Daniel Midgley

Linguist, teacher, podcaster, author

Category: linguistics (page 1 of 2)

Speakeasy Extras: Two years time

All the questions we didn’t get time to cover. Enjoy!

Quoted in the Washington Post: Orbisculate

The Because Language Word of the Week of the Year for 2020 was orbisculate. You can listen to us talk about it on this episode, but now you also read a quote about it from me in the Washington Post.

It’s an article by Sadie Dingfelder.

Their dad died of covid. Now they’re trying to get the clever word he made up into the dictionary.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2021/03/10/orbisculate-dictionary-krieger-covid/

It’s such a good word, it might have won even without their online campaign, says podcast host Daniel Midgley.
“Orbisculate felt like a refreshing splash of citrus in an otherwise grim year of words,” Midgley says.

Sadie Dingfelder in the Washington Post

Talk: Linguistic discrimination, X Semana de Letras, UTFPR

The good people at UTFPR in Brazil invited me to give a presentation on linguistic discrimination as part of their conference X Semana de Letras. I was joined by Prof Dr Miriam Sester Retorta.

I’m very grateful to have been invited — despite not speaking Portuguese. It’s worth pointing out that English-speaking privilege opens a lot of doors. It’s unfair, so I address it, and I suggest some ways to mitigate that.

You can download the slides here (PDF). The graphics are clickable links to what I’m talking about in the presentation.

http://danielmidgley.com/files/Midgley_X_Semana_de_Letras_UTFPR_2020-10-29.pdf

Thanks to Pedro Lucas Silva Pereira Alves, Prof Dr Rita Marriott, Heron Sato and the whole team at UTFPR!

Linguistics in the Pub, August 2020

I got to be on a panel for linguistic communication! How did we decide to get into podcasting? How can you be more of a public linguist? And how do you make it pay?

It was great to hang out with these people:

  • Hedvig Skirgård, my co-host on Because Language
  • Lauren Gawne and Gretchen McCulloch of Lingthusiasm
  • Carrie Gillon and Megan Figueroa of the Vocal Fries

Thanks also to Ruth Singer for hosting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYcxdcuD31c

(sorry — embedding this YouTube video isn’t working.)

Talk: Building the Curriculum

Daniel explains how, along with teachers Amy Ward Gordon and Kate Webster Blythe, designed and ran a high school linguistics program.

What were the challenges? How did the program change? Did OzCLO puzzles work for students? What advice do our teachers give to other non-linguists who would like to try this kind of thing?

Presented at the annual conference of the Australian Linguistic Society at Macquarie University, Wednesday 19 December 2019.

TEDx Perth talk: Ungrumping Language

Here’s my TEDx Perth talk on learning to love language even when it doesn’t do what you want. Many of us get grumpy about language, but ungrumping is easy, more fun, and can make the world a better place.

Thanks to TEDx Perth chair Rob Lines, my speech helper Karen Livey, and to all the wonderful listeners of Talk the Talk and the Speakeasy on ABC Radio.

LSA webinar: Linguistics in the News: How to Own It!

I got the chance to participate in a thing with the LSA on 22 August 2019. Imagine this stellar cast of characters:

  • Anne Curzan (University of Michigan), Co-Host, That’s What They Say (Michigan Radio)
  • Michelle McSweeney, Host of Subtext
  • Geoff Nunberg (University of California, Berkeley), Commentator, Fresh Air (National Public Radio)

and the moderator:

  • John McWhorter (Columbia University), Chair, LSA Public Relations Committee; Presenter, Lexicon Valley

And then — what do you know — me. In my recording pantry.

So much great advice for aspiring media folks.

One question remains, though: how do we pay people to do the work of explaining language to the public? Did you notice the complete silence after that question dropped? I decided to let that question hang for a bit, because I wanted to see what the others would say. Alas, their answer was: get tenure, and then you can do what you want. That’s a good one — Australian universities don’t have tenure. But that’s been the traditional model. In other words, do it as a side gig. There’s no provision to make it your main gig, because that hasn’t been the way. But what if you want it to be your main gig? Why shouldn’t linguistics have a massive media production machine behind it, the way (say) Crooked Media has done for American politics? Arguably, having a machine like that would be great for linguistics. How does it get paid for?

We need to fix the way public linguistics gets paid for. Watch for a post about that soon. In the meantime, thanks to the LSA and to John and the panellists for a great session. I learned heaps. Hope you did too.

Talk: Language Across Time

Language Across Time was a session for secondary students to learn about historical linguistics. Other organisers were Bethwyn Evans of ANU and Luisa Miceli of UWA. This session was part of the International Conference of Historical Linguistics, run by ANU and the Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language.

There’s also a page of resources, with videos and worksheets for students to follow along.

Here are the videos.

1: The Malagasy
2: Canoes
3: Numbers

If you prefer, you can watch and share the Facebook versions of these videos, which have subtitles.

How many words are there in all the world’s languages?

I took on this question for ABC Great Southern for their Curious Kids segment, and had a fun chat with Andrew Collins.

On Curious Kids with Andrew Collins for ABC Great Southern, Drive

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