Bonus 82: Frak, smeg, and more swearing in fiction - Ex Urbe Ad Astra interview with Jo Walton and Ada Palmer
The words that a culture considers taboo or obscene can tell us things about what that culture considers important or profane. For example, many swear words in present-day English relate to sex and body functions, while historically in English we’ve also had more religious swears, like “God’s blood” and “God’s teeth”. In fiction, authors can use invented swear words to get around censorship, like “frack” in Battlestar Gallactica and “frell” in Farscape, as well as to create a sense of a particular culture, such as “smeg” in Red Dwarf, which then sometimes take on new lives of their own among fans.
In this bonus episode, Gretchen gets enthusiastic about swearing (including rude gestures) in fiction with science fiction and fantasy authors Jo Walton and Ada Palmer, authors of the Thessaly books and Terra Ignota series, both super interesting series we’ve ling-nerded out about before on the show. We talk about fictional substitutes for the F word, expletive infixations like abso-bloody-lutely, sweary lexical gaps (why don’t we swear with “toe jam!”) and old fashioned swears in English. We also talk about learning real-life swear words without full awareness of their emotional valence by reading fiction (such as how Gretchen and Ada don’t find “bloody” as taboo as Jo does), cultural differences in taboo gestures such as pointing with the middle finger in real life and teeth-baring smiles in Arkady Martine’s A Memory Called Empire, and an extra bonusy bit about recording emotional punctuation in the audiobook of Because Internet.
Content note: Lingthusiasm episodes about swearing contain real swears! If you typically play this podcast around kids, for example, it’s up to you whether you want to have that conversation with them.
Also note that this conversation was first recorded as an interview with Gretchen for Ada and Jo’s podcast, Ex Urbe Ad Astra, where it will one day appear in longer form, but they’ve kindly let us share some of Lauren’s favourite snippets from it in advance (plus a few comments from her at the end!).
Bonus 81: Linguistic Advice - Challenging grammar snobs, finding linguistics community, accents in singing, and more
Are there linguistics things in your life that you would like advice about? In honour of our 7th anniversary making Lingthusiasm, this is an episode answering your advice questions, from the serious to the silly. We’re not professional advice columnists but we are professional linguists, and many people have asked us variants of similar questions over the years.
In this bonus episode, Lauren and Gretchen get enthusiastic about your linguistics questions! We give advice about how to change people’s perspectives on “correct” language, intergenerational slang, amateur research and finding linguistics community and jobs outside academia, learning signed languages from Deaf instructors, singing in different accents, our desire for more research on how podcasts spread linguistic structures, and a lightning round of many more questions!
Sometimes linguistics example sentences are so charmingly bland that they could lull you to sleep, listed one after each other without any larger story for context. We thought, what if we took this effect literally?
We present: LingthusiASMR, a very special bonus episode, in which your hosts Gretchen and Lauren get enthusiastic about linguistics in a very relaxed manner by reading a classic set of linguistics example sentences. Known informally as the Harvard Sentences, the 1965 Revised List of Phonetically Balanced Sentences were designed to use English speech sounds at the same frequency as they appear in English generally, for use in audio and speech transmission systems testing, which we hope will make them extra relaxing. We’ll have more context about these and other classic linguistics example sentences in an upcoming main episode, but for now, please relax and enjoy this delightfully mundane list of around 700 soothing sentences, read in our slowest and calmest voices.
ASMR, or Autonomous sensory meridian response is a tingling sensation that usually begins on the scalp and moves down the back of the neck and upper spine, often produced as a response to particular types of acoustic stimuli. We haven’t yet tested to what extent this episode will cause ASMR specifically or if it’ll just lead to a nonspecific feeling of relaxation, but the wordplay was too good to resist, so please comment below with whether you got the effect! And feel free to let us know your favourite Harvard Sentence if you haven’t nodded off already. Also, if anyone wants to do acoustic analysis of ASMR generally or this as compared to a regular episode, seriously, get in touch!
