Lingthusiasm Episode 3: Arrival of the linguists

Linguists are very excited about the movie Arrival, because it stars a linguist saving the day by figuring out how to talk with aliens. Which, if you compare it to previous linguists in film (being obnoxious to poor flower girls, for example) is a vast improvement. 

In this episode of the podcast that’s enthusiastic about linguistics, Gretchen and Lauren come to you having just watched Arrival, to tell you what it got right and wrong about life as a linguist, how linguists have been reacting, and the linguists who consulted on the film. We also talk about some other books and films that feature linguistics, if Arrival caught your interest. 

We also discuss what we’ve been up to lately. Gretchen is busily writing the latest draft of her book about internet English, and Lauren has just published a grammar of a language spoken in Nepal.

Click here for a link to this episode in your podcast player of choice or read the transcript here.

Here are the links mentioned in this episode:

• Intrigued by the linguistics in Arrival? Here’s what to check out next
• Language Log: the making of a cinematic linguist’s office
• List of linguistics media about Arrival from Jessica Coon
• The real etymology of Kangaroo
• How different languages name colours (Claire Bowern)
  
• Praat
• Lauren’s grammar of Lamjung Yolmo
• Gretchen’s page of book updates to date
  

Reviews:

• Lauren’s review of Story of Your Life
  
• Lauren’s review of Native Tongue
• Lauren’s review of Babel 17
• Lauren’s review of Embassy Town
  
• Gretchen’s livetweet of Too Like The Lightning
• Gretchen’s livetweets of The Fifth Season and The Obelisk Gate
• Gretchen’s posts about Ancillary Justice
• Gretchen’s livetweet of The Last Samurai
• Two linguists explain pseudo-Old English in The Wake
• Gretchen’s list of pop linguistics books and lingfic with Lauren’s additions

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.

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

Gretchen is on Twitter as @GretchenAMcC and blogs at All Things Linguistic.

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

Lingthusiasm is created by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne and 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).