Category: bad linguistics (page 1 of 3)

383: Decolonising the Archive (with Emma Murphy and Caroline Hughes)

Communities need language. But a lot of the documentation is locked up in the archives.

So now linguists are teaming up with community researchers to demystify linguistic research, so that this work can be taken to their communities to help …

377: Mailbag of Uncomfortableness

The mail keeps coming, and we keep answering.

  • Is English really a dialect of Chinese?
  • Why do people say “uncomfortableness”, when we already have “discomfort”?
  • Are “ankh” and “anchor” related?
  • How does learning traditional languages help communities?
  • Is there a

346: What Works (featuring Dan Dediu)

Why does language have the form it does, and why does it change the way it does?

Is it just… because? Or are there environmental motivators? Linguists are getting interested in just what factors are forming language into what it …

339: How English Could Be Way Cooler

Other languages have good ideas too, you know.

Have you noticed something cool about another language, and wished English did that? Is there any feature of another language that you wish English had?

Daniel and Hedvig are engaging in a …

322: Sense of Direction (featuring Alice Gaby)

North and south? Left and right? Or something else?

Different languages have different ways of talking about space. Sometimes this has to do with the environment of the people who speak them. But what happens when the environment changes?

Daniel

265: Universal Grammar 2 (featuring Dan Everett and Lynne Murphy)

The biggest idea in linguistics is back on the table.

Is there such a thing as the Universal Grammar? Do you have to have a human brain to learn language, or is learning a language just like learning anything else? …

245: Language Fact or Fiction?

Ever read a language story, and felt something was a bit off?

Does your keyboard layout affect how you feel about words? Is it true that people couldn’t see the colour blue until modern times? How are you supposed to …

235: Worst Words (featuring Don Watson)

Are our vocabularies shrinking? Is bureaucratic double-talk a sinister form of code designed to short-circuit original thought?

Author Don Watson thinks so, and explains why in his latest book Worst Words. But how does his view stack up to language …

226: Shakespeare in Translation 2 (featuring Celeste Rodriguez Louro, Migdalia Cruz, and Taylor Mac)

The Oregon Shakespeare Festival has commissioned all Shakespeare’s plays to be translated into contemporary English.

But how does one go about updating the words of the Bard? Does this task belong to playwrights, or to linguists?

Linguist Daniel Midgley speaks …

224: Bad Linguistics

Did the Australian accent appear as a result of drunkenness?

Is texting a sign of declining literacy?

Is business jargon killing English?

Of course not. It’s rubbish. All of it. But when bad linguistics comes to town, few can resist …

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