#superlinguo

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.

Lingthusiasm in 2025

Lingthusiasm turned 9! There were a dozen main episodes and an equal number of monthly bonus episodes for patrons.

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.

We launched some merch with our refreshed jazzy logo, and some Merry/Marry/Mery Christmas cards.

Main episodes

Whoa!! A surprise episode??? For me??!! (transcript)

The history of the history of Indo-European - Interview with Danny Bate (transcript)

On the nose - How the nose shapes language (transcript)

Highs and lows of tone in Babanki - Interview with Pius Akumbu (transcript)

Urban Multilingualism (transcript)

Is a hotdog a sandwich? The problem with definitions (transcript)

Linguistics of TikTok - Interview with Adam Aleksic aka EtymologyNerd (transcript)

Reading and language play in Sámi - Interview with Hanna-Máret Outakoski (transcript)

A hand-y guide to gesture (transcript)

The science and fiction of Sapir-Whorf (transcript)

Micro to macro - The levels of language (transcript)

A hundred reasons to be enthusiastic about linguistics (transcript)

Bonus episodes

The Mysterious Voynich Manuscript - Interview with Claire Bowern

World Linguistics Day

What’s in a nym? Synonyms, antonyms, and so many more

¡Pos ya está! Translating Because Internet into Spanish with Miguel Sánchez Ibáñez

Reading linguistic landscapes on street signs

Why sci-fi gestures live long and prosper - Crossover with Imaginary Worlds

Our very first swearing bonus episode, now unlocked! (available for free)

Advice #2 - Fun linguistic experiments, linguistic etiquette, and language learning scenarios

The linguistics of kissing 😘

Linguist Celebrities

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

What makes for beautiful writing, scientifically speaking

Crochet vocal tract, grammar is a team sport, gifs, and soy sauce - Deleted scenes from Jacq Jones, Emily M. Bender, and Tom Scott team interviews

Top Superlinguo posts in 2025

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.

Gesture: A Slim Guide posts

Cover Reveal - Gesture: A Slim Guide

Gesture: A Slim Guide - Five Fun Facts

Lauren talks about Gesture: podcast and media roundup

General posts

Introducing the Lingcomm Bibliography: tracking research on linguistic communication

Australian Journal of Linguistics special issue in honour of Barbara Frances Kelly

My collection of Academic Research/Admin tools

Position Statement on Generative AI in teaching and research

Review: The Cambridge Handbook of Gesture Studies

Blind people gesture (and why that’s kind of a big deal)

International Conference on Linguistics Communication (LingComm25) - registrations open!

A Decade of Lingwiki: An informal history

In praise of niche papers

Immortal Gestures, Damon Young (review)

Happy World Linguistics Day! (Nov 26)

Academic articles in 2025

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.

Previous years

Superlinguo 2024 in review

Superlinguo 2023 in review

Superlinguo 2022 in review

Superlinguo 2021 in review

Superlinguo 2020 in review

Superlinguo 2020 (2019 in review)

Superlinguo 2019 (2018 in review)

Superlinguo 2018 (2017 in review)

Superlinguo 2017 (2016 in review)

Field Notes is a new podcast about doing linguistic fieldwork, and the latest episode is an interview with @superlinguo. Description: 

This week’s episode is with Lauren Gawne who does fieldwork in Nepal working with speakers of Yolmo and Syuba. Lauren has experience as both a successful grant applicant and as a grant committee assessor. In this episode, she shares her advice for navigating applying for funding in an overly-competitive and under-resourced environment. One of the essential points Lauren makes is that struggling to find funding doesn’t necessarily reflect on the quality of your work or your project, or your commitment to the community you’re working with. In this episode, Lauren shares how she has funded her work and her advice to researchers looking to apply for fieldwork funding. Also, read the instructions.

I returned to full time work after a year of parental leave. That, alone, would have been enough for this year. Unfortunately, it turned into a terrible year at my university, with key senior colleagues in my department losing their jobs.

I like these reviews most year, but looking back on last year it feels even more important than usual to remember that there were some good things that happened in spite of everything going on with my university.

