Lingthusiasm Episode 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 or read the transcript here.

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.

Here are the links mentioned in the episode:

You can listen to this episode via Lingthusiasm.com, Soundcloud, RSS, Apple Podcasts/iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also download an mp3 via the Soundcloud page for offline listening.

To receive an email whenever a new episode drops, sign up for the Lingthusiasm mailing list.

You can help keep Lingthusiasm ad-free, get access to bonus content, and more perks by supporting us on Patreon.

Lingthusiasm is on Bluesky, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Mastodon, and Tumblr. Email us at contact [at] lingthusiasm [dot] com

Gretchen is on Bluesky as @GretchenMcC and blogs at All Things Linguistic.

Lauren is on Bluesky as @superlinguo and blogs at Superlinguo.

Lingthusiasm is created by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our senior producer is Claire Gawne, our production editor is Sarah Dopierala, our production assistant is Martha Tsutsui Billins, our editorial assistant is Jon Kruk, and our technical editor is Leah Velleman. Our music is ‘Ancient City’ by The Triangles.

This episode of Lingthusiasm is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike license (CC 4.0 BY-NC-SA).

Bonus 98: Linguist Celebrities

Have you ever wondered if there are famous people who lead a hidden double life as a linguist? If you hang around linguists long enough, you'll start hearing stories of them: musicians, athletes, politicians, and other people better known for their non-linguistic accomplishments who nonetheless have studied anywhere from one linguistics class once to a whole PhD -- we'll claim 'em all!

In this bonus episode, Gretchen and Lauren get enthusiastic about linguist celebrities! We start with the historically famous Brothers Grimm and quickly move onto modern people of varying levels of fame, including a fantasy author Gretchen read in high school, the former Prime Minister of Latvia and former Premier of Ontario, a curiously large number of linguistics figure skaters plus a few other athletes, several linguistics musicians, a celebrity chef, and several nerd celebrities. 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.

Know of any other celebrities with a linguistics background? Let us know, and maybe we'll find enough of them to do a second celebrities episode someday! Listen to this episode about linguist celebrities, and get access to many more bonus episodes by supporting Lingthusiasm on Patreon.

Transcript Episode 102: The science and fiction of Sapir-Whorf

This is a transcript for Lingthusiasm episode ‘The science and fiction of Sapir-Whorf’. It’s been lightly edited for readability. Listen to the episode here or wherever you get your podcasts. Links to studies mentioned and further reading can be found on the episode show notes page.

[Music]

Gretchen: Welcome to Lingthusiasm, a podcast that’s enthusiastic about linguistics! I’m Gretchen McCulloch.

Lauren: I’m Lauren Gawne. Today, we’re getting enthusiastic about the complexity of the relationship between the language you speak, and the way that you perceive reality. But first, our most recent bonus episode was the results of our 2024 listener survey.

Gretchen: We learned which one of us was more “kiki” and which one of us was more “bouba.”

Lauren: Mm-hm. And we discussed the highly competitive hand gesture game of “Paper, Scissors, Rock.”

Gretchen: “You mean ‘Rock, Paper, Scissors’?” – and more things that people call it cross-linguistically.

Lauren: Go to patreon.com/lingthusiasm for this and almost 100 other bonus episodes.

Gretchen: Ooo, 97! We’re almost at 100.

Lauren: Should we do something special for our hundredth?

Gretchen: Stay tuned to see if we do.

[Music]

Gretchen: So, I recently read the classic science fiction book Babel-17 by Samuel R. Delany, which people have been asking me to read for a long time.

Lauren: It’s from, like, the mid-’60s, so, for basically much longer than you’ve been a linguist (or alive) it’s been a staple of linguistic sci-fi reading.

Gretchen: Yes, this book is older than I am. You have to come to classics when you come to them. There’s no wrong time to do something like that. It sure does have a lot of linguistic elements. There’s this very cute bit where – so the characters have a lot of these interesting body modifications. This character has fangs and so can’t make a P sound.

