lingthusiasm

Bonus 61: Behind the scenes on how linguists come up with research topics

Added 2022-03-03 23:56:03 +0000 UTC

When you hear about a research study, the questions can seem very authoritative and the results very tidy. But research is ultimately done by humans, and humans need to figure out ways of coming up with questions and methods for answering them.

In this episode, Lauren and Gretchen get enthusiastic about how linguistic research topics come together! We talk about where our own research came from, figuring out spaces for new questions in the existing literature, and bridging gaps between multiple subject areas and communities.

Announcements:

We're doing another Lingthusiasm liveshow on April 9th (Canada) slash 10th (Australia)! (What time is it for me?) It will be a live Q&A for you, our wonderful patreons, all about fan fave topic: swearing! We'll be hosting this session on our Discord server, where you can share your favourite swear words and associated stories in various languages either during or before the show, and it will be available as an edited-for-legibility recording in your usual Patreon live feed if you prefer to listen at a later date. If you haven't joined the Discord yet, here are instructions for linking your Patreon and Discord accounts.

LingComm Grants are back in 2022! These are small grants to help kickstart new projects to communicate linguistics to broader audiences. There will be four $500 Project Grant, and ten Startup Grants of $100 each. Apply here by March 31, 2022 or forward this page to anyone you think might be interested, and if you’d like to help us offer more grants, you can support Lingthusiasm on Patreon or contribute directly. We started these grants because a small amount of seed money would have made a huge difference to us when we were starting out, and we want to help there be more interesting linguistics communication in the world.

Here are the links mentioned in this episode:

You can listen to this episode on this page, via the Patreon RSS or download the mp3. A transcript of this episode is available as a Google Doc. Lingthusiasm is also on Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter. Email us at contact [at] lingthusiasm [dot] com or chat to us on the Patreon page. Gretchen is on Twitter as @GretchenAMcC and blogs at All Things Linguistic. Lauren is on Twitter as @superlinguo and blogs at Superlinguo.

To chat about this episode and other lingthusiastic topics with your fellow linguistics fans, join us on the Lingthusiasm Discord server.

Lingthusiasm is created by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our senior producer is Claire Gawne, our production editor is Sarah Dopierala, our production manager is Liz McCullough, and our music is ‘Ancient City’ by The Triangles