Awards and prizes are a lovely way to acknowledge good work being done in your workplace or community. Academia is full of prizes, some of these require self-nomination, others have open nomination or winners are selected by a committee.
These awards recognise good work, but they also act as a signal that this kind of work is valued by a particular group of people. Sometimes, these awards and prizes are created because the specific work being celebrated is not visible within established norms. I was involved in the establishment of the Australian Linguistic Society’s Talkley award, which recognises good work being done to communicate about linguistics outside of academia. This kind of work is not easily recognised within formal workloads of academics, but if there’s one thing universities love, it’s when their academics win prizes.
One of my biggest critiques of awards is that people are not awarded commendations enough. I love commendations! And they serve the whole ecosystem well:
Commendations functionally do not cost anything. You don’t need to award a formal prize/trophy/cash. If there’s work that you think honours the spirit of your award but isn’t the winner this year, why not acknowledge that good work?
Commendations boost the aim you are trying to achieve. If your award is aimed at encouraging more of some behaviour, recognising more of that behaviour is good!
Commendations make the scope of your award clearer. Giving a couple of commendations helps people better triangulate what you think is good work. If your public engagement award only gives out prizes to people who write books, then the people making YouTube videos might give up nominating. If your commendations include a variety of genres, it affirms you believe they have value.
Commendations are useful and important currency in academia. Look, CV inflation is real and I hate it, but it’s the game we’re all playing, and there are many people who are doing lots of good work and have no external validation of this work to show for it. Commendations are straight-up academic currency and you can support the early career colleagues in your area by recognising the work they do, even if it doesn’t meet the full prize standard. Giving awards and commendations is the closet you can get to straight up printing money for nothing in the world of academia.
Commendations do not detract from main award winners. You can still give your main prizewinner a trophy, a chance to collect an award at a ceremony, a bigger write up in the newsletter afterwards. Commendations do not dilute the value of the principle award, they demonstrate the highly engaged field in which the winner is seen as the best demonstration of the behaviour you’re trying to encourage.
Shortlists (heck, even long lists!) also operate as preemptive commendations, especially if the awards in your professional world focus on books. Publishes know this, it’s why you see books with stickers like “<book prize> shortlisted” on shelves.
Sometimes you might just not have exemplary work to commend. In such a case, I’d suggest you may have to get stuck in the trenches to build that capacity. I’ve taken to writing to awards bodies in my field, even when I’m not nominating someone, to encourage them to give more commendations. We’ve been giving out commendations since we started the LingComm Grants in 2020 and it’s really affirmed my belief in the net benefit of the practice.
I also love the commendation-to-winner pipeline, I don’t think a commendation should be a disincentive to apply in future years.
If your institution, organisation or academic society has a awards or prizes, make this year the year you also give out a commendation or three!
For three years between 2022 and 2024, we ran a Lingthusiasm listener survey. We’ve used the survey for internal planning, answers to some linguistics questions were shared in bonus episodes and we are writing up some of the answers to those sections. I still wanted to share the things we’ve learnt about the Lingthusiasm audience. One thing that I find myself saying a lot when I do training about lingcomm or science communication is that we are not competing against each other, we are all on team linguistics/science and competing for peoples attention against reality tv or reels of people pretending to cook inedible food.
Digging into the results of our listener survey we found that there are some audience segments that have a deeper connection to linguistics, and some segments where Lingthusiasm is their only way into the topic. Separating out general audiences and academic ones is not always straight forward, and there are many different ways people engage.
One highlight of putting together this article was bringing several of our team members into the writing process! I’m a big fan of collaborative writing and while we’ve worked together for years, it was great to work on this new thing together.