Lauren: Oh, yeah, because I guess if you have teeth sticking out over your lips, you can’t close your lips to make a P.

Gretchen: The thing that gets me is it is explicitly said that he can’t make the P but he can make a B – and those are done with the same movement of the lips. It’s just the vocals cords which are different, which has nothing to do with where your fangs are.

Lauren: I absolutely love the linguist brain with which you read these books.

Gretchen: This was my experience of reading a lot of Babel-17 is that there’s a lot of linguistic elements that are almost doing it for me. The biggest of those is “Babel-17” itself, which in the book refers to this mysterious alien language that our poet linguist character (like, more poet linguists, that’s great) is assigned to interpret/decipher/translate/figure out from recordings. Classic linguist sci-fi story line, but Samuel Delany is one of the first people doing it.

Lauren: I was very invested in this character when I read this book ages ago.

Bonus 97: Rock, paper, scissors, Gesture book, and a secret project - Survey results and general updates

In this bonus episode, Gretchen and Lauren get enthusiastic about two sets of updates!

First, results from the 2024 listener survey. We learned which one of us you think is more kiki and more bouba, an utterly nonsensical question that you nonetheless had 80/20 agreement on! We also learned about heart gestures and variants on rock, paper, scissors (or paper, scissors, rock) in many different languages.

Plus, we used results from all three years of listener surveys to create a massive blog post of 101 places to get enthusiastic about linguistics, if you're looking for more linguistics options!

Second, our years in review and some upcoming things:

Lauren has finally finished writing her academic book about gesture and you can get Gesture: A Slim Guide from Oxford University Press later this month (that's late March 2025 for people reading from the future). If academic books aren't quite your jam (extremely reasonably), stay tuned for the fun highlights version on an upcoming Lingthusiasm episode!

Gretchen had a big trip in Europe last year including the launch of the Spanish edition of Because Internet, started learning American Sign Language (ASL), and has also been working a lot on a mysterious secret project which can't be announced in public yet (ooooooh~~). It's thanks to the support of patrons that we can do projects like this before they're bringing in revenue on their own so stay tuned for further announcements once we're allowed to talk about it :)

Together, we also co-authored two academic articles in 2024 about the meta aspects of doing linguistics communication with broader audiences (an important part of convincing Lauren's job that it's worth her spending time still making the podcast). They're called: 'Towards a theory of linguistic curiosity: applying linguistic frameworks to lingcomm and scicomm'  and 'Creating Inclusive Linguistics Communication: Crash Course Linguistics' (with a big team from Crash Course Linguistics). Listen to this episode about our 2024 survey results and general updates, and get access to many more bonus episodes by supporting Lingthusiasm on Patreon.

Transcript Episode 101: Micro to macro - The levels of language

This is a transcript for Lingthusiasm episode ‘Micro to macro - The levels of language’. It’s been lightly edited for readability. Listen to the episode here or wherever you get your podcasts. Links to studies mentioned and further reading can be found on the episode show notes page.

[Music]

Lauren: Welcome to Lingthusiasm, a podcast that’s enthusiastic about linguistics! I’m Lauren Gawne.

Gretchen: I’m Gretchen McCulloch. Today, we’re getting enthusiastic about all the different layers of language structure. But first, thank you to everyone who shared so many excellent linguistics facts to celebrate our 100th episode anniversary!

Lauren: To celebrate Lingthusiasm now having more than 100 episodes, we’ve compiled a list of 101 places where you can get even more linguistics enthusiasm.

Gretchen: If you want some suggestions for other podcasts, books, videos, blogs, other places online and offline to feed your interest in linguistics, you can check out that link from our website.

Lauren: Even with 101 options, I’m sure there’re still a few we’ve missed. Feel free to tag us @Lingthusiasm on social media about your favourites.

Gretchen: Or if there’re any that you’re particularly excited to see on the list, we would love this to help be a bit of a hub for people to find other cool linguistics communication projects.

Lauren: Our most recent bonus episode was an interview with Julie Sedivy about our relationship with language and how it changes throughout our lives and the linguistics of what makes writing feel beautiful.

