Lingthusiasm - A podcast that's enthusiastic about linguistics

Sometimes, a phrase seems to leap off the page and lodge into your mind, crisp and shining like a precious jewel. Other times, you're reading something and it just won't stick, your eyes wandering away no matter how hard you try. In this episode, your host Gretchen McCulloch gets enthusiastic about what psycholinguistics can tell us about creative writing, with Julie Sedivy, who's a psycholinguist based in Calgary, Alberta, Canada and the author of two general-audience linguistics books, 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 We talk about moving from the style of scientific writing to literary writing by writing a lot of unpublished poetry to develop her aesthetic sense, how studying linguistics for a writer is like studying anatomy for a sculptor or colour theory for a painter, and how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. We also do a small linguistic experiment on air using the following words, which you can play along with: luggage, liminal, withstand, tremulous, pulchritude, zoo. Note that this episode originally aired as Bonus 96: What makes for beautiful writing, scientifically speaking, and we’ve added an updated announcements section to the top. We’re excited to share one of our favourite bonus episodes from Patreon with a broader audience, while at the same time giving everyone who works on the show a bit of a break. Click here for a link to this episode in your podcast player of choice: https://pod.link/1186056137/episode/dGFnOnNvdW5kY2xvdWQsMjAxMDp0cmFja3MvMjM0MjI1MTk0OQ Read the transcript here: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/819808832839712768/transcript-episode-117-what-makes-for-beautiful Announcements: In this month’s bonus episode we get enthusiastic about linguistics podcasting with Helen Zaltzman, host of The Allusionist podcast! We talk about being nearly teenaged in the world of language podcasting (Lingthusiasm turns 10 later this year, and The Allusionist turned 10 last year!) and alternative careers that we had on the way to becoming podcasters (did you know Helen once worked for a reality TV show?). We also talk about breaking the kiki/bouba test, the importance of publishing "failed" experiments, the Bender Rule and the Holliday Rule (both previous Lingthusiasm guests!). Listen on Patreon now: https://patreon.com/posts/159381151 Note that this particular bonus episode is available to everyone who follows us at any level (including free!) on Patreon, so welcome if you're joining us as an Allusionist fan (or a broke lingthusiasm fan tbh, we're trying to give you some treats while also trying to keep the show running!!). Speaking of which...a few people found Patreon's new community gifting feature before we even knew what to do with it so we've been able to give out 7 community-supported memberships so far to people who follow us for free on Patreon. If anyone else is feeling comfortably off in this economy and wants to help both us and your fellow lingthusiasts, we'd be happy to do this again! https://patreon.com/lingthusiasm/gift?type=community Follow us as a free member to get announcements whenever we might have gifted memberships to distribute! Join us on Patreon now to get access to this and 110+ other bonus episodes. You’ll also get access to the Lingthusiasm Discord server where you can chat with other language nerds. Plus: we've been posting more and more fun things for free followers on Patreon, such as helping us decide what bonus episode to unlock next and this exciting new announcement about zines! For all this and more join us at: https://patreon.com/lingthusiasm For links to things mentioned in this episode: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/819808519023968256/lingthusiasm-episode-117-what-makes-for-beautiful

TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts are an evolving genre of media: short-form, vertical videos that take up your whole screen and are served to you from an algorithm rather than who you follow. This changes how people talk in them compared to earlier forms of video, and linguists are on it! In this episode, your host Gretchen McCulloch gets enthusiastic about the linguistics of tiktok with Adam Aleksic, better known on social media as etymologynerd. We talk about how Adam got his start into linguistics via etymology, the process that he goes through to make his current videos get the attention of people and algorithms, and how different forms of media (like podcasts vs shortform video) relate differently to their audiences. We also talk about the challenges of writing a book about language on the internet when it changes so fast, comparing the writing process for Adam's upcoming book Algospeak with Gretchen's book Because Internet. Click here for a link to this episode in your podcast player of choice: https://episodes.fm/1186056137/episode/dGFnOnNvdW5kY2xvdWQsMjAxMDp0cmFja3MvMjExNjQ1NTgxMA Read the transcript here: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/786832938503405568/transcript-episode-105-linguistics-of-tiktok Announcements: In celebration of our 100th bonus episode we've decided to go back into the vault and revisit our very first bonus episode - with updated sweary commentary! We've made this extra bonus bonus version available to all patrons, free and paid, so feel free to send it to your friends: https://www.patreon.com/posts/131301144 In this month’s bonus episode we get enthusiastic about your linguistics questions! In honour of our 100th bonus episode of Lingthusiasm, and because our first advice episode was so popular, here's another episode answering your advice questions, from the serious to the silly! 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://www.patreon.com/posts/125727177 For links to things mentioned in this episode: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/786832701937303552/lingthusiasm-episode-105-linguistics-of-tiktok

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

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

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

Eye of newt and toe of frog, Wool of bat and tongue of dog... In this episode, your hosts Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne get enthusiastic and ~spooky~ about possession! We talk about how the haunting type of possession and the linguistic type of possession do share an etymological origin, but how the term "possession" itself is misleading, because possessive constructions are used to express all sorts of relationships between nouns, including part-whole (eye of newt), material (a cauldron of silver), interpersonal (the wizard's apprentice), and general association (the school of magic). We also talk about the three big ways possession is expressed in English (of, 's, and have) and how languages can require some concepts to be possessed (like kinship terms and body parts) or consider others too significant or too trivial for possession (like the moon or a pen). Click here for a link to this episode in your podcast player of choice: episodes.fm/1186056137/episode/dGFnOnNvdW5kY2xvdWQsMjAxMDp0cmFja3MvMTkzNjk2NzMzOQ Read the transcript here: lingthusiasm.com/post/764631688689172480/transcript-episode-97-ooooooh-our-possession Announcements: The 2024 Lingthusiasm Listener Survey is here! bit.ly/lingthusiasmsurvey24 It's a mix of questions about who you are as our listener, as well as some fun linguistics experiments for you to participate in. If you have taken the survey in previous years, there are new questions, so you can participate again this year. There's also a spot for asking us your linguistics advice questions, since our first linguistics advice bonus episode was so popular! You can listen that one here: patreon.com/posts/92128507 In this month’s bonus episode we get enthusiastic about how linguists might go about communicating with aliens! Drawing on highlights of the academic book "Xenolinguistics: Towards a Science of Extraterrestrial Language", we talk about how we'd actually go about trying to communicate with aliens. Join us on Patreon now to get access to this and 90+ other bonus episodes, including the episodes where we discuss the results of our past two surveys: patreon.com/lingthusiasm For links to things mentioned in this episode: lingthusiasm.com/post/764631220667695104/ooooooh-our-possession-episode-oooooooohh