Abstract
Podcasting is now an established entertainment medium, and is a useful platform for content that can find a niche global audience outside of traditional broadcast media. Linguistics is one topic that benefits from this model of internet distribution. Linguistics podcasting can serve both educational and entertainment aims, with audiences that encompass non-linguists interested in scicomm-adjacent topics as well as linguistics students and educators in secondary and tertiary education. To better understand these heterogeneous audience(s) for linguistics podcasts, this article presents survey data for listeners of the Lingthusiasm podcast (2024, 963 participants). We explore survey participant demographic data, as well as people’s relationship to both formal linguistics education and linguistics as a topic of general interest. We show that the distinction between general and academic audiences is complex, and that there are audience segments that are highly-engaged auto-didacts. These results demonstrate the value of linguistics podcasting both as an educational resource and in advancing awareness of linguistics for new audiences.
Reference
Gawne, L., M. Tsutsui Billins, S. M. Dopierala, L. Velleman & G. McCulloch. (2026). Who Listens to Linguistics Podcasting? A Survey of Lingthusiasm Listeners. Language and Linguistics Compass 20(2). e70030. https://doi.org/10.1111/lnc3.70030
2026 LingComm Grants – Small Grants for Communicating Linguistics to Wider Audiences
We want to see more linguistics in the world!
The 2026 LingComm Grants are $300 (USD) to support linguistics communication projects that bring pop linguistics to broader audiences in new and engaging ways. The grants also include a mentoring meeting with Gretchen McCulloch, Lauren Gawne, and/or an experienced lingcommer who we have personally selected to be relevant to your project to ask your lingcomm process questions, and promotion of your project to our lingthusiastic audience.
We have six $300 LingComm Grants on any topic related to linguistics and an additional $300 Kirby Conrod and Friends LGBTQ+ LingComm Grant.
The initial grants are funded by Lingthusiasm, thanks to the kind support of our patrons, and judged by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. You can help fund the grants and other LingComm projects here. Additional grants in 2026 were funded thanks to Daniel Currie Hall, Sarah Kelen, Lukas Graf, Rob Monarch and other anonymous donors.
ALT
Please apply and/or share with any up and coming lingcommers you know!
Lingthusiasm Episode 112: When language become-s(3SG) linguistic example-s(PL)
Language is all around us. This sentence right here, is language! But between the raw experience of someone saying something and a linguistic analysis of what they’ve said, there are certain steps that make it easier for that analysis to happen, or to be understood or reproduced by others later.
In this episode, your hosts Lauren Gawne and Gretchen McCulloch get enthusiastic about how language becomes linguistic data. We talk about making recordings of language, transcribing real-life or recorded language, annotating recordings or transcriptions, archiving all those materials for future generations, restoring archival materials from decaying formats, and presenting this information in useful ways when writing up an analysis. Along the way, we touch on playing 100+ year old songs from cracked wax cylinders, the multi-line glossing format used so readers can understand examples in a language they’re not already fluent in, analyzing spontaneous conversation using tapes from the Watergate Scandal, recognizing everyone who’s contributed (including your own intuitions!), and Lauren’s role on a big committee of linguists and archivists formalizing principles for data citation in linguistics.
Not sure about committing to a monthly subscription? You can now sign up for a free trial and start listening to bonus episodes for free right away.
In this month’s bonus episode we get enthusiastic about some of our favourite deleted bits from recent interviews that we didn’t quite have space to share with you! First, an excerpt from our interview with Adam Aleksic about tiktok and how different online platforms give rise to different kinds of communication styles. Second, a return to our interview with Miguel Sánchez Ibáñez for a bit about Spanish internet slang, -och, and why “McCulloch” looks like a perfect name for an author of a book about internet linguistics. Finally, deleted scenes from our advice episode, in which we reveal some Lingthusiasm lore about pronouncing “Melbourne” and imitating each other’s accents and answer questions about linguistics degrees and switching languages with people..
Join us on Patreon now to get access to this and 100+ other bonus episodes. You’ll also get access to the Lingthusiasm Discord server where you can chat with other language nerds.
Lingthusiasm is created by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our senior producer is Claire Gawne, our production editor is Sarah Dopierala, our production assistant is Martha Tsutsui Billins, our editorial assistant is Jon Kruk, and our technical editor is Leah Velleman. 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).
It has been a lovely and busy year. It has been so nice to see Gesture: A Slim guide out in the world. It was about four years from contract to publication, which isn’t long in the world of academic publishing, but it’s been long enough that sometimes it surprises me to see it on my shelf.