Lingthusiasm in 2024

Lingthusiasm turned 8! We maintained our regular pace, posting a dozen main episodes as well as our monthly bonus episodes for patrons. We plotted our vowels and covered a wide range of topics, including some great interviews with guests.

We launched our perfectly calibrated, Very Serious ‘Which Lingthusiasm episode are you?’ quiz guide you!

We were also reviewed in the New York Times, were featured in Lauren Passell’s Podcast the Newsletter, and conducted our final survey in the trilogy we planned.

We released a new sticker/badge that says "Ask Me About Linguistics", new merch that says "more people have read the text on this shirt than I have" and a range of merch with a very elegant Gavagai from Lucy Maddox, which are both available alongside merch for all kinds of linguists and language fans.

Main episodes

A politeness episode, if you please (transcript)

Helping computers decode sentences - Interview with Emily M. Bender (transcript)

OooOooh~~ our possession episode oOooOOoohh 👻 (transcript)

Welcome back aboard the metaphor train! (transcript)

Lo! An undetached collection of meaning-parts! (transcript)

The perfectly imperfect aspect episode (transcript)

How nonbinary and binary people talk - Interview with Jacq Jones (transcript)

Brunch, gonna, and fozzle - The smooshing episode (transcript)

Scoping out the scope of scope (transcript)

What visualizing our vowels tells us about who we are (transcript)

Connecting with oral culture (transcript)

No such thing as the oldest language (transcript)

Bonus episodes

Crochet vocal tract, grammar is a team sport, gifs, and soy sauce - Deleted scenes from Jacq Jones, Emily M. Bender, and Tom Scott team interviews

Metaphors be with you! Lingthusiasm x Let’s Learn Everything crossover episode

Linguistic Travel - Estonia, Mundolingua, and Martha’s Vineyard

Xenolinguistics 👽

Behind the Scenes on the Tom Scott Language Files

Don’t you love to do a “do” episode?

The best and worst comparatives episode

Linguistic mixups - spoonerisms, mondegreens, and eggcorns

Secret codes and the joy of cryptic word puzzles

Inner voice, mental pictures, and other shapes for thoughts

How we made vowel plots with Bethany Gardner

Are thumbs fingers and which episode of Lingthusiasm are you? Survey results and a new personality quiz

Themself, Basque ergativity cartoons, and bad swearing ideas - Deleted scenes from Kirby Conrod, Itxaso Rodriguez-Ordoñez, and Jo Walton and Ada Palmer

Top Superlinguo posts in 2024

I honestly expected to have nothing to post here, so it's lovely to know that I do still get small changes to blog throughout the year.

General posts

Research Data Management. Or, How I made multiple backups and still almost lost my honours thesis.

Thinking With Your Hands, Susan Goldin-Meadow (Review)

How to Talk Language Science with Everybody, Laura Wagner & Cecile McKee (Review)

Himalayan Linguistics turns 20: Celebrating two decades of Diamond Open Access publish

Himalayan Linguistics, Linguistics Vanguard and the Australian Journal of Linguistics - my three journal editorial hats

2024 LingComm Grants – Small Grants for Communicating Linguistics to Wider Audiences

2024 LingComm Grantees: New linguistics projects for you to follow

New gesture Emoji in Unicode 15.1: Head Shaking Horizontally and Head Shaking Vertically (aka shake and nod!), and (finally) right facing emoji

Academic articles in 2024

Four publications this year, across lingcomm, gesture and emoji. I also spent a lot of this year finishing Gesture: A Slim Guide, which will be out with OUP in 2025.

McCulloch, G. & L. Gawne. 2024. Towards a theory of linguistic curiosity: applying linguistic frameworks to lingcomm and scicomm. Linguistics Vanguard 10(s3): 181-189. DOI: 10.1515/lingvan-2024-0073 [OA published version][blog summary]

Gawne, L., & Cooperrider, K. (2024). Emblems: Meaning at the interface of language and gesture. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics. doi: 10.16995/glossa.9705 [OA published version][blog summary]

Cabraal, A. & L. Gawne. 2024. Using emoji as a creative tool for data analysis. In H. Kara, D. Mannay & A. Roy (Eds), The Handbook of Creative Data Analysis, 201-212. Bristol: Polity Press.

