Looking forward to learning more from this series about IRL lingcomm, which can often fly under the radar. Thanks @gretchenmcc.bsky.social and Leah Velleman for putting this series together!
Linguist Senior Lecturer, La Trobe University gesture/grammar/✨emoji/#lingcomm Podcast: @lingthusiasm Masto: superlinguo@scicomm.xyz Blog: superlinguo.com She/her(/they)
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Looking forward to learning more from this series about IRL lingcomm, which can often fly under the radar. Thanks @gretchenmcc.bsky.social and Leah Velleman for putting this series together!
LingComm IRL is a new interview series on the LingComm blog where people can share their face-to-face #lingcomm projects. The first post was about doing linguistics with Girl Scouts in the US, the second is about a a high school linguistics club in Estonia: lingcomm.org/2025/08/27/l...
Find out how science was used to spite the Nazis in the latest episode of Let's Learn Everything! "91: Lauren Gawne, Is Pointing Rude, and Gesture Studies" wherever you get podcasts.
Thanks! I only listen to podcasts in English, but want to capture as much of the linguistics podcast world as possible, so this is very useful!
I don't know most emblems, because there's an extreme documentation gap: doi.org/10.16995/glo...
Our cohost @superlinguo.bsky.social is on Let's Learn Everything!
Sorry you're being bullied by a defunct service, dummy.
👉 Is pointing rude? 👈 I had an extreme amount of fun chatting about gesture with the Let's Learn Everything crew. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/9... We touched on medieval manuscripts, rainbows, archers and Just Dance (absolutely not Dance Dance Revolution)
Thanks!
Thanks! I don't think I have any Italian ones on the list yet!
Thanks!
I'd love someone to make a list of long video creators!
Tell Lauren about any new linguistics podcasts you're aware of, in any language! And if you're looking for more linguistics to listen to, boy do I have a treat for you:
I'm doing my annual update to my list of linguistics and language podcasts: www.superlinguo.com/post/1584480... If you listen to anything that's not already on the list, please let me know about it! (I wait until something has 5 episode before adding it to the list)
I'm doing my annual update to my list of linguistics and language podcasts: www.superlinguo.com/post/1584480... If you listen to anything that's not already on the list, please let me know about it! (I wait until something has 5 episode before adding it to the list)
Murderbot is one of my all time favourite series - this is a fabulous price and great cause.
Current me is so grateful to past me/the whole team whenever I need a quick but slick topic intro in my teaching!
the first crash course linguistics video now has a million views, @superlinguo.bsky.social @jessgrieser.com aren't you glad we worked on this in 2020 anyway if you want some fun 10 min linguistics videos to watch you can still do that!
Many cities are host to hundreds of languages that don't show up on official records. In this episode we get enthusiastic about urban multilingualism!
That's great to know!
Thanks. Very useful.
Linguists know babies come from the 14th century diminutive of 'babe', but the origin of that word (and hence all babies) is ultimately uncertain.
Lovely to see @dontattempt.bsky.social’s piece on gestures in today’s Herald, featuring my IMMORTAL GESTURES alongside @superlinguo.bsky.social and others: www.smh.com.au/culture/book...
More stuff about gesture, from more people, in more places, for more audiences! That's basically the summary of my business model at the moment. (This is why I do not run a business)
Also in the same column, @damonyoung.com.au's immortal Gestures, which I had a lot of fun reviewing a few months ago: www.superlinguo.com/post/7851897...
"Scholarly in tone, Gawne's book unlocks the wonders of alternative spaces that various cultures adopt." Always love any opportunity to share the different ways that different cultures speak and gesture about time using different physical metaphors.
So nice to see references to some of my favourite bits of Gesture: A Slim Guide featured in this weekend's SMH column from @dontattempt.bsky.social www.smh.com.au/culture/book... [paywalled, sorry]
Do you take photos of linguistically interesting signage? Join the club!
pinging @manymindspod.bsky.social because of the very excellent and very Australian illustration.
I'd love to hear any feedback on this position statement we have developed. It aims to clearly communicate to students our approach to using AI, and the underlying reasons and motivations for our approach. Would you use something like this in your teaching? What changes would you make?
I've really enjoyed the discussions with my team as we worked on this and the response from other educators. So great to work with a team where the focus is so deeply on student learning outcomes and experience.
This statement was written to clearly communicate to our students our expectations of them and what they can expect from us.
The Linguistics Discipline at La Trobe University have developed a discipline-specific position statement on the role of generative AI in our classrooms. www.superlinguo.com/post/7908973...
people just love clunky eye wear that makes it difficult to process visual information, which is why all cinemas are 3D now.
I've joined the board of the International Society for Gesture Studies as the organisation's Public Relations Officer. I love sharing Gesture Studies with different audiences, and I get to work with an amazing team, so it's pretty much a dream role! www.gesturestudies.com/board
The lingcomm mailing list now has over 100 members! If you're a #lingcomm practioner who wants to hear about lingcomm conferences, events, journal special issues, and so on, please feel free to subscribe!