I was joined by three new colleagues, who have been wonderfully energetic and collaborative. I also joined the Higher Education Academy as a Senior Fellow, which has given me the opportunity to connect with other people doing interesting teaching work at La Trobe University.
And between the teaching and the research there was (thankfully) still time for podcasting and some blogging. A good year all around.
We celebrated our 100th episode with 100 facts about linguistics, and then half a year later our 100th bonus, and also made our first bonus episode available for everyone to listen to. We also shared 101 places to get enthusiastic about linguistics, and 10 of the most popular Lingthusiasm episodes. There are 13 bonus episodes for 2025, as we re-released our very first bonus episode (with new introduction) for all patrons, including free supporters.
There were a few posts celebrating the publication of Gesture: A Slim Guide but also over a dozen other substantive posts. It’s good to know that even without putting pressure on myself the blog is ticking along as a broadly monthly concern.
Alongside the publication of Gesture: A Slim guide, there were four academic publications this year, across lingcomm, gesture, Tibetic and linguistics data. Happily, all of these were published open access. It’s great to see funding models are shifting and I am able to more easily publish work that anyone can read.
Rodríguez Louro, C., K. Parton & L. Gawne. For the love of people: Introduction to the special issue in honour of Barbara Frances Kelly. (2025). Australian Journal of Linguistics. 45.3: 259–74. https://doi.org/10.1080/07268602.2025.2514173 [blog summary]
Gawne, L., K.A. Hildebrandt & S. Styles. (2025). Natural disasters elicit spontaneous multimodal iconicity in onomatopoeia and gesture: Earthquake narratives from Nepal and New Zealand. Australian Journal of Linguistics, 45.3: 448–65. https://doi.org/10.1080/07268602.2025.2506628 [blog summary]
Gawne, L., H.N. Andreassen, L. Ferrara, A.L. Berez-Kroeker. (2025). Open research requires open mindedness: commentary on “Replication and methodological robustness in quantitative typology” by Becker and Guzmán Naranjo. Linguistic Typology. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/lingty-2025-0018 [blog summary]
Gawne, L., & J. O’Donnell. (2025). Micro-patronage for research communication: the Lingthusiasm podcast as a case study of a sustainable funding model. Journal of Science Communication 24(03). https://doi.org/10.22323/146620250609102339 [blog summary]
The year ahead
I submitted an application for promotion in 2025, and will start 2026 as an Associate Professor. A promotion application is not a trivial thing to write (I tracked my time, it was at least 25 hours, and that’s even with documentation pretty organised already).
2026 is hopefully going to be a year of lots of curriculum planning and development. This kind of work is often not very visible, so I’m hoping to document some of it as we go. There are, as always, lots of research and lingcomm plans afoot too.
Browsing old Superlinguo content?
I have a welcome page on the blog that points you to aggregate posts, and series of posts I’ve done over the years, as well as themed collections of posts that have appeared on the blog in the last twelve years.
Lingthusiasm Episode 111: Whoa!! A surprise episode??? For me??!!
Wait, surprise is associated with a particular intonation!? Oh, you can see surprise by measuring electricity from your brain!? Hang on, some languages have grammatical marking for surprise!?
In this episode, your hosts Lauren Gawne and Gretchen McCulloch get enthusiastic about surprise. We talk about surprise voice and context, writing surprise with punctuation marks and emoji, anti-surprise and sarcasm, and measuring the special little surprise blip (technically known as the n400) in your brain using an EEG machine. We also talk about grammatically indicating surprise, aka mirativity, and whether that’s its own thing or part of a broader system related to doubt and certainty (spoiler: linguists are still debating this).
Patreon bonus episodes also make a great last-minute gift for a linguistics enthusiast in your life.