Gretchen: You can also read Julie’s new book called Linguaphile, which is, indeed, very beautifully written. It is about that relationship that we have with language throughout our lives.

Lauren: For this and over 90 other bonus episodes, go to patreon.com/lingthusiasm.

[Music]

Lauren: Welcome to the 101st episode of Lingthusiasm.

Gretchen: It’s LING 101!

Lauren: Oh my gosh, that is a classic first year subject course code.

Gretchen: I feel like there’s this canonical introduction to linguistics course that almost every linguistics programme has in some form. It’s a classic textbook format. It’s a classic course style. It goes from this very micro-level of language to this macro-level of language where you’re starting with very small list units and zooming out into the whole area of discourse.

Lauren: Weirdly enough, I absolutely did this subject, but we didn’t have course codes like “LING 101,” but I did do an introduction to linguistics that was exactly like this.

Gretchen: Ours also was not called “LING 101.” It was called “LING 100.”

Lauren: Oh, no. That was the last episode. We missed it.

Gretchen: We missed it. Now we can’t do it ever. Then I was at another university where it was called “201.” I don’t really wanna wait for another 100 episodes for us to be able to do this. I think “101” is still classically in the culture – the idea of an intro linguistics course – even if there’re many course codes that are different from that.

Lauren: Lingthusiasm is intentionally not in this structure.

Gretchen: It seems like it would be a bit of a shame if we had to start like, okay, our first year is like, only phonetics, and then we’re gonna do only phonology, and then when we get all the way to pragmatics, we’ve got to stop doing the podcast or something. We made a very conscious decision early on to mix it up a bit.

Lauren: I mean, especially with the level of detail wherein – imagine if we’re like, “We’re 100 episodes in. We’re now moving from individual phones up to phonology.” We could’ve been here for quite a while.

Gretchen: Yeah, I think it’s more fun to mix it up. It also means that if we encounter a really good example or anecdote or paper – a new paper comes out – that we wanna talk about about a particular topic, there’s always more stuff that we can say about sounds. It’s not like, “Oh, well, we did sounds for the first three years, and then we never get to do sounds again.”

Lauren: Episode 101 is a great time to actually take ourselves through – 101 course-style – all these different layers of linguistic structure so you can see how a finite number of building blocks had this capacity to combine in so many novel ways.

Gretchen: I think of it as those – have you ever seen those videos where they start really, really zoomed in on a quark or an electron or a nucleus, and then they zoom out to the atom, and then to the cell, and then to the plant, and then to the backyard, and then to the map-view, and the Earth-view, and the Solar System, and the galaxy, and then you feel like, “Wow! We’re so far out!” and then you can zoom back in and back out. It’s very trippy and fun. We can do that with language.

Lauren: One of the great things about this is that those building blocks being able to combine in really versatile ways allows us to create sentences that have never been uttered before. Collecting these is something of a linguist’s hobby.

Gretchen: We have a few fun sentences that we can keep returning to and talk about them and all these different layers. But let’s debut our candidate sentences here.

Lauren: One: “Today, I learnt that there were smaller walrus ancestors, and I am extremely happy to report that the researcher writing about this did, indeed, refer to them as ‘smallrus’.”

Gretchen: Number Two: “Moons can have moons, and they are called ‘moonmoons’.”

Lauren: Three: “As the current record holder for the highest score in Donkey Kong, Hank Chien is legally fourth in line to be President of Taiwan.”

Lingthusiasm Episode 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 or read the transcript here.

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.

Here are the links mentioned in the episode:

Lingthusiasm episodes mentioned:

You can listen to this episode via Lingthusiasm.com, Soundcloud, RSS, Apple Podcasts/iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also download an mp3 via the Soundcloud page for offline listening.

To receive an email whenever a new episode drops, sign up for the Lingthusiasm mailing list.

You can help keep Lingthusiasm ad-free, get access to bonus content, and more perks by supporting us on Patreon.