Gawne, L., G. McCulloch, N. Sweeney, R. Alatalo, H. Bodenhausen, C. Riley & J. Grieser. 2024. Creating Inclusive Linguistics Communication: Crash Course Linguistics. In A. Charity Hudley, C. Mallinson, and M. Bucholtz (Eds), Inclusion in Linguistics, 383-396. Oxford University Press. [Open Access PDF][blog post summary]

The year ahead

After a year of upheaval, next year will be a time of rebuilding. There will be a new team, a new curriculum, and I'm not silly enough to assume that also means a new, manageable pace of work. I'll still be sharing work here and recording Lingthusiasm. I've also been spending more time on Bluesky, perhaps I'll see you there?

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.

Previous years

Superlinguo 2023 in review

Superlinguo 2022 in review

Superlinguo 2021 in review

Superlinguo 2020 in review

Superlinguo 2020 (2019 in review)

Superlinguo 2019 (2018 in review)

Superlinguo 2018 (2017 in review)

Superlinguo 2017 (2016 in review)

I spent 2023 on leave to hang out with a new tiny human. I still found time for some linguistics, including regular Lingthusiasm episodes and even some intermittent blogging. I also got to reuse all my linguist pregnancy announcement jokes.

Lingthusiasm

Lingthusiasm turned 7 this year! We celebrated with a dozen main episodes as well as our monthly bonus episodes for patrons. We had some help to get through the year while I was on leave with interviews with linguists from around the world, including Lingthusiasm team members Martha Tsutsi-Billins and Sara Dopierela.

We released our new Etymology isn't Destiny merch, which is available alongside merch for all kinds of linguists and language fans.

Main episodes

Where language names come from and why they change (transcript)

How kids learn language in Singapore - Interview with Woon Fei Ting (transcript)

Bringing stories to life in Auslan - Interview with Gabrielle Hodge (transcript)

Tone and Intonation? Tone and Intonation! (transcript)

Word Magic (transcript)

The verbs had been being helped by auxiliaries (transcript)

Frogs, pears, and more staples from linguistics example sentences (transcript)

How kids learn Q’anjob’al and other Mayan languages - Interview with Pedro Mateo Pedro (transcript)

Look, it’s deixis, a word for linguistic pointing! (transcript)

Ergativity delights us (transcript)

Revival, reggaeton, and rejecting unicorns - Basque interview with Itxaso Rodríguez-Ordóñez (transcript)

If I were an irrealis episode (transcript)

Bonus episodes

Parrots, art and what even is a word - deleted scenes from Kat Gupta, Lucy Maddox and Randall Munroe interviews

Singapore, New Zealand, and a favourite linguistics paper - 2023 Year Ahead Chat

When books speculate on the future of English

Neopronouns, gender-neutral vocab, and why linguistic gender even exists - Liveshow Q&A with Kirby Conrod

2022 Survey Results - kiki/bouba, synesthesia fomo, and pluralizing emoji

Linguistic jobs beyond academia

LingthusiASMR - The Harvard Sentences

How we make Lingthusiasm transcripts - Interview with Sarah Dopierala

Field Notes on linguistic fieldwork - Interview with Martha Tsutsui Billins

Postcards from linguistics summer camp

Linguistic Advice - Challenging grammar snobs, finding linguistic community, accents in singing, and more

Frak, smeg, and more swearing in fiction - Ex Urbe Ad Astra interview with Jo Walton and Ada Palmer

LingComm: 2023 conference

The 2023 LingComm conference happened in February, and was once again in the LingComm conference space in Gather Town. I enjoyed being on the planning committee that put together an amazing event that built on the inaugural conference in 2021. Stay tuned for 2024 lingcomm updates!

Top Superlinguo posts in 2022

This year was a chance to reflect on the decade since I graduated, and to articulate the important role my main supervisor had in shaping my career.

After wrapping up the linguistics jobs interview series last year, this year was a chance to share some aggregated resources from 8 years and 80 interviews.

I also got to read a couple of great linguistics books for kids, keep up to date with linguistics podcasts, share some of my favourite linguistics books and check in on some things happening online.