In this month’s bonus episode we get enthusiastic about the mysterious Voynich Manuscript with Dr. Claire Bowern! We talk about We talk about what we can actually know about the manuscript for certain: no, it wasn’t created by aliens; yes, it does carbon-date from the early 1400s; and no, it doesn’t look like other early attempts at codes, conlangs, or ciphers. We also talk about what gibberish actually looks like, what deciphering medieval manuscripts has in common with textspeak, why the analytical strategies that we used to figure out Egyptian hieroglyphs from the Rosetta Stone and Linear B from Minoan inscriptions haven’t succeeded with the Voynich Manuscript, and finally, how we could know whether we’ve actually succeeded in cracking it one day.
Join us on Patreon now to get access to this and 100+ other bonus episodes. You’ll also get access to the Lingthusiasm Discord server where you can chat with other language nerds.
Lingthusiasm is created by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our senior producer is Claire Gawne, our production editor is Sarah Dopierala, our production assistant is Martha Tsutsui Billins, our editorial assistant is Jon Kruk, and our technical editor is Leah Velleman. 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).
The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy is my only interaction with sugar plums. I had no real idea until I wrote this post that it was a hard sugar candy rather than.. well a plum in sugar.
The etymology given in the Oxford English Dictionary is from plum, the fruit, but this isn’t a common enough use to have a specific sense.
Sugar plums are new to me but definitely not new, they’ve been a recorded treat for at least 600 years in English.
At Superlinguo, I celebrate the silly season with Christmasy words. The full list is here. If you’ve got a Christmas word you’re curious about, let me know!
Lingthusiasm Episode 110: The history of the history of Indo-European - Interview with Danny Bate
Before there was English, or Latin, or Czech, or Hindi, there was a language that they all have in common, which we call Proto-Indo-European. Linguists have long been fascinated by the quest to get a glimpse into what Proto-Indo-European must have looked like through careful comparisons between languages we do have records for, and this very old topic is still undergoing new discoveries.
In this episode, your host Gretchen McCulloch gets enthusiastic about the process of figuring out Proto-Indo-European with Dr. Danny Bate, public linguist, host of the podcast A Language I Love Is…, and author of the book Why Q Needs U. We talk about why figuring out the word order of a 5000-year-old language is harder than figuring out the sounds, and a great pop linguistics/history book we’ve both been reading that combines recent advances in linguistic, archaeological, and genetic evidence to reexamine where these ancient Proto-Indo-European folks lived: Proto by Laura Spinney. We also talk about Danny’s own recent book on the history of the alphabet, featuring fun facts about C, double letters, and izzard!
In this month’s bonus episode we get enthusiastic about celebratory days, years, decades, and more with some relationship to linguistics! We recently learned that people in the UK have been celebrating National Linguistics Day on November 26th and many lingcommers are excited about the idea of taking those celebrations international: World Linguistics Day, anyone? What we learned putting this episode together is that celebratory days take off when groups of people decide to make them happen so…let’s see how many different locations around the world we can wish each other Happy World Linguistics Day from this year!
Join us on Patreon now to get access to this and 100+ other bonus episodes. You’ll also get access to the Lingthusiasm Discord server where you can chat with other language nerds.
Lingthusiasm is created by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our senior producer is Claire Gawne, our production editor is Sarah Dopierala, our production assistant is Martha Tsutsui Billins, our editorial assistant is Jon Kruk, and our technical editor is Leah Velleman. 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).
When we started planning the special issue of the Australian Journal of Linguistics in honour of Barbara F. Kelly, I immediately knew that this was the work I wanted to submit to the collection. This is a project that I had been tinkering on with my collaborators for a while, but this was the perfect venue that got me to pull it together.
This project draws together two research interests that Barb and I shared: Tibeto-Burman languages and the use of gesture. It was also great to work on this with Kristine Hildebrandt, who was Barb’s close grad school friend, and Suzy Styles, who contributed an excellent illustrative figure as well as her expertise in cross-sensory representation.