Lingthusiasm aesthetic IPA chart lens cloth special offer! (Closing October 5th, 2022)
The
International Phonetic Alphabet chart is sometimes called the periodic
table of linguistics. But the periodic table comes in a range of aesthetics,
and we wanted to create a sleek, minimalist, aesthetic IPA chart design too. One that you can take
anywhere on a handy portable lens cloth so you can admire the chart while also
keeping your glasses, computer screen, sunglasses and camera lens
clean.
We’re going to place ONE (1) massive order for aesthetic IPA chart lens cloths on October 6, 2022. If you want one, be a Lingthusiasm patron at the Lingthusiast tier or higher on October 5th, 2022,
timezone: anywhere in the world. If you’re already a patron at that
tier, then you’re set! (That’s the tier where you also get bonus episodes and the Discord access, we’ve never run a special offer at this tier before but we think this time it’ll be worth it!)
If you know other linguists or linguistics fans who might be excited to
have a snazzy aesthetic IPA chart that they can carry around with them
(plus, y'know, get access to the usual Patreon perks
like bonus Lingthusiasm episodes and a Discord server that’s
enthusiastic about linguistics), please help them find out about this
before it’s too late! We are not planning to ever order a second batch
of IPA lens cloths, so this is your one chance to get them.
For more details about the motivation behind the design, and the lens cloth special offer, see this longer post.
[IPA chart redesign image description: an abstract, minimalist* rendering of the
International Phonetic Alphabet as a grid of white, sans-serif letters
on a midnight blue background, with no row or column headings. Bright
green is used as an accent colour, for solid green circles around the
voiceless consonants; white circles with green font for the rounded
vowels, and narrow green borders around the lateral sounds. There’s a
small lingthusiasm logo in the bottom corner and a translucent “demo”
watermark splashed in the background.]
[Infographic image description: What if the International Phonetic Alphabet looked
like weird nerd art? Get this design (arrow to previously-described
abstract IPA demo) on a handy-to-carry lens cloth (image of those
microfibre cloths you clean glasses with; these are not the actual
cloths but just to give you an idea of the genre). (Tiny abstract
drawing of Lauren & Gretchen silhouettes from the website.) We’re
placing one bulk order for everyone who’s a Lingthusiast patron or
higher as of October 5, 2022. Sign up at patreon.com/lingthusiasm]
Bonus 67: Behind the scenes on making an aesthetic IPA chart - Interview with Lucy Maddox
The International Phonetic Alphabet chart is an iconic reference image which many linguists have pinned up somewhere to refer to. But its most familiar form is a not-especially-aesthetic technical diagram and we wondered, what if we made a more artistic version?
In this episode, Lauren and Gretchen get enthusiastic with Lucy Maddox, Lingthusiasm’s resident artist, about redesigning the IPA! We talk about how Lucy got interested in linguistics, how she got into art, how we started working with her, and the many design considerations that went into making a redesigned IPA chart: using New York City subway icons as inspiration for the circles, adding colours and a sans-serif font to differentiate it from the classic IPA chart (and why we definitely couldn’t use capitals), and integrating the vowel chart and the two consonant charts all into one diagram.
Announcements:
We’ve teamed up with linguist/artist Lucy Maddox to create a fun, minimalist version of the classic International Phonetic Alphabet chart, which you can see here (plus more info about how we put together the design). It looks really cool, and it’s also a practical reference tool that you can carry around with you in a convenient multi-purpose format: lens cloths!
We’re going to place ONE (1) massive order for aesthetic IPA chart lens cloths on October 6, 2022. If you want one, be a patron at the Lingthusiast tier or higher on October 5th, 2022, timezone: anywhere in the world. If you’re already a patron at that tier, then you’re set!
The International Phonetic Alphabet chart is sometimes called the periodic table of linguistics – an important technical diagram that’s also visually interesting and which many linguists hang up on a wall, carry around inside a notebook, or simply know the exact keystrokes that’ll get them to a page to type or listen to it.