The latest round of cuts at ANU include an outrageous plan to close the Australian National Dictionary Centre (ANDC). ANU has forgotten its vital function as the national university. Please sign this petition urging ANU to reconsider and protect the ANDC: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...
Thanks! Good to know there's an ongoing body of work building more nuance and refinement into this discussion!
Blind people gesture (and why that’s kind of a big deal) - original post from 2016, with a new research update from last year. The language you speak influences gesture structure in a way that shows they're deeply linked in the way we learn and use language: www.superlinguo.com/post/7896289...
Is a burrito a sandwich? Is ravioli? What about an ice cream sandwich...? So wait, does any word mean anything anymore? Have we just broken language?? It's okay, linguistics has a solution! In this episode we solve the problem with definitions!
There's now a @lingcomm.bsky.social mailing list! This group is a space to share information about #lingcomm practice. This includes, but is not limited to, conferences, events, journal special issues and other information of interest to lingcomm practitioners. lingcomm.org/2025/07/18/l...
Emoji aren’t ruining language 🚫🗑️🗣️ They’re a natural substitute for gesture 🙌🤌 @superlinguo.bsky.social theconversation.com/emoji-arent-... #emoji #gesture #linguistics #language
As I noted in my petition comments, dictionaries and dictionary centres have a vital civic role to play in pushing back against misinformation, marginalisation and erasure. While a lot of the commentary in the last few days has about the control of language in the US as yet another assault on civil
Happy #WorldEmojiDay! Here's a sneak peek at what's coming in Unicode 17.0 later in the year! blog.unicode.org/2025/07/say-...
The latest round of cuts at ANU include an outrageous plan to close the Australian National Dictionary Centre (ANDC). ANU has forgotten its vital function as the national university. Please sign this petition urging ANU to reconsider and protect the ANDC: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...
The ones I do have go to a folder, but RSS is just the best. Have fun!!
I assumed blood 🫣
I'm using The Old Reader, it handles a lot of stuff pretty well, I'm very fond (I've been using it forever now) and much prefer it to newsletters in my inbox.
Sometimes a wildcard at the start of the search term can catch common colocations that are throwing things off: books.google.com/ngrams/graph... I think this is kind of picking up a bit of what @arrantpedantry.com noted about the specific tax law usage
Thanks for all your posting during the conference!
Linguists, did you know LINGUIST List runs a review section? It's a fun way to get copies of books you want to read, and then have a good and useful reason to read them! (and, uh, yeah, Gesture: A Slim Guide is currently available for review 😅 linguistlist.org/issues/36/20...)
Hmm, it's been a while since I've thought about embassy town. It's definitely true that words we use to describe gesture work for their communication (synthetic, global, etc) but gesture is intended to coocur with speech to resolve the context dependence in a way that's different.
"Elephants elaborated their gesturing when their goal was not met." So great! Good to see the kind of work that's been happening with primates extending to other animals!
Linguists, did you know LINGUIST List runs a review section? It's a fun way to get copies of books you want to read, and then have a good and useful reason to read them! (and, uh, yeah, Gesture: A Slim Guide is currently available for review 😅 linguistlist.org/issues/36/20...)
The usual excellent distillation you know and love from MAIHT3000 and the book, but also it was recorded, so if I see it's published I'll be sure to share!
I believe it was recorded for future broadcast!
What to do with the infiltration of AI across so many platforms: 1. Resist the myth of inevitability 2. Support the humanities!!
Lovely to spend an evening listening to @emilymbender.bsky.social chatting with Kobi Leins about #TheAICon, and the weird technological moment that we find ourselves in.
Lingwiki is the name used for an informal network of people and events with the aim of improving the representation of linguistics on Wikipedia. It's also the story of how @gretchenmcc.bsky.social and I started working together, which was fun to revisit!
A Decade of Lingwiki: An informal history 2025 marks ten years of lingwik. I like round numbers, documenting informal histories and lingwiki, and so I wanted to celebrate this anniversary by sharing the parts of the lingwiki story I am familiar with. www.superlinguo.com/post/7870922...
Great podcast and conclusion: Even though Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis might not be necessarily scientifically based, it still invites/provokes people to delve deeper into communication understandings with people of other cultures/language @superlinguo.bsky.social open.spotify.com/episode/0TiM...
Yay! It's very much in conversation with your work with Akita on the Japanese earthquake corpus!
Gesture a Slim Guide is available with a 30% discount code (AUFLY30) on the global.oup.com/academic website - for the hardcover (and it looks like it works for the very cute softcover too) global.oup.com/academic/pro...
Yay!! Looking forward to hanging out with you and sharing all my fave gesture stories!