General posts and reviews

10 years of a PhD

Barb Kelly

Gender Variations for Person in Suit Levitating Emoji - Emoji Proposal

Linguistics and Language Podcasts (2023 update)

Language Books for Kids: Highly Irregular, Arika Okrent & Sean O'Neill

Linguistics books for kids: Once Upon a Word - a Word-origin Dictionary, Jess Zafarris

Linguistics Jobs resources

Linguistics Jobs Interviews - directory of posts and resources

Linguistics Jobs resource set

Superlinguo Linguist Job Interviews full list

Linguistics education and its application in the workplace: An analysis of interviews with linguistics graduates (new publication in Language)

Information and advice

hapax legomenon and automated email replies

Lingthusiasm guide to pop linguistics books

Hello Grambank! A new typological database of 2,467 language varieties

What we can accomplish in 30 years of lingcomm: Opening keynote of #LingComm23

Australian Linguistic Society’s Accredited Linguist program

Academic articles in 2023

Although I was on leave, things that I was working on earlier made it through to publication. I like that there was one paper on lingcomm, one on gesture (including emoji!) and one on the linguistics job interviews, it feels like a nice mix of some of my current interests. Just a pity there wasn't a Tibeto-Burman paper in there!

Gawne, L. & A. Cabraal. 2023. Linguistics education and its application in the workplace: an analysis of interviews with linguistics graduates. Language, 99(1), e35-e57. [doi][Superlinguo post]

Freestone, P., J. Kruk & L. Gawne. forthcoming. From Star Trek to The Hunger Games: emblem gestures in science fiction and their uptake in popular culture. Linguistic Vanguard, 9(3), 257-266. [doi][Superlinguo post]

Gawne, L., & McCulloch, G. (2023). ‘Communicating about linguistics using lingcomm-driven evidence: Lingthusiasm podcast as a case study’, Language and Linguistics Compass, 17/5: e12499. DOI: 10.1111/lnc3.12499 [doi][Superlinguo post]

The year ahead

I'll be back to work full time. I've found the low-key level of blogging I managed this year to be sustainable, so expect it to be business-as-usual here. Lingthusiasm will also continue with monthly main and bonus episodes, thanks to the patrons who support the show and ensure we have a team that can keep everything rolling while begin to take on more administrative responsibilities in my job.

I'm looking forward to sharing some things that are in the final stages of peer-review and copy editing, and I'm excited to be spinning up some new projects.

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.

Previous years

Superlinguo 2022 in review

Superlinguo 2021 in review

Superlinguo 2020 in review

Superlinguo 2020 (2019 in review)

Superlinguo 2019 (2018 in review)

Superlinguo 2018 (2017 in review)

Superlinguo 2017 (2016 in review)

At the start of 2022 it was my aim to move gently through this year, after the general global upheaval the pandemic brought, and settling back into work after parental leave. I mostly think managed that for myself, and things worth sharing still happened this year.

Lingthusiasm

Lingthusiasm turned 6 this year. As well as regular episodes and bonus episodes every month, this year we ran a special offer for patrons and did a one-off print run of lens cloths with our redesigned aesthetic IPA.

Main episodes

Love and fury at the linguistics of emotions (transcript)

Who questions the questions? (transcript)

The linguistic map is not the linguistic territory (transcript)

What If Linguistics - Absurd Hypothetical Questions with Randall Munroe of xkcd (transcript)

Various vocal fold vibes (transcript)

Language in the brain - Interview with Ev Fedorenko (transcript)

What we can, must, and should say about modals (transcript)

Tea and skyscrapers - When words get borrowed across languages (transcript)

What it means for a language to be official (transcript)

Word order, we love (transcript)

Knowledge is power, copulas are fun (transcript)

Making speech visible with spectrograms (transcript)

Bonus episodes

Speakest Thou Ye Olde English?

103 ways for kids to learn languages

Linguistics and science communication - Interview with Liz McCullough

Behind the scenes on making an aesthetic IPA chart - Interview with Lucy Maddox

Using a rabbit to get kids chatting for science

Language inside an MRI machine - Interview with Saima Malik-Moraleda

There’s like, so much to like about “like”

What makes a swear word feel sweary? A &⩐#⦫& Liveshow

Approaching word games like a linguist - Interview with Nicole Holliday and Ben Zimmer of Spectacular Vernacular

Behind the scenes on how linguists come up with research topics

Emoji, Mongolian, and Multiocular O ꙮ - Dispatches from the Unicode Conference

LingComm: 2022 grants and conference posts

This year we ran another round of LingComm Grants, and we’ve been enjoying seeing new linguistic communication projects come to life. We also published summaries of top tips from plenary panels of the 2021 LingComm conference, and I teamed up with Gabrielle Hodge to write about how to plan communication access for online conferences. The LingComm conference will be back in 2023!