Like with the periodic table of the elements, the layout of the IPA chart is a key to what the symbols mean: from top to bottom, the chart goes roughly from sounds where the mouth is the most closed to the most open, and from left to right, it goes from sounds where the constriction is the front of the mouth to the back of the mouth. This means that many linguists only know well the parts of the IPA that they encounter regularly in languages they work with, and rely on their knowledge of the overall structure to retrieve other parts on occasion. Hence the need to have it handy to refer to.
But there’s also an important way in which the IPA chart and the periodic table differ: art. If you want a handy reference chart of the elements for your wall or your pocket, there are hundreds of possible designs, ranging from subtle, minimalist designs that look like cool nerdy art to intricate, maximalist designs with all the technical detail you might possibly want to refer to.
With the International Phonetic Alphabet, most people are still printing out (or occasionally stickering, or laminating) the same greyscale diagram from the International Phonetic Association. We, your Lingthusiasm cohosts, have a lot of affection for this classic design, which we’ve spent many hours poring over (especially the forbidden grey areas, ahem), but we also wondered, wouldn’t it be cool if there was a more subtle, minimal version that would look more like weird-yet-stylish nerd art and less like a diagram from an academic paper?
After many months of back-and-forth on coming up with and refining the design, we’re very excited to share the near-final design with you!
[Image description: an abstract, minimalist* rendering of the International Phonetic Alphabet as a grid of white, sans-serif letters on a midnight blue background, with no row or column headings. Bright green is used as an accent colour, for solid green circles around the voiceless consonants; white circles with green font for the rounded vowels, and narrow green borders around the lateral sounds. There’s a small lingthusiasm logo in the bottom corner and a translucent “demo” watermark splashed in the background.]
*Yes, we know there’s a syntax theory called Minimalism as well, which this has no real relationship to because it’s a different subfield. Consider it a bonus easter egg!
(By the way, the design still has “demo” on it because, while we’ve checked it with several very helpful phonetics/phonology friends, there remains a possibility that there’s a typo somewhere which the linguistics internet at large will tell us about before we get it printed. Hey, did we mention – if you notice a typo here, now would be a GREAT time to tell us about it before we print a zillion copies.)
We’ve actually recorded a whole episode chatting with Lucy about the design process, which will be September’s bonus episode, but a few brief notes about our design inspirations until then:
First, we were inspired by the ad-hoc IPA diagrams that linguists draw quickly on blackboards and notebooks when they want to discuss a point, which just have the minimal amount of information, and which generally don’t have any labels for the rows or columns. So we ditched the labels. This is an IPA chart for people who already understand the general principles of reading an IPA chart, even if they don’t quite remember all the symbols – everything should be figure-out-able based on its position relative to common, well-known symbols. Same with the various circles for non-positional information: if you know that the difference between /p/ and /b/ is that /p/ is voiceless and /b/ is voiced, you can deduce that the solid green circle also indicates voicing for less familiar symbols. Or, if you’re inclined to puzzles, this is an IPA chart for people who enjoy the challenge of decoding what some cool-looking symbols mean based on some familiar ones with maybe an assist from Wikipedia or a clickable IPA chart.
But wait – this left us with a conundrum. The main consonant and vowel charts are totally decodable based on position. But there are also two other extra consonant charts which contain a grab-bag of other symbols arranged in no particularly decodable order. Simply removing the headings from these charts left them confusing. But after all, the IPA sounds are all produced with the same vocal apparatus…could we just fit them all into one diagram? It turns out that this (eventually, after much tweaking) looks really neat. And, we think, even makes these oft-disregarded consonants easier to remember.
Oh and by the way, since the 1900 version of the IPA chart had the consonants and vowels all on the same diagram, what if we included the vowels on there too? (We could not, alas, figure out a way of arranging the diacritics to make their meanings decodable from position only, so in the end we omitted them. If anyone does figure this out, please do let us know and we can talk about a revised version.)
