When language was innovated, what happened next? How did it change our abilities — and our responsibilities — to each other? Dr Nick Enfield shares ideas…
ChatGPT has just landed. It can generate text that seems fluid, plausible, and (surprisingly) not total nonsense. It’s got a lot of people wondering what’s…
Yes, linguistics is all through the world of sci-fi, but science fiction has had a surprising impact on linguistic research. Dr Hannah Little is cataloguing…
Language isn’t just for communication — it’s fun. For over a hundred years, crosswords have served as entertainment, and even been blamed for society’s ills.…
How is language like a game of charades? According to a new book, quite a lot. Charades players and language users improvise and work together…
Lingcomm legend Mignon Fogarty (Grammar Girl) joins us to answer all the questions in our Mailbag! And we have to ask her about National Grammar…
Every Linguistics 101 student knows about HP Grice and his famous Maxims. They state that dialogue is usually cooperative — and when it doesn’t appear…
The Words of the Year are out! And we’re talking about ’em. We’re answering all the questions in our voluminous Mailbag. And Hedvig springs a…
You probably communicate with your friends using media references all the time. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. But why do we include media…
All it took was a tweet. Last week, linguists refocused their attention on a paper about humidity and tone. Was it bad linguistics? Environmental determinism?…