Abstract
This paper examines onomatopoeia and gesture in the description of earthquakes, to better understand how people produce complex multimodal representations of experiences. We use narratives from New Zealand English speakers (2010/2011 earthquakes around Christchurch), and from Nubri and Syuba (Tibeto-Burman) speakers (2015 earthquakes in Nepal). We selected 16 narratives from each event. Between the two datasets there were distinct preferences regarding onomatopoeia; no English speakers used onomatopoeia, while seven participants across the Nepal narratives did, using distinct onomatopoeic tokens, which conformed to similar phonetic shapes. Speakers across all groups used gesture to iconically represent the earthquake, with similarities across groups regarding a preference for two hands and repetition of movement. New Zealand participants consistently used vertical gesture trajectory, while the Nepali participants used horizontal-trajectory gestures. We argue that this is likely a result of cultural context but also the interaction of housing types with the motion of an earthquake, and represents iconic information in the gestural channel that is not captured in the spoken channel. This paper illustrates the importance of considering the multimodal iconic representation of events in narrative to build an understanding of the sensory experience of an event that is shared in the retelling.
Citation
Gawne, Lauren, Kristine A. Hildebrandt, and Suzy Styles. (2025). ‘Natural disasters elicit spontaneous multimodal iconicity in onomatopoeia and gesture: Earthquake narratives from Nepal and New Zealand’, Australian Journal of Linguistics, 45/3: 448–65. DOI: 10.1080/07268602.2025.2506628
This article is the introduction to the special issue of the Australian Journal of Linguistics in honour of Barbara Frances Kelly. This article was co-authored with Celeste Rodríguez Louro and Katharine Parton, my two co-editors for the volume. Celeste and Katharine were also two of Barb’s earliest PhD students, and working together on this has been a lovely experience.
This article traces the trajectory of Barb’s career, weaving in the links to each of the contributions to the special issue. We also used this article to provide some reflections on our experience of Barb as a research supervisor, and how she combined intellectual rigour and a deep personal care in a way that has shaped us as researchers and as people.
Abstract
Barbara Frances Kelly, affectionately known as “Barb”, was a language scientist, a tireless advocate for her community and – most importantly – our PhD supervisor. Her sudden passing in late 2022 left her family, friends and colleagues deeply saddened. Yet, amid our grief, we were aware of the mark she had left in our lives. In this introductory paper, we trace Barb’s career in linguistics, linking her contributions to those of the scholars featured in this Special Issue in her honour. We also reflect on the lasting impact of her mentorship. Barb’s warmth, humanity and unwavering support – her deep love for people – were evident in every aspect of her doctoral supervision. From her arrival at The University of Melbourne in 2005 through to her senior years in academia, she guided us with courage and an unshakable belief in our potential. Barb’s supervision was a rare blend of intellectual rigour and genuine care. Her sharp mind and compassionate mentorship created a unique experience – one that shaped us as scholars and individuals. We argue that her approach exemplifies the foundations of successful doctoral supervision: a combination of scholarly excellence and deep human connection. This legacy lives on, inspiring future generations.
Citation
Rodríguez Louro, Celeste, Katharine Parton, and Lauren Gawne. (2025). ‘For the love of people: Introduction to the special issue in honour of Barbara Frances Kelly’, Australian Journal of Linguistics, 45/3: 259–74. DOI: 10.1080/07268602.2025.2514173
The latest double issue of the Australian Journal of Linguistics (45.3) is a special issue in honour of Barbara Frances Kelly. It has been my absolute pleasure to be an editor for this special issue, bringing together an amazing range of work that touches on the contributions and legacy of Barbara F. Kelly.
Thanks to my co-editors Katharine Parton and Celeste Rodriguez Louro. Thanks also to all of the contributors, who were the loveliest collection of authors one could hope to work with (unsurprising, given that one of Barb’s particular talents was collecting great people).
Almost all articles are Open Access, with the remainder available without paywall for the first six months.
I’ll be sharing more later about the two contributions in the collection I was an author on. I wanted to start by sharing the full list of the articles and contributors in the special issue.
Lingthusiasm Episode 109: On the nose - How the nose shapes language
We often invoke the idea of language by showing the mouth or the hands. But the nose is important to both signed and spoken languages: it can be a resonating chamber that air can get shaped by, as well as a salient location for the hand to be in contact with.