With such a cool-looking IPA design, we also wanted to make it exist as a durable, tiny, lightweight object that you could carry with you everywhere and which might even be useful for secondary purposes. Which brings us to…lens cloths!
Lens cloths are a small, durable format for a reference image and you can use them to clean glasses, sunglasses, screens, camera lenses, and so on. Plus, they’re a kind of merch we’ve never been able to do before, because lens cloth printing companies want you to place orders in the hundreds or ideally thousands.
Thousands? Oh, that brings us to The Plan:
We’re going to place ONE (1) massive order for aesthetic IPA chart lens cloths on October 6, 2022. If you want one, be a patron at the Lingthusiast tier or higher on October 5th, 2022, timezone: anywhere in the world. If you’re already a patron at that tier, then you’re set! (That’s the tier where you also get bonus episodes and the Discord access, we’ve never run a special offer at this tier before but we think this time it’ll be worth it!)
If you want several IPA lens cloths, to give to friends or to make double extra sure you never leave home without one, you can also join the higher tiers (or stick around if you’re already there). Patrons as the Ling-phabet tier will get 4 lens cloths and patrons at the Phil-ling-thropist tier will receive 12, in addition to the other rewards at those tiers.
We’ve ordered sample lens cloths from several different companies and we’re really pleased with the quality of the company we’re planning on going with – the design will be entirely sublimated into the microfibre material so there’s nothing to scratch your lenses, and it has a satisfying thickness and image resolution. The lens cloth production company estimates about a 2 week turnaround on ordering, so we expect we’ll be mailing the lens cloths in late October or early November, which *should* be plenty of time for the major winter gifting holidays, assuming the supply chains cooperate.
We do also want to make this sleek aesthetic IPA chart design available on posters and possibly other objects (tell us what you’d be excited about in the comments below!) but that’s going to take a second phase of design work to also make the design look good as a rectangle in addition to a square and figure out some additional colour options to go with a variety of decors. To be honest, running the square design as a special offer is also a bit of a test-run/fundraiser for the rectangular stage of the design, since we’ve already put quite a lot of our own energy and paying-the-designer into it. If people aren’t as excited as we are about this idea, then maybe a rectangular version and/or more colours don’t need to exist. Which would be fine too! But, I mean, c'mon.
If you know other linguists or linguistics fans who might be excited to have a snazzy aesthetic IPA chart that they can carry around with them (plus, y'know, get access to the usual Patreon perks like bonus Lingthusiasm episodes and a Discord server that’s enthusiastic about linguistics), please help them find out about this before it’s too late! We are not planning to ever order a second batch of IPA lens cloths, so this is your one chance to get them.
Whew, that was a long post! Here’s the highlights:
[Image description: What if the International Phonetic Alphabet looked like weird nerd art? Get this design (arrow to previously-described abstract IPA demo) on a handy-to-carry lens cloth (image of those microfibre cloths you clean glasses with; these are not the actual cloths but just to give you an idea of the genre). (Tiny abstract drawing of Lauren & Gretchen silhouettes from the website.) We’re placing one bulk order for everyone who’s a Lingthusiast patron or higher as of October 5, 2022. Sign up at patreon.com/lingthusiasm]
People have been telling us, I’m extremely bored of this pandemic still (still!) existing and is there a way that I could get more linguistics joy and whimsy in the mail?
People have also been asking, is there a way to get Gretchen to sign my copy of her book Because Internet, especially since irl conferences are, uh, not much of a thing these days?
We’re excited to announce a special offer that we’re running on Patreon that solves both of these problems!
Two round “Schwa never stressed” stickers (one floral, one geometric)
One classic square Lingthusiasm logo sticker
One BECAUSE INTERNET bookplate sticker signed by Gretchen, for you to stick inside your copy or anywhere else you like
Here’s what the stickers look like! (IPA scarf and hot cup of tea not included)
Plus, we have a stretch goal!
