#daniel midgley

Linguistics in the Public Ear: Outreach via Podcasts and Radio panel at LSA 2018

We were very pleased to bring together a range of linguistics podcasts and hosts at the annual meeting of the Linguistic Society of America this weekend in Salt Lake City, Utah. Here’s our panel description from the program: 

More and more people are listening to linguistics as they exercise, commute to work, or do household chores. The number of Americans who listen to podcasts has doubled since 2013, and a growing number of these podcasts are about linguistics. Being able to download an episode to your phone or computer, listen to it anywhere (often while doing something else with your hands), and even pause and come back to it, has created a surge in the popularity of audio. Even radio programs have been putting their shows online to attract more listeners after airing. While language is often a popular topic on general interest shows, there are now enough dedicated linguistics podcasts that we've put together a whole panel of them for the first time in LSA history.

This panel brings together the hosts of both well-established and up-and-coming linguistics podcasts, which combined reach hundreds of thousands of listeners around the world. The podcasts encompass a wide range of formats: some also exist as radio shows while others run entirely on the internet; their run times range from 4 minutes, to 30 minutes, to a full hour; and their institutional support ranges from public radio, to private podcasting networks, to solo enterprises funded by listeners. Their founding dates range from radio in 1998, the first podcast wave in 2006-2009, and the second podcast wave in 2012-2016. Hosts range from academic linguists with a commitment to public outreach to professional communicators with a commitment to doing the research.

The panel is of interest to a variety of levels, from linguists who were barely aware that podcasts even existed and now want to get the lay of the land, to dedicated podcast listeners who want to get a glimpse behind the scenes. Panelists will provide practical advice about starting one's own podcast, being an effective guest on an existing podcast to share one's research, linguistics podcasting as a career path, and using podcasts in the linguistics classroom, as well as broader take-home messages about effective linguistics public engagement in general. 

Although a few speakers ran into weather issues and had to send in their contributions remotely, it all came together in the end! Here’s a link to all the podcasts, in order of appearance, with cohosts who weren’t present in parentheses:  

Grammar Girl, Mignon Fogarty 

Lexicon Valley, John McWhorter  

The Allusionist, Helen Zaltzman

That’s What They Say, Anne Curzan 

The World in Words, Nina Porzucki (with Patrick Cox)

Talk the Talk, Daniel Midgley (with Ben Ainslie and Kylie Sturgess)

Lingthusiasm, Lauren Gawne and Gretchen McCulloch 

A Way with Words, Grant Barrett (with Martha Barnette)

We were also excited to have at the panel The Vocal Fries (Megan Figueroa and Carrie Gillon) which didn’t even exist when we were putting the panel together. It’s great to see the linguistics podcast sphere continue to grow! 

In Quartz, Daniel Midgley, of the radio program Talk the Talk, has a linguistic guide to writing effective protest signs. Excerpt: 

Language can be used to persuade, amuse, insult, and mobilize action. Few formats can accomplish these goals as ably or succinctly as the protest sign.

When you make a protest sign, you’re working with considerable linguistic constraints: Space is limited by what you (and your friends) can carry, and if you’re marching, your reader will have to absorb your message quickly, making sign-writing a tough task.

Fortunately, this is where linguistics can help. Whether you’re protesting US president Donald Trump, Brexit, or college-tuition hikes, certain syntactic and rhetorical principles make the best protest signs powerful and effective. Using the example of anti-Trump protests, the following list outlines some linguistic tips to making forceful and potent pickets. [...]

Rhyming

Rhymes are memorable and can help turn a sign into a chant. This is why epic sagas since the era of Beowulf have rhymed—the structure gave the bard a way to remember what came next. The meter of these phrases (what linguists refer to this as their “prosodic pattern”) also make rhyming slogans easy to remember.

CAN’T BUILD WALL / HANDS TOO SMALL MR. HATE / LEAVE MY STATE

We're excited to be part of the broader linguistics podcast community and bring you behind the scenes on other shows!  

In this interview, Lauren sat down with Daniel Midgley of the Talk the Talk radio show/podcast to talk about how Daniel got into linguistics, what linguists and radio producers have in common, his favourite linguistics resources, and how linguists can be better at engaging with the media and the public.

Lauren and Daniel got to hang out as part of the workshop 'Talking the Talkley' that Lauren organized for the Australian Linguistics Society annual conference in December (the Talkley is the ALS award for communicating linguistics, a pun on the Walkley awards for Australian journalism).

Talking the Talkley workshop summary:

The rise of ‘on demand’ media like podcasts and content platforms like The Conversation means that linguists are able to share their expert knowledge with a wider audience than ever before. This workshop brings together people who have worked to bring linguistics into the popular consciousness in different media.