Imagine you're in a field with someone whose language you don't speak. A rabbit scurries by. The other person says "Gavagai!" You probably assumed they meant "rabbit" but they could have meant something else, like "scurrying" or even "lo! an undetached rabbit-part!" In this episode, your hosts Lauren Gawne and Gretchen McCulloch get enthusiastic about how we manage to understand each other when we're learning new words, inspired by the famous "Gavagai" thought experiment from the philosopher of language VWO Quine. We talk about how children have a whole object assumption when learning language, and how linguists go about learning languages that are new to them through either translating standardized cross-linguistic wordlists known as Swadesh lists or staying monolingual and acting out concepts. We also talk about when our baseline assumptions are challenged, such as in categorizing kangaroos and wallabies by their hopping rather than their shape, and when useful folk categories, like "trees" and "fish" don't line up with evolutionary taxonomies. Click here to listen to this episode in your podcast player of choice: episodes.fm/1186056137/episode/dGFnOnNvdW5kY2xvdWQsMjAxMDp0cmFja3MvMTg5ODA2MjI5MA== Read the transcript here: lingthusiasm.com/post/758924587635441664/transcript-episode-95-lo-an-undetached Announcements: We have new Lingthusiasm merch! Imagine you're in a field with someone whose language you don't speak. A rabbit scurries by. The other person says "Gavagai!" You probably assumed they meant "rabbit" but they could have meant something else, like "scurrying" or even "lo! an undetached rabbit-part!" Inspired by the famous Gavagai thought experiment, these items feature a running rabbit and the caption "lo, an undetached rabbit-part!" in a woodblock engraving crossed with vaporwave style in magenta, indigo, teal, cream, and black/white on shirts, scarves, and more! "More people have been to Russia than I have" is a sentence that at first seems fine, but then gets weirder and weirder the more you read it. Inspired by these Escher sentences, we've made self-referential shirts saying "More people have read the text on this shirt than I have" (also available on tote bags, mugs, and hats), so you can wear them in old-time typewriter font and see who does a double take. Finally, we've made a design that simply says "Ask me about linguistics" in a style that looks like a classic "Hello, my name is..." sticker, and you can put it on stickers and buttons and shirts and assorted other portable items for when you want to skip the small talk and go right to a topic you're excited about. You can find all these designs and more at redbubble.com/people/lingthusiasm/shop In this month’s bonus episode we get enthusiastic about the word "do"! We talk about the various functions of "do" as illustrated by lyrics from ABBA and other pop songs, what makes the word "do" so unique in English compared to other languages, and the drama of how "do" caught on and then almost got driven out again Join us on Patreon now to get access to this and 80+ other bonus episodes. You’ll also get access to the Lingthusiasm Discord server where you can chat with other language nerds. Find us as patreon.com/lingthusiasm For links to things mentioned in this episode: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/758923731979698176/95-lo-an-undetached-collection-of-meaning-parts

There are many ways that people perform gender, from clothing and hairstyle to how we talk or carry ourselves. When doing linguistic analysis of one aspect, such as someone's voice, it's useful to also consider the fuller picture such as what they're wearing and who they're talking with. In this episode, your host Gretchen McCulloch gets enthusiastic about how nonbinary people talk with Jacq Jones, who's a lecturer at Te Kunenga ki Pūrehuroa / Massey University in Auckland, New Zealand. We talk about their research on how nonbinary and binary people make choices about how to perform gender using their voices and other variables like clothing, and later collaborating with one of their research participants to reflect on how it feels to have your personal voice and gender expression plotted on a chart. We also talk about linguistic geography, Canadian and New Zealand Englishes, and the secret plurality of R sounds in English and how you can figure out which one you have by poking yourself (gently!) with a toothpick. Click here for a link to this episode in your podcast player of choice: episodes.fm/1186056137/episode/dGFnOnNvdW5kY2xvdWQsMjAxMDp0cmFja3MvMTg1MzMwODQxMA== Or read the transcript here: lingthusiasm.com/post/753857624894849024/transcript-episode-83 Announcements: In this month’s bonus episode we get enthusiastic about three of our favourite kinds of linguistic mixups: spoonerisms, mondegreens, and eggcorns! We talk about William Spooner, the Oxford prof from the 1800s that many spoonerisms are (falsely) attributed to, Lauren's very Australian 90s picture book of spoonerisms, the Scottish song "The Bonny Earl of Moray" which gave rise to the term mondegreen, why there are so many more mondegreens in older pop songs and folk songs than there are now, and how eggcorn is a double eggcorn (a mis-parsing of acorn, which itself is an eggcorn of oak-corn for akern). Join us on Patreon now to get access to this and 80+ other bonus episodes. You’ll also get access to the Lingthusiasm Discord server where you can chat with other language nerds about your favourite linguistic mixups: patreon.com/posts/105461156 For links to things mentioned in this episode: lingthusiasm.com/post/753857305290915840/episode-93-how-nonbinary-and-binary-people-talk