Bonus 97: Rock, paper, scissors, Gesture book, and a secret project - Survey results and general updates

In this bonus episode, Gretchen and Lauren get enthusiastic about two sets of updates!

First, results from the 2024 listener survey. We learned which one of us you think is more kiki and more bouba, an utterly nonsensical question that you nonetheless had 80/20 agreement on! We also learned about heart gestures and variants on rock, paper, scissors (or paper, scissors, rock) in many different languages.

Plus, we used results from all three years of listener surveys to create a massive blog post of 101 places to get enthusiastic about linguistics, if you’re looking for more linguistics options!

Second, our years in review and some upcoming things:

Lauren has finally finished writing her academic book about gesture and you can get Gesture: A Slim Guide from Oxford University Press later this month (that’s late March 2025 for people reading from the future). If academic books aren’t quite your jam (extremely reasonably), stay tuned for the fun highlights version on an upcoming Lingthusiasm episode!

Gretchen had a big trip in Europe last year including the launch of the Spanish edition of Because Internet, started learning American Sign Language (ASL), and has also been working a lot on a mysterious secret project which can’t be announced in public yet (ooooooh~~). It’s thanks to the support of patrons that we can do projects like this before they’re bringing in revenue on their own so stay tuned for further announcements once we’re allowed to talk about it :)

Together, we also co-authored two academic articles in 2024 about the meta aspects of doing linguistics communication with broader audiences (an important part of convincing Lauren’s job that it’s worth her spending time still making the podcast). They’re called: ‘Towards a theory of linguistic curiosity: applying linguistic frameworks to lingcomm and scicomm’  and 'Creating Inclusive Linguistics Communication: Crash Course Linguistics’ (with a big team from Crash Course Linguistics).

Listen to this episode about our 2024 survey results and general updates, and get access to many more bonus episodes by supporting Lingthusiasm on Patreon.

In this bonus episode, Lauren and Gretchen get enthusiastic about what we’ve been up to in 2022 (much travel for Gretchen, with linguistic impressions of Singapore, Australia, and New Zealand!) and what’s coming up for 2023 (a second tiny human, er, longitudinal language acquisition project for Lauren, which means you’ll get a few more interview episodes from Gretchen’s travels).

We also talk about our favourite linguistics paper that we read in 2022 slash possibly ever: okay, yes, academic papers don’t typically do this, but this paper has spoilers, so we STRONGLY recommend reading it yourself here before listening to this episode, or check out the sample paragraph on the Patreon post. 

Listen to this episode about our 2023 plans and get access to many more bonus episodes - including our upcoming liveshow! - by supporting Lingthusiasm on Patreon.

One more day to get a signed Because Internet bookplate sticker with your name on it! 

We just wanted to let any procrastinators know that you have one more day to upgrade to the new “ling-phabet” tier and get a free signed BECAUSE INTERNET bookplate sent to you in the mail!

(The deadline is August 15 in any timezone, which might mean that Patreon will let you sneak by for a few hours into August 16 where you are, but don’t count on it!!!)

This is an easier way of effectively getting a “signed copy” of BECAUSE INTERNET without needing to ship a whole bunch of heavy hardcover books to and from Montreal: you get your copy of BECAUSE INTERNET however is convenient for you, Gretchen signs a bookplate with your name in it and sends you a small, light sticker in the mail, and finally you stick the bookplate inside your copy of BECAUSE INTERNET (or you can stick it somewhere else if you’ve gotten the ebook or audiobook version).

(If you do want a signed copy of BECAUSE INTERNET sent to you despite potentially-large international shipping fees, however, the tiny and charming independent bookstore Argo Bookshop in Montreal is helping with that as a separate thing from this Patreon – just buy it from them online and indicate in the “special instructions” box what name you’d like it signed to.)

See above for a photo of what the bookplates look like! (Plus a scarf you might recognize!) This could be your name!

The signed bookplates are a time-limited Special Offer which is part of our new “ling-phabet” tier. Both now and after the Special Offer is over, this tier lets you sponsor an IPA symbol or other special character and be recognized on the Lingthusiasm website on our new “Supporter Wall of Fame” page. You can get your symbol through our ~*~super scientific~*~ Which IPA Character Are You Quiz (we’ll message you a link to the quiz after you join), or just tell us what your favourite character or other Unicode symbol is. Plus, you get an image with your name and favourite symbol on it 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. We’ve really been enjoying seeing your answers and your reactions to the symbols since we launched this new tier, and there are so many names and symbols on the Wall of Fame now!  

We’re still incredibly appreciative of all levels of support for our completely independent linguistics podcast!

The bonus episodes will continue to be available at the $5 and above level the way they always have, so definitely don’t feel like you have to go for this new tier if you can’t spare the cash, but if you can 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!

Stay lingthusiastic!

Gretchen and Lauren