Lingthusiasm is on Bluesky, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Mastodon, and Tumblr. Email us at contact [at] lingthusiasm [dot] com

Gretchen is on Bluesky as @GretchenMcC and blogs at All Things Linguistic.

Lauren is on Bluesky as @superlinguo and blogs at Superlinguo.

Lingthusiasm is created by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our senior producer is Claire Gawne, our production editor is Sarah Dopierala, our production assistant is Martha Tsutsui Billins, our editorial assistant is Jon Kruk, and our technical editor is Leah Velleman. Our music is ‘Ancient City’ by The Triangles.

This episode of Lingthusiasm is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike license (CC 4.0 BY-NC-SA).

Bonus 96: What makes for beautiful writing, scientifically speaking

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 bonus episode, Gretchen 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.

Listen to this episode about what psycholinguistics can tell us about creative writing, with Julie Sedivy, and get access to many more bonus episodes by supporting Lingthusiasm on Patreon.

101 places to get enthusiastic about linguistics

In honour of Lingthusiasm's 100th episodiversary, we've compiled this list of 101 public-facing places where linguists and linguistics nerds hang out and learn things! 

17 podcasts about linguistics

13 nonfiction books about linguistics

6 linguistically-inspired novels

14 linguistics youtube channels

11 shortform video channels about linguistics (tiktok/reels)

10 most popular Lingthusiasm episodes

In honour of the 100th episode of the podcast that's enthusiastic about linguistics, here is our most popular episode from each "decade" of Lingthusiasm! 

Episode 01 - Speaking a single language won't bring about world peace

Wouldn’t it solve so many problems in the world if everyone just spoke the same language? Not so fast!  

Episode 13 - What Does it Mean to Sound Black? Intonation and Identity Interview with Nicole Holliday

If you grow up with multiple accents to choose from, what does the one you choose say about your identity? How can linguistics unpick our hidden assumptions about what “sounds angry” or “sounds articulate”? What can we learn from studying the melodies of speech, in addition to the words and sounds? 

Episode 25 - Every word is a real word

We don’t point at a chair or a tree and assert that it’s not a word. Of course it’s not! So why, then, do people feel called to question the wordhood of actual words?  

Episode 39 - How to rebalance a lopsided conversation

Why do some conversations seem to flow really easily, while other times, it feels like you can’t get a word in edgewise, or that the other person isn’t holding up their end of the conversation? 

Episode 49 - How translators approach a text

How do translators decide whether to more closely follow the literal structure of the text or to adapt more freely? 

Episode 59 - Are you thinking what I'm thinking? Theory of Mind 

We talk about the highly important role of gossip in the development of language, reframing how we introduce people to something they haven’t heard of yet, and ways of synchronizing mental states across groups of people, from conferences to movie voiceovers.

Episode 68 - Tea and skyscrapers - When words get borrowed across languages

When societies of humans come into contact, they’ll often pick up words from each other. When this is happening actively in the minds of multilingual people, it gets called codeswitching; when it happened long before anyone alive can remember, it’s more likely to get called etymology.

Episode 72 - What If Linguistics - Absurd Hypothetical Questions with Randall Munroe of xkcd

We answer absurd hypothetical linguistic questions from special guest Randall Munroe, creator of the webcomic xkcd

Episode 80 - Word magic

The magical kind of spell and the written kind of spell are historically linked. Saying a word can change the state of the world, both in terms of fictional magic spells and in terms of the real-world linguistics 

Episode 90 - What visualizing our vowels tells us about who we are

Vowels are a significant component of what we think of as someone's accent, so we commissioned custom vowel diagrams and explore how they're made and what factors might affect your vowels.

Transcript Episode 100: A hundred reasons to be enthusiastic about linguistics

This is a transcript for Lingthusiasm episode ‘A hundred reasons to be enthusiastic about linguistics’. It’s been lightly edited for readability. Listen to the episode here or wherever you get your podcasts. Links to studies mentioned and further reading can be found on the episode show notes page.

