click here for a link to this episode in your podcast player of choice: episodes.fm/1186056137/episode/dGFnOnNvdW5kY2xvdWQsMjAxMDp0cmFja3MvMjAxMDg1Njk3MQ Read the transcript here: lingthusiasm.com/post/772874564563845120/transcript-episode-100 Announcements: In this month’s bonus episode we get enthusiastic about some of our favourite deleted bits from recent interviews that we didn't quite have space to share with you! First, we go back to our interview with phonetician Jacq Jones, previously seen talking about how binary and non-binary people talk. Then, we return to computational linguist Emily M. Bender to talk about how Emily's students made a computational model of Lauren's grammar of Lamjung Yolmo and how linguistics is a team sport. Finally, we return to our group interview with the team behind Tom Scott's Language Files to talk about sneaky Icelandic jokes and the unedited behind-the-scenes version of the gif/gif joke. Join us on Patreon now to get access to this and 90+ other bonus episodes. You’ll also get access to the Lingthusiasm Discord server where you can chat with other language nerds: patreon.com/posts/118982443 For links to things mentioned in this episode: lingthusiasm.com/post/772874257193730048/lingthusiasm-episode-100-a-hundred-reasons-to-be

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• 99: A politeness episode, if you please

  If it wouldn't be too much trouble, if you have a spare half hour, could we possibly suggest that you might enjoy listening to this episode on politeness? Or, if you'd prefer a less polite version, "Listen! Now!" In this episode, your hosts Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne get enthusiastic about what politeness and rudeness are made up of at a linguistic level. We talk about existing cultural notions of "saving face" and "losing face", aka the push and pull between our desire for help vs our desire for independence, and how they've been formalized in a classic linguistics paper. We also talk about being less polite to show intimacy, addressing God in English and French, which forms of politeness are and aren't overtly taught, different uses of "please" in UK vs US English, levels of indirectness, email etiquette across generations and subcultures, rudeness and pointing, nodding norms in Japanese and English, smiling at strangers in the US vs Europe, and how a small number of politeness ingredients can combine in so many different ways that are culturally different. Click here for a link to this episode in your podcast player of choice: episodes.fm/1186056137/episode/dGFnOnNvdW5kY2xvdWQsMjAxMDp0cmFja3MvMTk5MDMyNTM3MQ Read the transcript here: lingthusiasm.com/post/770341829256364032/transcript-episode-99 Announcements: In this month’s bonus episode we get enthusiastic about science metaphors and learning everything with Tom Lum and Caroline Roper, cohosts of Let's Learn Everything! We talk about whether programming languages should count as a language credit, numbers and ritual stock phrases like seventeen and "once upon a time", as well as etymology and metaphor in ecology, chemistry, and linguistics. We also talk about turning the "constantly trying to figure things out" part of your brain off, attending the word of the year vote, and how linguists have a tendency to be curious about language all the time, which... sometimes gets us into trouble. Join us on Patreon now to get access to this and 90+ other bonus episodes, plus access to the Lingthusiasm Discord server where you can chat with other language nerds. Find it all right here: patreon.com/lingthusiasm Looking for a last minute gift for the language nerd in your life? Or are you trying to get someone in your life to love linguistics as much as you do? Patreon have newly added a gift memberships feature! So if you'd be excited to receive a patreon membership to Lingthusiasm, forward this link to your friends and/or family with a little wink wink nudge nudge patreon.com/lingthusiasm/gift For links to things mentioned in this episode: lingthusiasm.com/post/770341545981444096/lingthusiasm-episode-99-a-politeness-episode-if

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