Tips for LingComm series

Planning communication access for online conferences: A Research Whisperer post about LingComm21

LingComm23 conference (February 2023)

2022 LingComm Grantees: New linguistics projects for you to follow

Top Superlinguo posts in 2022

Superlinguo remains a place where I can test out ideas or share things that aren’t necessarily the shape of an academic publication. I also continued my slow series of posts about linguistics books for kids, with a gem from 1966!

General posts

Superlinguo turns 11!

New Superlinguo Welcome page

Linguistics books for kids: How You Talk

Long form blog posts

Notes and observations about air quote gestures

Fictional gestures in scifi and fantasy

Information and advice

Doing your own Linguistics Job Interviews

Planning communication access for online conferences: A Research Whisperer post about LingComm21

Managing Breakout Rooms in online Tutorials and Workshops

Adopting the Trømso Recommendations in academic publishing

Linguistics Job Interviews

In 2022 the Linguistics Job Interviews series was edited by Martha Tsutsui-Bilins. After 8 years and 80+ interviews, the regular monthly series is coming to an end. There were 12 new interviews this year: 

Interview with a  Director of Conversation Design

Interview with an Artist

Interview with a Research Scientist

Interview with a Language Engineer

Interview with a Data Manager & Digital Archivist

Interview with a Natural Language Annotation Lead

Interview with an EMLS/Linguistics instructor & mother of four

Interview with a Performing Artiste and Freelance Editor

Interview with a Hawaiian and Tahitian language Instructor, Translator & Radio Host

Interview with a Customer Success Manager

Interview with an Impact Lead

Interview with an Online Linguistics Teacher

Regular interviews may have ended, but I’ll have more on linguistics, jobs and careers in 2023. I also wrote this post about doing your own Linguistics Job Interviews, to encourage other people to share their stories or interview others about their experiences.

Academic articles in 2022

This year I had two academic articles published. I also published one academic review of a monograph:

Gawne, L. & S. Styles. 2022. Situating linguistics in the social science data movement. In A.L. Berez-Kroeker, B. McDonnell, E. Koller & L.B. Collister (Eds), The Open Handbook of Linguistic Data Management, 9-25. MIT Press. [Open Access PDF][Superlinguo summary]

Gawne, L. & T. Owen-Smith. 2022. The General Fact/Generic Factual in Yolmo and Tamang. Studies in Language. Issue number forthcoming doi: 10.1075/sl.21049.gaw [published version][Green OA version][blog summary]

Gawne, L. 2022. Review of Repetitions in Gesture by Jana Bressem. The Linguist List. [HTML]

The year ahead

I will be on parental leave in 2023 🎉

Last time I went on leave with a newborn I had no idea if I would have a job to return to. I’m very grateful to not have that stress hanging over me this time around. Lingthusiasm will continue as regularly scheduled. It will be interesting to see how things here go without the monthly job interview posts. I’ll still have new publications, and various linguistics resources and observations to share, if maybe on a less than weekly basis. You can always follow Superlinguo on Tumblr @superlinguo), join the mailing list (in the sidebar), go retro and use the RSS feed, or follow me on Twitter (@superlinguo)

Previous years

Superlinguo 2021 in review

Superlinguo 2020 in review

Superlinguo 2020 (2019 in review)

Superlinguo 2019 (2018 in review)

Superlinguo 2018 (2017 in review)

Superlinguo 2017 (2016 in review)

This year was much like last year, but with more teaching and less energy in reserve. Putting this overview together has been a good reminder that even when it feels like nothing is getting done, there’s still actually a lot going on! 

Lingthusiasm and Superlinguo have continued on for another year, we ran LingComm21 and LingFest for the first time, and I said farewell to Mutual Intelligibility and By Lingo.