[Music]

Gretchen: Welcome to Lingthusiasm, a podcast that’s enthusiastic about linguistics! I’m Gretchen McCulloch.

Lauren: I’m Lauren Gawne. Today, we’re getting enthusiastic about linguistics in 100 different ways for our 100th episode. But first, thanks for joining us for this very special round number episode.

Gretchen: Whether this is your first or hundredth episode of Lingthusiasm, or anywhere in between, we’re delighted by your enthusiasm for linguistics.

Lauren: Our most recent bonus episode was deleted scenes from interviews including talking to Jacq Jones about linguistics crafting, chatting Gavagai with Tom Scott, and a discussion about computational linguistics and language documentation with Emily Bender.

Gretchen: The support of our patrons and your enthusiasm for our bonus episodes on Patreon has been the way that we’ve funded the show for the first hundred episodes. Your continued support will help us make many more.

Lauren: For this bonus episode and over 90 other bonus episodes, go to patreon.com/lingthusiasm.

[Music]

Gretchen: This is our 100th episode of Lingthusiasm! We should do something special to celebrate.

Lauren: Oh, yeah! We could do an episode on the linguistics of time words like “month” or “year.”

Gretchen: I think we’ve done that. What if we do tense and how time works in grammar?

Lauren: We’ve done that, too. We could do numbers.

Gretchen: No, we’ve done numbers in a bonus episode. Besides, how are we supposed to pick just one favourite topic?

Lauren: When it comes to linguistics, maybe our favourite topic is all of them.

Gretchen: I remember when I was first learning linguistics and feeling like I was constantly having my mind expanded by so many things that I didn’t know about languages and how they fit in the world.

Lauren: Oh, yes, I love those moments where you’re just like, “Ah ha! This is cool.” We’ve pulled together 100 linguistics facts for our 100th episode!

Gretchen: Featuring some Lingthusiasm classics, things from previous episodes that either stood out to us or people on social media told us were especially memorable, and maybe some things that might show up in expanded form in future episodes.

Lauren: One thing we’ve also loved across the last 100 episodes have been the amazing guest interviews we’ve done. We’ve also excited to share some facts from previous guests on the show, which they’ve sent along to help us celebrate.

Gretchen: We’d love to hear from you, too! What’s a quick fact, example, story, other thing related to linguistics that made you go, “Whoa,” or that you like sharing with people? Whether it’s already in this episode or something we haven’t gotten to yet.

Lauren: Maybe that will help more people find the show for Episode 200!

Lingthusiasm Episode 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 or read the transcript here.

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.

Here are the links and citations mentioned in the episode:

Lingthusiasm episodes mentioned:

Merch mentioned in this episode:

You can listen to this episode via Lingthusiasm.com, Soundcloud, RSS, Apple Podcasts/iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also download an mp3 via the Soundcloud page for offline listening.

To receive an email whenever a new episode drops, sign up for the Lingthusiasm mailing list.

You can help keep Lingthusiasm ad-free, get access to bonus content, and more perks by supporting us on Patreon.

Lingthusiasm is on Bluesky, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Mastodon, and Tumblr. Email us at contact [at] lingthusiasm [dot] com

Gretchen is on Bluesky as @GretchenMcC and blogs at All Things Linguistic.

Lauren is on Bluesky as @superlinguo and blogs at Superlinguo.

Lingthusiasm is created by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our senior producer is Claire Gawne, our production editor is Sarah Dopierala, our production assistant is Martha Tsutsui Billins, our editorial assistant is Jon Kruk, and our technical editor is Leah Velleman. Our music is ‘Ancient City’ by The Triangles. This episode of Lingthusiasm is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike license (CC 4.0 BY-NC-SA).

Bonus 95: Crochet vocal tract, grammar is a team sport, gifs, and soy sauce - Deleted scenes from Jacq Jones, Emily M. Bender, and Tom Scott team interviews

We've interviewed lots of great people on Lingthusiasm, and sometimes there's a story or two that we just don't have space for in the main episode, so here's a bonus episode with our favourite recent outtakes! Think of it as a special bonus edition DVD from the past year of Lingthusiasm with director's commentary and deleted scenes.