If we reach a total of 1400 1380 (!) patrons at any level before November 3, then the sticker pack will also include:
Two mini Lingthusiasm green cutout stickers, one of which is called “bouba” and the other “kiki” — which is which? That’s an experiment you get to run on your friends when you stick them on your phone case, water bottle, laptop, etc.
Here’s what the sticker set looks like, including the kiki bouba twins:
Ling-phabet tier
This special offer is part of the Ling-phabet tier, which also has the ordinary perk of letting patrons sponsor an IPA symbol or other special character and be recognized on the Lingthusiasm website on our “Supporter Wall of Fame” page. You can get your symbol through our ~*~super scientific~*~ Which IPA Character Are You Quiz, or just tell us what your favourite character or other Unicode symbol is. Then you get an image with your name and favourite symbol on it (see samples here!) recognizing you as a supporter, which you can share on social media/print off and use as a bookmark/gaze at in warm satisfaction/etc.
Plus, after 3 months at this tier, you get its regular “Lingthusiast” sticker in the mail, so that could be a total of 5 (or 7) stickers and 2 joyous mail occasions for you!
(Patrons at the Phil-ling-thropist tier will get two sticker packs — an extra one to share with a friend or to make sure your next laptop is still sufficiently lingthusiastic — plus the IPA Wall of Fame tile. Phil-ling-thropists also have the impact of 10 patrons in lowering our stretch goal — many thanks to the two people who have already done so! Patrons at this level also receive a “Lingthusiast” mug after three months at this tier instead of the three month sticker.)
Patrons at all tiers help keep the show running
We’re still incredibly appreciative of all kinds of support for our completely independent linguistics podcast! Whether you’re talking about Lingthusiasm on social media or just sending a link to one friend who you want to listen with you, every little bit helps. Plus, patrons at every level are contributing to progress on the kiki/bouba sticker stretch goal. Existing patrons at the relevant tiers will still receive sticker packs, and we’ll be in touch to confirm addresses closer to the shipping date.
The bonus episodes and access to the Lingthusiasm Discord will continue to be available at the Ling-thusist tier and above the way they always have, so definitely don’t feel like you have to go for this special offer if you can’t spare the cash, but if you can afford it and you’d like to help cross-subsidize Lingthusiasm for the many people learning about linguistics for free from our main episodes, then we’ve got these new special perks to make it even sweeter!
Wikipedia is a treasure trove of late-night rabbit holes on all sorts of
topics, including many related to linguistics! But there’s more than
just the articles themselves – Wikipedia is also the process of how
random people from around the internet work together to figure out what
to put in them.
In this bonus episode, Lauren and Gretchen get
enthusiastic about improving linguistics content on Wikipedia! We talk
about gaps and biases that still exist for linguistics-related articles,
getting started with Wikipedia edit-a-thons for linguists (#lingwiki)
in 2015, how Wikipedia can fit into academia (from wiki journals to
classroom editing assignments), and the part that Wikipedia played in
the Lingthusiasm origin story.
Announcements:
There’s just under one month left to sign up for the Lingthusiastic Sticker Pack! Become a Ling-phabet patron or higher by November 3, 2021
(anywhere on earth) and we’ll send you a pack of four fun
Lingthusiasm-related stickers! Plus, if we hit our stretch goal, that’ll
also include the two bouba and kiki stickers below for all sticker
packs. Tea and scarf, sadly, not included, but the usual tier rewards of
IPA wall of fame tile and Lingthusiast sticker are. (That could be
seven stickers!)
People have been telling us, I’m extremely bored of this pandemic still (still!) existing and is there a way that I could get more linguistics joy and whimsy in the mail?
People have also been asking, is there a way to get Gretchen to sign my copy of her book Because Internet, especially since irl conferences are, uh, not much of a thing these days?
We’re excited to announce a special offer that we’re running on Patreon that solves both of these problems!
