Language Ideologies w/ Savithry Namboodiripad

About this episode

This episode discusses language ideologies and their impact, featuring insights from linguist Savithry Namboodiripad.

“And that’s what ideologies are: the air that you’re breathing, something that feels like it’s common sense.” From start to finish, this episode is about ideologies: their consequences, their makeup, and the struggle to shake their influence. Savithry Namboodiripad, an associate professor of Linguistics at UMichigan leverages her linguistics background to critique ideologies of the native speaker, monolingualism, multilingualism, and more. Her research often proceeds on two separate tracks: studying language (usually syntax or language contact), and studying the field of linguistics: where our received theoretical framings come from, and how to reach stronger conclusions based on multi-disciplinary evidence. In this episode, we discuss how to dismantle pernicious ideologies through better experimental design and theoretical framing, and then we get to questions that are far greater than just the field of linguistics. For instance, why must we always get to the “pure” natural object? How have ideas about language always transcended academic discourse? Throughout, we express a lot of frustration at the academic frameworks that neglect to unsettle eugenicist, misogynistic, or racist…

People in this episode

Host: Talia Sherman

Guest: Savithry Namboodiripad

Topics covered

• language ideologies
• linguistics
• multilingualism
• academic frameworks
• theoretical framing

Keywords

• language ideologies
• native speaker
• monolingualism
• multilingualism
• academic discourse

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: UMichigan

More episodes of Tomayto Tomahto

• Literary Studies and Liberalism with Amanda Anderson · June 9, 2026 · 1h 0m
• Sean Carroll on Theoretical Physics and Interdisciplinarity · March 20, 2026 · 1h 12m
• Data Science and Machine Translation w/ John DeNero · January 21, 2026 · 48 min
• Listening, Semiotics, and So Much More w/ Michael Berman · November 30, 2025 · 1h 14m
• The Modern Dictionary w/ Stefan Fatsis · October 11, 2025 · 60 min
• The AI Con w/ Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna · May 19, 2025 · 1h 7m