Mutual Intelligibility wrap up

In February this year we wrapped up the Mutual Intelligibility newsletter. Across a year we published 16 guides to the Crash Course Linguistics videos, 6 Resource Guides and 23 of our 3 Links short posts. The final Mutual Intelligibility post is a directory of all of these posts.

LingComm21 conference

In April 2021 I ran the inaugural Conference on Linguistics Communication (LingComm21), with Gretchen McCulloch, Jessi Grieser and Laura Bailey, with Liz McCullough as Conference Manager. We had 200 registered participants join us for three days of conference on the Gather platform.

We learnt so much putting this conference together that along with Liz McCullough and Gretchen McCulloch we wrote a series of posts about virtual conferences, which appeared on the LingComm.org website:

Why virtual conferences are antisocial (but they don’t have to be)

Designing online conferences for building community

Scheduling online conferences for building community

Hosting online conferences for building community

Budgeting online conferences or events

Planning accessible online conferences

After LingComm21 we ran LingFest, a program of online linguistics events aimed at a general audience in April and May of 2021, with over a dozen events.

Lingthusiasm

This year Lingthusiasm celebrated its fifth anniversary, and received a shiny new website, developed by Liz McCullough. I love the new site, which is designed to make it easier to find what you’re looking for - whether your a brand new listener or a long time lingthusiast. It’s worth visiting, if only to check out the cute new icons Lucy Maddox created for us.

In April we ran a liveshow “The Listener Talks Back - A Lingthusiasm liveshow about backchannelling” as part of LingFest, an online festival of linguistics (you can listen to it as our May bonus episode). In November we ran a sticker special offer and got custom Lingthusiasm green kiki & bouba stickers printed, alongside a bunch of others, to sent to Ling-phabet level patrons.

Main episodes

Writing is a technology

Listen to the imperatives episode!

How linguists figure out the grammar of a language

R and R-like sounds – Rhoticity

Not NOT a negation episode

Making machines learn Fon and other African languages - Interview with Masakhane

A Fun-Filled Fricative Field Trip

Are you thinking what I’m thinking? Theory of Mind

That’s the kind of episode it’s - clitics

Corpus linguistics and consent - Interview with Kat Gupta

Cool things about scales and implicature

Where to get your English etymologies

Bonus episodes

Linguistics puzzles for fun and olympiad glory

Linguistic 〰️✨ i l l u s i o n s ✨〰️

Lingwiki and linguistics on Wikipedia

Q&A with Emily Gref from language museum Planet Word

Sentient plants, proto-internet, and more lingfic about quirky communication

Language under the influence

Gotta test ‘em all - The linguistics of Pokémon names

Lingthusiasm liveshow: The listener talks back (on backchannelling)

Talking to babies and small children

The episode-episode (reduplication)

100th episode Q&A about naming dogs, modifying English, linguistics research, and more

Deleted scenes - Outtakes from Lingthusiasm interviews

Top Superlinguo posts in 2020

This year Superlinguo turned 10! I still love my typo riddled home on the internet, where I can share research, links to lingcomm work I’ve been doing, and stray linguistic thoughts. After eight years and about 200 editions I said goodbye to By Lingo, my column in The Big Issue. It is now in the excellent hands of Lee Murray and I enjoy being a reader each edition.

Milestones

10 years of Superlinguo

Goodbye By Lingo

Long form blog posts

The linguistics of hyperlinks

Conversation, cooperation and dementia

Gestures in podcasting

By Lingo: Beforetimes

Information and advice

Gesture emoji: contributing to the Unicode standard

Practical advice if you want to start a podcast (updated post)

Crash Course Linguistics for VCE English Language Units

Review: The Language Lover’s Puzzle Book, Alex Bellos

Linguistics Job Interviews

There are now over 60 interviews in this series, with 12 new interviews this year:

Interview with a TV Writer

Interview with a Senior Analyst, Strategic Insights & Analytics

Interview with a Social Media Lead

Interview with a CEO of a SaaS company

Interview with a Communications and Engagement Assistant

Interview with a Technical Writer

Interview with a Legislative Drafter

Interview with a Stay-at-home Mom and Twitch Streamer

Interview with a Peer Review Program Manager

Interview with an Associate at the Children’s Center for Communication, Beverly School for the Deaf

Interview with a Metadata Specialist and Genealogist

Interview with an Academic Linguist

I have started building a resource kit to help people use the interviews, both for their own career planning and as a resource in linguistics classrooms: (bit.ly/ling-jobs). I’m also excited that in 2022 Martha Tsutsui-Billins will be running the interviews on Superlinguo.