Two round “Schwa never stressed” stickers (one floral, one geometric)
One classic square Lingthusiasm logo sticker
One BECAUSE INTERNET bookplate sticker signed by Gretchen, for you to stick inside your copy or anywhere else you like
Here’s what the stickers look like! (IPA scarf and hot cup of tea not included)
Plus, we have a stretch goal!
If we reach a total of 1400 1380 (!) patrons at any level before November 3, then the sticker pack will also include:
Two mini Lingthusiasm green cutout stickers, one of which is called “bouba” and the other “kiki” — which is which? That’s an experiment you get to run on your friends when you stick them on your phone case, water bottle, laptop, etc.
Here’s what the sticker set looks like, including the kiki bouba twins:
Ling-phabet tier
This special offer is part of the Ling-phabet tier, which also has the ordinary perk of letting patrons sponsor an IPA symbol or other special character and be recognized on the Lingthusiasm website on our “Supporter Wall of Fame” page. You can get your symbol through our ~*~super scientific~*~ Which IPA Character Are You Quiz, or just tell us what your favourite character or other Unicode symbol is. Then you get an image with your name and favourite symbol on it (see samples here!) recognizing you as a supporter, which you can share on social media/print off and use as a bookmark/gaze at in warm satisfaction/etc.
Plus, after 3 months at this tier, you get its regular “Lingthusiast” sticker in the mail, so that could be a total of 5 (or 7) stickers and 2 joyous mail occasions for you!
(Patrons at the Phil-ling-thropist tier will get two sticker packs — an extra one to share with a friend or to make sure your next laptop is still sufficiently lingthusiastic — plus the IPA Wall of Fame tile. Phil-ling-thropists also have the impact of 10 patrons in lowering our stretch goal — many thanks to the two people who have already done so! Patrons at this level also receive a “Lingthusiast” mug after three months at this tier instead of the three month sticker.)
Patrons at all tiers help keep the show running
We’re still incredibly appreciative of all kinds of support for our completely independent linguistics podcast! Whether you’re talking about Lingthusiasm on social media or just sending a link to one friend who you want to listen with you, every little bit helps. Plus, patrons at every level are contributing to progress on the kiki/bouba sticker stretch goal. Existing patrons at the relevant tiers will still receive sticker packs, and we’ll be in touch to confirm addresses closer to the shipping date.
The bonus episodes and access to the Lingthusiasm Discord will continue to be available at the Ling-thusist tier and above the way they always have, so definitely don’t feel like you have to go for this special offer if you can’t spare the cash, but if you can afford it and you’d like to help cross-subsidize Lingthusiasm for the many people learning about linguistics for free from our main episodes, then we’ve got these new special perks to make it even sweeter!
In fiction, we can often tell when a character is drunk or high by their way of speaking: when someone’s slurring sounds together or jumping erratically from topic to topic, the audience is meant to assume that they’re under the influence. But how accurate are these fictional portrayals?
In this episode, Lauren and Gretchen get enthusiastic about two fun studies of how people talk differently when under the influence of alcohol or cannabis: the German Alcohol Language Corpus and the delightfully named “Dude, What Was I Talking About? A New Sociolinguistic Framework for Marijuana-Intoxicated Speech”. We also talk about the logistical complications of setting out to study intoxicated speech, from setting up fake pubs and recording in a “vehicular environment” to the ethical issues around how to make sure that impaired people are giving informed consent to participate (tip: ask them when they’re still sober).
Announcements:
Have a story or a study to share related to this episode? Patrons can join us on Discord! Our Lingthusiasm Discord server is where you can chat with fellow language nerds about the latest episodes, obscure linguistics facts, cute animal pictures, and or course, memes. We even have custom linguistics emoji!
A podcast that's enthusiastic about linguistics by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne.
Weird and deep conversations about the hidden language patterns that you didn't realize you were already making.
New episodes (free!) the third Thursday of the month.
