2018 Year in Review
Cross-posted from my blog, All Things Linguistic.
In 2018, I finished writing my book about internet language, which now has an official title (BECAUSE INTERNET) and publication date (July 23, 2019). You can preorder it here now and it will arrive as a delightful present from yourself halfway through the year!
I also started writing a column for Wired about internet language and went to Australia to do two Lingthusiasm liveshows.
Writing
My book about internet language officially has a title and publication date! Look for BECAUSE INTERNET: UNDERSTANDING THE NEW RULES OF LANGUAGE in July 2019, and you can also put your email address here to make sure you don’t miss when it’s out on social media.
I also began a column about internet language for Wired. My first two articles:
Lingthusiasm Podcast
For Lingthusiasm, my podcast with Lauren Gawne, we did our long-anticipated liveshows in Sydney and Melbourne! We also released new Lingthusiasm merch, including tree diagram scarves, rainbow IPA scarves, Space Baby art, and IPA ties.
We released 12 main episodes and 12 bonus episodes:
16. Learning parts of words – Morphemes and the wug test
17. Vowel Gymnastics
18. Translating the untranslatable
19. Sentences with baggage – Presuppositions
20. Speaking Canadian and Australian English in a British-American binary
21. What words sound spiky across languages? Interview with Suzy Styles
22. This, that and the other thing – determiners
23. When Nothing Means Something
24. Making books and tools speak Chatino – Interview with Hilaria Cruz
26. Why C and G come in hard and soft versions, and more about palatal sounds
27. Words for family relationships: kinship terms
Bonus episodes:
11. We are all linguistic geniuses – Interview with Daniel Midgley
12. Creating languages for fun and learning
15. Linguistics grad school advice
17. Homophones, homonyms, and homographs
18. Emoji, Gesture and The International Congress of Linguists
19. Hyperforeignisms
20. Bringing up bilingual babies
21. What’s it really like at academic conferences?
22. Q&A (with bonus video!) about the shape of your ears, very old words, and more
Media
A few select media articles:
Multiple exclamation marks in internet speak!!! (Atlantic)
Video on NBC about teen slang (NBC)
Emoji in the courtroom (CBC The Current)
On the origins of “doggo” (Wired)
An interview about Lingthusiasm with Lauren Gawne (Babel Magazine Meet the Professionals series)
Lingthusiasm was featured on Dictionary.com’s list of best podcasts about language.
I also started a personal/professional instagram account, and started updating the accounts for All Things Linguistic and Lingthusiasm more frequently: go check those out if your instagram feed needs more linguistics in it.
You can also follow All Things Linguistic on Mastodon for a daily linguistics post there.
Talks and conferences
I gave a talk about emoji as gesture at EmojiCon in Brooklyn and about emoji sequences as beat gestures at Emoji2018 at Stanford.
I went to a broad range of interesting conferences this year: XOXO, PatreCon, LangFest, Scintillation, Automatic Speech Recognition for Endangered Languages (ASREL retreat), McGill Symposium on Indigenous Languages, and the annual meeting of the Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR).
While in Australia, I gave workshops on LingComm at the annual meeting of the Australian Linguistic Society and at the Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language summer school, in addition to a sold-out public lecture on internet linguistics at the summer school. I also gave talks about emoji as gesture at four universities: Sydney, Melbourne, Monash, and La Trobe.
At the annual meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, I organized a panel called Language in the Public Ear: Linguistics Outreach via Podcasts and Radio, for which my cohost Lauren Gawne represented Lingthusiasm. I also organized the linguistics Wikipedia editathon with Lauren Collister, and stepped in at the last minute to co-host the Five Minute Linguist competition with Lane Greene of the Economist, in addition to our previously scheduled judging, due to weather issues.
Selected blog posts
I hit my 6-year blogiversary! Here are a few of my favourite posts from 2018:
Roundup posts
A very long list of linguistics YouTube channels and other free online videos about linguistics
How to explain linguistics to your friends and family this holiday season (updated)
28 tips for doing better in your intro linguistics course (updated)
Language and Linguistics podcasts (updated)
Linguistics jobs interviews
Linguistics + X career advice post (updated)
Memes and other linguist humour
Look, Simba. Everything the light touches on that chart is pronounceable.
Wallet but pronounced like ballet, laughter but pronounced like daughter, and more
The English “th” sound takes on the Distracted Boyfriend meme
Things about languages
Folks, there’s nothing left from the linguistics division. (On the Brazil National Museum fire)
New Zealand government pushes for Maori in all primary schools by 2025
Indigenous languages spoken by people at the U.S.-Mexico border
A free online course about the linguistics of signed languages
Example sentences
Semantic ambiguity: let this be the hour that we draw swords together
Structural ambiguity: “Fake degree claims dog prominent Spanish politicians.” and “Nicole, who never saw a dog and didn’t smile” (diagrammed)
Linguistics handmade things
Internet linguistics
Other linguistics
Why teaching phonics is an important part of learning to read
Debunking the idea that apes might have learned a sign language
Repairing the World: a sci fi short story featuring linguists
This young girl uses “los,” “las” and the gender-neutral “les” — watch her explain why.
Communicating colours using black and white (a language evolution game)
A colour-coded diagram of the English IPA with the part of the mouth you use to make each sound
Heaven’s Vault: a videogame that’s “like Guitar Hero for linguistics”
Deflecting “how are you” and “how many languages do you know” with Gricean Maxims
Babies notice the difference between signed languages and gestures
Pointing with the index finger isn’t as universal as you might think
How to visualize consonants by painting charcoal on various parts of your mouth
When most people tell you they think words are so fascinating, they have in mind items like “canoodle” and “serendipity.” When linguists say it, they have in mind, like, “the.”
Missed out on previous years? Here are the summary posts from 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017. If you’d like to get a much shorter monthly highlights newsletter via email, you can sign up for that on my website.