In this episode, your hosts Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne get enthusiastic about the nose! We talk about why noses are so popular cross-linguistically (seriously, nasals are in 98% of the world’s languages), what the nose looks like inside (it’s bigger than you think!), and increasingly cursed methods that linguists have tried to use to see inside the nose (from giving yourself the worst headache to, yes, sticking earbuds up your nostrils). We also share our favourite obscure nose-related idioms, map the surprisingly large distribution of the “cock-a-snook” gesture, and try to pin down why the nose feels like an intrinsically funny part of the body.
We’re 9 years old! For our anniversary, we’re hope you could leave us a rating our review on your favourite podcast app to help people who encounter the show want to click “play” for the first time: we’ll read out a few of our favourite reviews at the end of the show over the next year so this could be your words!
People have responded super enthusiastically to the jazzed up version of our logo that we sent to patrons earlier this year! So we’ve now made this design available on some very cute merch. Wear your Lingthusiasm fandom on a shirt or a mug or a notebook to help spot fellow linguistics nerds!
In this month’s bonus episode we get enthusiastic about our favourite words ending in nym! We talk about We talk about how there are so many kinds of nym words that are weirder and wackier than classic synonyms and antonyms, how even synonyms and antonyms aren’t quite as straightforward as they seem, and why retronyms make people mad but are Gretchen’s absolute favourite. Plus: a tiny quiz segment on our favourite obscure and cool-sounding nyms!.
Join us on Patreon now to get access to this and 100+ other bonus episodes. You’ll also get access to the Lingthusiasm Discord server where you can chat with other language nerds.
Lingthusiasm is created by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our senior producer is Claire Gawne, our production editor is Sarah Dopierala, our production assistant is Martha Tsutsui Billins, our editorial assistant is Jon Kruk, and our technical editor is Leah Velleman. 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).
In this episode we follow our noses to end up covering a wide range of topics!
Looking for podcasts about language and linguistics? Here’s a comprehensive list with descriptions! I’ve also mentioned if shows have transcripts. If there are any I missed, let me know!
Linguistics
Lingthusiasm A podcast that’s enthusiastic about linguistics by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne (that’s me!). Main episodes every third Thursday of every month, with a second bonus episode on Patreon. (Transcripts for all episodes)
Because Language Every week Daniel, Ben, and Hedvig cover the news in linguistics and tackle a particular topic. (previously Talk the Talk) (Transcripts for all episodes after release)
The Vocal Fries Every episode Carrie Gillon & Megan Figueroa tackle linguistic discrimination in relation to a particular group. (Transcripts for some episodes)
Language on the MoveConversations about linguistic diversity in social life. (Transcripts for some episodes)
Linguistics Behind the Scenes join linguistics professor Christina Sanchez-Stockhammer and linguistics enthusiast Dominic Piazza on a backstage tour of linguistic research. (transcripts for all episodes)
Said & Done A podcast about languages and the people who speak them, from the Columbia LRC
Accentricity From Sadie Durkacz Ryan, a lecturer in sociolinguistics at Glasgow University. Season one has six episodes.
All About AccentsA podcast all about accents with linguist and accent coach Dani Morse-Kopp in conversation with her partner Lucas Morse.
Tomayto Tomahto Led by Talia Sherman, a Brown University undergrad, this interview-based podcast explores language.
Field Notes Martha Tsutsui Billins interviews linguists about their linguistic fieldwork. (Transcripts for all episodes)
Linguistics Careercast A podcast devoted to exploring careers for linguists outside academia.
The Language Neuroscience PodcastNeuroscientist Stephen Wilson talks with leading and up-and-coming researchers. For an academic audience. (Transcripts for all episodes).
Writing Wrongs Historic and contemporary forensic linguistic cases, from Aston Institute for Forensic Linguistics.
Grammar Girl Episodes are rarely longer than 15 minutes, but they’re full of tips about English grammar and style for professional writing, and more! (Transcripts for all episodes).
A Language I Love Is…A show about language, linguistics and people who love both. An interview-based podcast hosted by Danny Bate.
Word of Mouth BBC Radio 4 show exploring the world of words with Michael Rosen.
