Picture this: it's early January, 2024, and hundreds upon hundreds of linguists have gathered for the Linguistic Society of America (LSA)'s annual meeting in New York City. With so many language nerds in one place, I couldn't help but interview as many people as I could about their favorite linguistics fact.
This episode contains tantalizing tidbits of information about everything from onomastics, non-concatenative morphology, and the McGurk effect—to historical events effecting language change, and statistics about sociolinguistic judgements. There are allusions to the debate of creole uniformitarianism vs exceptionalism, as well as examples of the Great Vowel Shift and the ongoing discussion of language's encapsulation of culture. From etymology facts, to tricky syntactic constructions, to cross-linguistic phonological observations, to the entrenchment of misogyny through language, you will be entranced and entertained for the entire episode.
The voices showcased here represent a diverse field; linguists hail from all backgrounds and subfields, and they work in industries like academia, healthcare, technology, journalism, and media. Who knew linguistics was such a versatile discipline that can totally and most definitely aid you in a lucrative career where you'll never have to worry about "tenure"??
Several interviews were filmed and posted to Nicole Holliday's tiktok page, accessible here.
Thank you to all who participated in this episode. Being a linguist is one of the greatest privileges I have ever known. I feel immeasurably lucky to be able to share that title with all of you.
Voices heard throughout the episode, in the order they appear:
Heidi Harley, Professor at University of Arizona
Nicole Holliday, Professor at Pomona College
Daniel Ginsberg, Director of Strategic Initiatives at the American Anthropological Association
Canaan Breiss, Professor at USC
Caitl Light, Academic Advisor at Loyola University Chicago
Kirby Conrod, Professor at Swarthmore College
Allison Casar, PhD candidate at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Joshua Dees, PhD candidate at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Walt Wolfram, Professor at North Carolina State University
Gretchen McCulloch, Internet Linguist and host of Lingthusiasm: a podcast that's enthusiastic about linguistics
Kelly Elizabeth Wright, Post-doc at Virginia Tech
Jordan Douglas Tavani, PhD candidate at UCSB
Rachel Burdin, Professor at UNH
Gabby Poplawski, Undergraduate student at Pomona College
Jamaal Muwwakkil, Post-doc at UCLA
Michel DeGraff, Professor at MIT
Aaliyah Bullen, Undergraduate student at Swarthmore College
Paul Reed, Professor at University of Alabama
Alex Johnston, Professor at Georgetown and Consultant
Brad Davidson, Director of Medical Anthropology at Havas Health and You; Penny Eckert, Professor Emeritas at Stanford
Ceci Cutler, Professor at CUNY Graduate Center and Lehman College
Valerie Fridland, Author of Like, Literally, Dude, and Professor at University of Nevada, Reno
Mike Stern, PhD student at Yale
Katie Russel, PhD candidate at UC Berkeley
Bruno Ferenc Segedin, PhD student at Brown
Alexa Little, Learning Experience Designer at Veeam Software
Emily Bender, Professor at University of Washington
Ben Zimmer, Columnist for the Wall Street Journal
Aiden Malanoski, PhD candidate at CUNY Graduate Center
Jon Stevenson, PhD candidate at University of York
Byron Ahn, Professor at Princeton
and me, Talia Sherman, Undergraduate student at Brown