In this bonus episode, Lauren and Gretchen 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, to speculate about crocheting a model of the vocal tract (PLEASE send us pics if you make one) and a fun diagnostic test you can try right now to figure out which of the two English R sounds you make! (Yes, there are two tongue positions, it's okay, they sound the same.) 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. Plus: Lauren tests Gretchen's lateral thinking about soy sauce versus tomato sauce (utterly failing to disprove the myth that linguists know all the etymologies). Listen to this episode about some of our favourite deleted bits from recent interviews, and get access to many more bonus episodes by supporting Lingthusiasm on Patreon.

Transcript Episode 99: A politeness episode, if you please

This is a transcript for Lingthusiasm episode ‘A politeness episode, if you please’. It’s been lightly edited for readability. Listen to the episode here or wherever you get your podcasts. Links to studies mentioned and further reading can be found on the episode show notes page.

[Music]

Lauren: Welcome to Lingthusiasm, a podcast that’s enthusiastic about linguistics! I’m Lauren Gawne.

Gretchen: I’m Gretchen McCulloch. Today, we’re getting enthusiastic about what politeness and rudeness are made up of at a linguistic level. But first, people have been asking us for years, “You guys have bonus episodes on Patreon, but I wanna get a gift for someone,” or “I’m broke/I don’t have a credit card. Is there a way that I can buy a gift subscription for someone else to the bonus episodes or ask someone else to get them as a gift for me?”

Lauren: We’re pleased to say that the answer is now, “Yes!” Patreon have newly added a gift membership feature. If you’d be excited to receive a Patreon membership to Lingthusiasm as a gift, we’ll have the link in the show notes for you to forward to your friends and/or family with a little wink-wink, nudge-nudge.

Gretchen: Also, if you’re intrigued by the bonus episodes but a monthly subscription isn’t quite your thing, we also now have a way for you to buy a themed bundle of linguistic bonus episodes on a particular topic. If you’re looking for more linguistics-related books to read – both fiction and non-fiction – you can pick up the Lingthusiasm Book Club collection or check out the Lingthusiasm After Dark collection for our episodes about swearing, language under the influence of…various substances, and our special ASMR episode where we read the Harvard Sentences in a [ASMR voice] soothing, calming voice.

Lauren: For both of these collections or membership that gives you access to over 90 bonus episodes, go to patreon.com/lingthusiasm.

Gretchen: Our most recent bonus episode, for example, was a crossover chat with the team from Let’s Learn Everything. Let’s Learn Everything is a delightfully silly science podcast. They had me on their main show to ask me questions about linguistics. But they had so many fun questions that we recorded a second bonus part for patrons about science, metaphors, and more. You don’t need to already have any familiarity with their show to listen to the bonus episode, but we will link to the first part anyway since it was also really fun.

[Music]

Lauren: “Okay, Gretchen, let’s start the episode.”

Gretchen: “Lauren, would you like to start the episode?”

Lauren: “If you would please introduce the topic of the episode, Gretchen, I would be ever so grateful.”

Gretchen: “Oh, no, I couldn’t possibly. No, you go first. I really must insist that YOU introduce the topic of the episode. Ah, that is, if you wouldn’t mind. I hope I’m not imposing.”

Lauren: “Well, thank you. I appreciate that. It’s incredibly kind of you to concede to my feelings about whose turn it is to start the episode. Maybe we can start it by being incredibly impolite to each other.” [Both hosts hesitate]

Gretchen: It’s so – it was a lot easier to act at being very polite. This being rude to each other on purpose thing feels really hard to me, actually.

Lauren: If we were to try, though, I imagine that the sentences would be a lot shorter and involve a lot less deferring to each other. Maybe something very abrupt like, “Start the show now, lady!”

Gretchen: “Get on with the effin’ podcast, all right?”

Lauren: “Podcast, now!”