Other things around the internet

This is a very incomplete list of miscellaneous internet things I did in 2021:

Aramteskan Grammar, now available at Fiat Lingua 

The hand gestures that last longer than spoken languages (BBC Future article I’m quoted in)

Ask Me Another (NPR) podcast interview alongside Gretchen McCulloch

Language Chats, World Forge and Conlangery: Lingthusiasm visits 3 other podcasts

Nonsense words make people around the world think of the same shapes (Science article I’m quoted in)

Emojis aren't debasing language (Guardian article quoting Gretchen and me)

What the sound of your name says about you (BBC Future article featuring Suzy Styles and mentions our work)

Academic articles in 2021

This year I had four academic articles published. I love how they cover four different facets of my research interests: one was about gesture (particularly away gestures), one was about Tibeto-Burman grammar (particularly reported speech evidentiality), one was about emoji (and gesture!) and one was about lingcomm (and Linguistics in the Pub). References, and links to the papers and the Superlinguo summaries:

Gawne, Lauren & Jennifer Daniel. 2021. The past and future of hand emoji. Proceedings of the 4th International Workshop on Emoji Understanding and Applications in Social Media (Emoji 2021). [Open Access PDF] [full citation and conference proceedings coming soon][blog post]

Gawne, Lauren. 2021. ‘Away’ gestures associated with negative expressions in narrative discourse in Syuba (Kagate, Nepal) speakers. Semiotica https://doi.org/10.1515/sem-2017-0163 [Green OA version embargoed until March 2022][blog post]

Gawne, Lauren & Ruth Singer. 2021. Ten Years of Linguistics in the Pub. Australian Journal of Linguistics. 41(2). doi: 10.1080/07268602.2021.1974341 [PDF][FigShare PDF - embargoed until April 2023][blog post]

Gawne, Lauren. 2021. Reported evidentiality in Tibeto-Burman languages. Himalayan Linguistics, Vol. 20(3): 80-115. doi: 10.5070/H920152301 [Open Access publication][blog post]

The year ahead

After a year of parental leave, and two years of the rollercoaster of teaching and parenting through a pandemic, my plan for this year is to (try to) work slowly and thoughtfully. I’m still working on projects that I thought would be much further ahead, but I’m still so excited to hopefully be able to start sharing them in the next year or so. The last couple of years have really forced me to think about what to prioritise, and this year is all about figuring out how to prioritise it. Not a very glam ambition for the year, but an important one as I learn more about the ebbs and flows of a full teaching schedule!

Previous years

Superlinguo 2020 in review

Superlinguo 2020 (2019 in review)

Superlinguo 2019 (2018 in review)

Superlinguo 2018 (2017 in review)

Superlinguo 2017 (2016 in review)

Superlinguo turned 11 on the 12th of April!

Two exciting updates in the last year:

Welcome page

Superlinguo now has a welcome page!

www.superlinguo.com/welcome

There are links to aggregate posts for the Job Interview series, linguistics book (fiction, non-fiction and kids), and Christmas words, and regular series that I track via tags including season gift guides, academic publications, annual reviews and conlanging work.

I’ve also linked to all of my other substantive blog posts by theme, including posts about gestures, words, sounds, language on the internet and linguistics memes, as well as advice about academia and advice about lingcomm.

Linguistics Jobs series now edited by Martha Tsutsui Billins

The monthly linguistics jobs interview series continues, now in the most excellent hands of Martha Tsutsui Billins. Martha is a linguist whose research focuses on the Ryukyuan language Amami Oshima, specifically honourifics and politeness strategies in the context of language endangerment. Martha runs Field Notes, a podcast about linguistic fieldwork.

Previous anniversary posts

10 years of Superlinguo

Happy 6th birthday Superlinguo!