Words & Actions A podcast about how language matters in business, politics and beyond.
SubtitleA podcast about
languages and the people who speak them, from Patrick Cox and Kavita
Pillay. For those who miss Patrick’s old podcast, The World in Words.
The Parlé Podcast from Canadian Speech-Language Pathologist Chantal Mayer-Crittenden.
Slavstvuyte! A podcast for everyone who is fascinated by Slavic languages from Dina Stankovic.
Subtext A podcast about the linguistics of online dating.
Hear us out! The science of second language listening from the Japan Association for Language Teaching.
Conlangs
Conlangery
Particularly for those with an interest in constructed languages, they
also have episodes that focus on specific natural languages, or
linguistic phenomena. Newer episodes have transcripts.
Linguitect Matt, Rowan and Liam explain linguistic topics and talk about how to build them into your conlang.
Dictionaries
Word For Word From Macquarie dictionary, with a focus on Australian English.
Fiat Lex A podcast about making dictionaries from Kory Stamper & Steve Kleinedler. One season.
Word MattersFrom the editors at Merriam-Webster, hosted by Emily Brewster, Neil Serven, Ammon Shea, and Peter Sokolowski.
English
Unstandardized English Interview-based podcast. Disrupting the language of racism and white supremacy in English Language Teaching.
That’s What They Say Every week linguist Anne Curzan joins Rebecca Kruth on Michigan public radio for a five minute piece on a quirk of English language.
A Way With Words A talk-back format show on the history of English words, cryptic crosswords and slang.
Words/etymology
Words Unravelled Rob Watts (aka RobWords) and Jess Zafarris unravel the stories behind everyday terms.
Something Rhymes With Purple Susie Dent and Gyles Brandreth uncover the hidden origins of language and share their love of words.
Telling our Twisted Histories Kaniehti:io Horn brings us together to decolonize our minds– one word, one concept, one story at a time.
Word Bomb Hosts Pippa Johnstone and Karina Palmitesta explore one word per week, using particular words for a deep dive into linguistic and social issues. (Transcripts for all episodes)
Words for GrantedIn each episode Ray Belli explores the history of a common English word in around fifteen minutes.
Lexitecture Ryan, a Canadian, and Amy, a Scot share their chosen word each episode.
Bunny Trails Shauna and Dan discuss idioms and other turns of phrase.
The Translation Chat Podcast a podcast on Japanese to English media with Jennifer O’Donnell, and translators and editors in the Japanese to English localization.
In Languages other than English
Parler Comme Jamais A French language podcast from Binge Audio.Monthly episodes from Laélia Véron.
Sozusagen A German language podcast of weekly 10 minute episodes.
Talking Bodies A German language podcast about speech, gesture and communication.
Registergeknister A German language linguistics podcast of the Collaborative Research Center 1412 at the Humboldt University of Berlin.
Språket A Swedish language podcast from Sveriges Radio about language use and change.
SpråktalkA Norwegian language podcast with Helene Uri and Kristin Storrusten from Aftenposten.
Klog på sprog A Danish language podcast that playfully explores the Danish language.
Kletshead A Dutch language podcast about bilingual children for parents, teachers and speech language therapists from Dr. Sharon Unsworth. Also in English.
Over taal gesproken A Dutch language podcast from the Institute for the Dutch language and the Dutch Language Society.
BabelPodcast A Portuguese language podcast from Brazil, hosted by Cecilia Farias and Gruno.
Mexendo com a Língua A Spanish language podcast about linguistics, literature, culture, and more from the Postgraduate Program in Linguistics at the Federal University of São Carlos.
El Racionalista Omnívoro a Spanish language podcast about linguistics, history, cinema, literature and more, hosted by Antonio Fábregas.
War of Words
A Spanish language podcast about linguistics from Juana de los Santos,
Ángela Rodríguez, Néstor Bermúdez and Antonella Moschetti.
Con la lengua fuera A Spanish language podcast from Macarena Gil y Nerea Fernández de Gobeo.
Hablando mal y pronto A Spanish language conversational podcast from Santiago, Juan and Magui.
