#lingthusiasm

Which shape is bouba and which is kiki? A Lingthusiasm zine

Here are two shapes. If you had to assign the name "bouba" to one of them and "kiki" to the other, which name would you give to which? If you think about it, you probably have a guess… In this Lingthusiasm zine, Gretchen McCulloch gets enthusiastic about these two linguistically famous shapes.

Print and fold your own copies for free! 

8½ x 11 paper: colour, b&w 

A4 paper: colour, b&w 

How to cut and fold a minizine

Learn more about bouba and kiki! 

What words sound spiky across languages? (Lingthusiasm podcast)

Which is "bouba" and which is "kiki"? (Tom Scott Language Files video)

Bouba/Kiki Effect (Wikipedia)

Research cited

Cwiek et al 2021, Novel vocalizations are understood across cultures

Loconsole et al 2026, Matching sounds to shapes: Evidence of the bouba-kiki effect in naïve baby chicks

Öztürk et al 2012, Sound symbolism in infancy: Evidence for sound–shape cross-modal correspondences in 4-month-olds

Styles and Gawne 2017, When does maluma/takete fail? Two key failures and a meta-analysis suggest that phonology and phonotactics matter

More from Lingthusiasm

More zines that are enthusiastic about linguistics!

We also make a podcast that's enthusiastic about linguistics!

In 2025, Lauren Gawne and I reached our 100th episode of Lingthusiasm, our podcast that’s enthusiastic about linguistics! It’s a special format featuring 100 fun things about linguistics, which makes it a great entry point to the show if you haven’t tried it yet or are looking for something to forward to people. We also celebrated our 100th bonus episode (does that make this year actually our…

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

See also

Micro-patronage for research communication: the Lingthusiasm podcast as a case study of a sustainable funding model (new research article)

Towards a theory of linguistic curiosity: applying linguistic frameworks to lingcomm and scicomm - New Open Access research article in Linguistics Vanguard

Summary:

A podcast that's enthusiastic about linguistics by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. "A fascinating listen that will change the way you see everyday communications." –New York Times. "Joyously nerdy" –Buzzfeed.

He feels quite safe and comfortable in his little Man-Box.

Do not ask him to leave the little Man-Box. That would be insensitive.

Also, if you wish to call yourself a Man, he says you must first join him inside the little Man-Box.

So I've just listened to @lingthusiasm's episode on words about smells, and apparently european languages aren't nearly as evocative about their smell words as a lot of other languages?

Which is quite strange and fascinating to me, as I never had any ability to smell, and have for most of my life conceptualised smell as like a metaphor or literary device for the atmosphere of a space or thing, almost synonymous with "vibes" and "aura".

Now I very much wonder what my conceptualision of "smell" would be like had my mother tongue been one with more evocative smell words....

Maybe I'd have figured out that I don't have a sense of smell before the age of 14?

Did the fact that most smell words in German and English follow the "smell of [thing]" or "[thing] smell" scheme help or hinder my understanding my outside understanding of the concept of smell?

i wish. i wish. id gotten the opportunity to study linguistics at a uni level. that'd be the dream..

in another life im an academic linguist. unfortunately in this life i like being able to afford food.

ANYWAY huge hype about Because Internet by Gretchen McCulloch. as soon as I finish reading this book I wanna check out her podcast @lingthusiasm