THIS is the moment the shovel emoji was created for
I absolutely love this origin story. This makes absolute sense (I also benefited from so maybe secondhand copies of Morris books)
😔💐
oh yeah I'm not touching the central team's research copy at all. I'm new to Nvivo but not to staying paranoid when it comes to data management. www.superlinguo.com/post/7439604...
being industry standard and absolutely terrible can both be true! I hope your student's project is going well!
hahaha I opened up the project on the mac after 2 upgrades and a conversion and none of the data was in there. I love this highly productive use of my time. Speedrunning my way into qual research life.
after today's session I can confirm it happened with both the Win and Mac versions (I didn't even want to have to set up the Windows version, but I also didn't want to bother the team). Your student is gaining authentic real-world skills in patience with arcane software!
Working at this for 30 minutes and I'm still yet to actually put data in front of my eyeballs. A lot of qual research jokes are starting to make a lot more sense to me.
It finally happened, I've started working on a project where I need to use NVivo. It's been a comedically bad experience so far (I've had to download it on my PC so I can then download a converter, so I can move it to my mac, and the project has additionally been "upgraded" for system updates twice)
From the vault: hear me and @superlinguo.bsky.social talk about why the word for "seal" sounds like "fuck" in so many European languages, shifts in meaning from "sucks" to "rawdogging" and more sweary commentary from the very first Lingthusiasm bonus episode, now updated and free-with-email!
Such light!!
this was pretty much the reason we made the pink heart proposal, so that any pride flag could be made from a collection of hearts (not as satisfying as a single multicolour heart, but that's a level of specificity that emoji aren't going to ever be coded for)
I've noticed 'unhinged' in my own lexicon and around me a lot in the last month or so, but apparently this is something that's been building for a couple of decades and only now hitting my perceptual filter.
What your hands are saying (even when you’re not thinking about it) I had so much fun talking about gesture with @grammargirl.bsky.social, this is the first interview I recorded with someone who had read Gesture: A Slim Guide. You can probably hear my delight: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/w...
New ✨episode✨ with Lauren Gawne @superlinguo.bsky.social about her new book "Gesture: A slim guide" We're talking about all the gestures, but we delve into emoji, and we're even on video! Find it all here, or in your favourite podcatcher www.patreon.com/posts/120-ge... @lingthusiasm.bsky.social
I'm sorry, I'm so bad at being across video, I wonder if there's something about dictionary production from the conlang side of educational video making. @colingorrie.bsky.social @conlangery.com
There's less on dictionary making than you might expect, but I think I read/cited this while working on the Yolmo dictionary: Mosel, U., (2004) “Dictionary making in endangered speech communities”, Language Documentation and Description 2, 39-54. doi: doi.org/10.25894/ldd...
The Cambridge Handbook of Gesture Studies has a little bit on gesture dictionaries, but this short paper is good too: Kreydlin, G. 2010. Lexicography of gestures and their nominations (dictionaries and database systems). New Trends in Lexicography. 90–98. Cambridge Scholars. (dm if u need a pdf)
Micro-patronage for research communication: the Lingthusiasm podcast as a case study of a sustainable funding model A new OA research article with @jod999.bsky.social in the Journal of Science Communication (JCOM) doi.org/10.22323/146... Blog post summary: www.superlinguo.com/post/7859436...
Immortal Gestures, Damon Young (review) www.superlinguo.com/post/7851897... 15 chapters about 15 gestures, the author’s relationship to them, and what they tell us about culture, history, religion and so much more. I enjoyed Young delighting in the observation of actions typically taken for granted.
Symmetrical fandom 💕
I just saw your post about it!!!
Spending some time with my smart and funny parasocial friends @emilymbender.bsky.social & @alexhanna.bsky.social. The AI Con is a wonderfully sensible analysis of what's happening with tech hype today.
Oh no... I've absolutely backed myself into a pedantic number trap 😅
100% here for pedantic numeral content.
Is that last one gift or gender?
In praise of niche papers www.superlinguo.com/post/7845555... A blog post inspired by @dingemansemark.bsky.social I really enjoyed this exercise, please share those papers which are close to your heart and you're always surprised they don't get much attention!
Yesssssss
The Journal of the Undergraduate Linguistics Association of Britain takes global submissions and is explicitly set up to support and mentor students: www.ulab.org.uk/journal/issues
Sending out a bat signal for linguists: I’m trying to get my high school Linguistics and Media Studies class approved as an ENG101 course for early college / dual enrollment. The English dept at this community college keeps sending up roadblocks because there’s “too much linguistics,” (1/3) 🐦🐦
My boss made these for me, they sit on my desk and are useful for in-person meetings as well as online ones.
We are both big fans!
Thank you for the reassurance before we start watching 🫡
In this episode we talk about language play in Sámi, multilingual reading, the 500+ year history of joiks, and "language showers" with Dr. Hanna-Máret Outakoski, a professor at the Sámi University of Applied Sciences in Kautokeino, Norway soundcloud.com/lingthusiasm...
Did you know that ELP offers a FREE Language Revitalization Mentors program? Anyone who’s working to revitalize their language, wanting to get started, or curious about language revitalization, can talk one-on-one with experienced language revitalizers and scholars. endangeredlanguages.com/mentors
haha I was chatting with someone about this the other day and was like "this has real Alex Goldman vibes" lol