Saussure e grida An Italian language podcast about linguistics from Irene Lami.
These are podcasts that had a good run of episodes and are no longer being produced.
Spectacular Vernacular
A podcast that explores language … and plays with it Hosted by Nicole
Holliday and Ben Zimmer for Slate. Transcripts available. 19 episodes from 2021 and 2022.
Science Diction
a podcast about words—and the science stories behind them. Hosted by
Johanna Mayer, this is a production from WNYC Science Friday. 42 episodes from 2020-2022.
Troublesome Terps The podcast about the things that keep interpreters up at night. 70 episodes from 2016-2022.
Very Bad Words A podcast about swearing and our cultural relationship to it. 42 episodes from 2017 and 2018.
The Endless Knot
is not strictly a language podcast, but they often include word
histories, linguistics podcast fans episode may find their colour
series particularly interesting.
Glossonomia Each episode is about a different vowel or consonant sound in English. 44 episodes from 2010-2014.
Distributed Morphs An interview-based podcast about morphology, from Jeffrey Punske. Eight episodes in 2020.
Word to the Whys
a podcast where linguists talk about why they do linguistics. Created
by TILCoP Canada (Teaching Intro Linguistics Community of Practice). 10 episodes in 2020 and 2021.
The Weekly Linguist An interview podcast about the languages of the world and the linguists who study them from Jarrette Allen and Lisa Sprowls. 21 episodes in 2021.
Silly Linguistics (ad hoc episode posting, but episode 7 is an interview with Kevin Stroud for History of English fans)
Linguistics After Dark Eli, Sarah and Jenny answer your linguistics questions in hour-ish long episodes.
WACC Podcast (guest lectures at Warwick Applied Linguistics)
Queer Linguistics has a couple of episodes, with a bit of classroom vibe
GradLings An occasionally-updated podcast for linguistics students at any stage of study, to share their stories and experiences.
Canguro English A podcast about language for people learning languages. 103 episodes from 2018-2021.
Why is English? A podcast about how the English language got to be the way it is, from Laura Brandt. Seven episodes from 2020 and 2021.
AnimologyVegan blogger Colleen Patrick Goudreau uses her love of animals as a starting point for exploring animal-related etymologies. 27 episodes from 2017-2020.
Wordy Wordpecker Short weekly episodes from Rachel Lopez, charting the stories of English words. 14 episodes from 2018.
Speaking of Translation A monthly podcast from Eve Bodeux & Corinne McKay. 10 episodes from 2020-2021.
Se Ve Se Escucha
(Seen and Heard) Language justice and what it means to be an
interpreter, an organizer and bilingual in the US South, from the Center
for Participatory Change. Episodes from 2020.
This is an updated listing from December 2024. I’m always excited to be able to add more podcasts to the list, so if you know of any linguistics/language podcasts not here, please let me know! I wait until a show has at least 5 episodes before I add it to the list, and I like to let people know when transcripts are available.
Since launching Gesture: A Slim Guide, one of the most delightful things has been getting to share all of my favourite bits of it on some of my favourite podcasts. As well as a whole episode of Lingthusiasm, here are some other places I’ve been chatting about gesture:
Is pointing rude? I’m sure it’s a simple question with a simple answer that won’t completely break our brains in rethinking all we take for granted about gesture. Also, what is Lauren’s holy grail lost media of gesture studies?
Gesture is everywhere. We wave our hands when we talk, even if we’re alone. Signed languages are, of course, full languages that use gesture. And it could even be argued that emoji are the online equivalent of gesture. It’s inescapable. And why would we want to do without it, when it’s so useful? So we’re talking about gesture and language with Dr Lauren Gawne, author of Gesture: A Slim Guide.
Your hands may be saying more than your words. Lauren Gawne explains how gestures shape communication, how they differ across cultures, and why removing gestures can make your speech less fluent.
Brynn Quick speaks with Dr. Lauren Gawne. Dr. Gawne is especially interested in documenting and analysing how people speak and gesture. Her current research focuses on the cross-cultural variation in gesture use.
ALT
