127: Oh (with Maia Chao, Kelly Wright, and Caitlin Green)

The Words of the Year are out! And we’re talking about ’em. We’re answering all the questions in our voluminous Mailbag. We have here, there, and where. We also have that and what. Was there ever a hat? Why are we friends with someone? Is the distribution of emoji Zipfian? If you study linguistics — the science of language — are you a STEM major? And Hedvig springs a game on us.

29 Jan 20221h 19min

Our listeners have voted, and here are all the words! Which were our top Words of the Week? Which were the worst? And what did all the dictionary people pick? We’re joined by our very special guest (and lingopod pal) Dr Lauren Gawne for this very cheugy episode of Because Language.

22 Dec 20211h 23min

Our friends and listeners bring us lots of great stories, questions, and words. So for this episode, we've invited them to present them themselves! All patrons have been invited to join us for this live episode, and many have brought pets. Also, Dr Hadas Kotek has examined the sentences used in linguistic textbooks and examples. How are people represented in our discipline?

17 Dec 20211h 22min

The sciences are facing a replicability crisis. Some landmark studies were once considered settled, but then failed when they were retested. So have any linguistic experiments been toppled? And how do we fix this problem? Dr Martine Grice and Dr Bodo Winter have contributed to a special issue of Linguistics, and they join us for this fun episode.

1 Dec 20211h 34min

Here to help us answer our voluminous Mailbag is the tireless Dr Caitlin Green, Vice Cancellor of Caitlin University. Among our questions: NON-BINARY or NONBINARY? What’s behind coffee names? Why is there an L in WOULD? Could swearing get in the way of persuasion? When is it time to stop supporting a minority language? What’s with the D in TIDDIES? Fee fi fo… fun? Why doesn’t it rhyme with ENGLISHMAN? Where does TUCKER come from?

16 Nov 20211h 14min

Dialect is a role-playing game about language and how it dies. Over the course of a game, players form an isolated community, create a private language, and watch it fade away as the community’s isolation is breached. We’re very pleased and honoured to play a game of Dialect, with game creator Hakan Seyalıoğlu of Thorny Games leading us through it.

15 Nov 20212h 56min

You probably communicate with your friends using media references all the time. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. But why do we include media references, when we could just talk? Turns out it has a lot to do with identity, building social relationships, and communication — all the stuff that language normally does. We’re having a media-heavy discussion with Dr Sylvia Sierra about her book Millennials Talking Media: Creating Intertextual Identities in Everyday Conversation.

1 Nov 20211h 41min

This is the second of a two-parter on generativism, the linguistic school of thought originated by Noam Chomsky. This time, it's from the perspective of early-career researchers. How is generativism relevant to them, and how do they regard its claims? We ask: What importance does linguistic theory have on day-to-day research? How does generativism relate to nativism, the idea that at least some language is innate? Is there a conflict between generativism and functionalism today? What's the next step in the generative enterprise?

14 Okt 20211h 56min