90 episodes
Because Language - a podcast about linguistics, the science of language. Daniel Midgley, Ben Ainslie, and Hedvig Skirgård
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4.7 • 100 Ratings
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A podcast about linguistics, the science of language.
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95: Why the Far-Right Demagogues Language (with Caitlin Green and Maureen Kosse)
Language authorities. Right-wing politicians. White supremacists and feminists. What do they have in common? They're all working together to fight gender-inclusive language. But why bring language into this fight? What extra does this give them?
Dr Caitlin Green and Maureen Kosse join us to explain on this big episode. -
93: Stop! Grammar Time (live with Ellen Jovin and friends)
In honour of Grammar Day (4 March), we are joined live by special guest Ellen Jovin, who regularly dispenses grammar advice and wisdom from the Grammar Table. Now she's testing our grammatical mettle and answering our questions.
YouTube video of this episode:
https://youtu.be/C1l8Alk3Ptc?si=7pnGnuKcy9YY-mhR -
92: In the First 600 Milliseconds (with Rachel Nordlinger)
What are your eyes doing when you describe a scene? It may depend on your language.
New research from Dr Rachel Nordlinger and team shows that we do a lot of planning and scanning very quickly, and it follows the requirements of our language. She's studied Murrinhpatha, an Australian Aboriginal language, to see what its speakers do. -
90: Enpoopification (with Grant Barrett and Tim Brookes)
We’re talking words, and no one has a way with words like Grant Barrett. He’s here to tell us what it’s like at Dictionary.com, and what went down at the annual American Dialect Society Words of the Year 2023 vote. And perhaps he can help forestall Hedvig’s planned mass human extinction.
Also: World Endangered Writing Day is upon us! It’s a fantastic initiative, and author Tim Brookes of Endangered Alphabets is here to lay out the case for preserving writing systems. -
89: Words of the Week of the Year 2023 (with Cory Doctorow and friends)
The public has voted, and a winner has been decided! We're looking all the words chosen by the various dictionary bodies, and counting down our Words of the Week of the Year.
And there's a very special interview with author, blogger, activist, and inventor of words Cory Doctorow. -
87: Trans-Inclusive (with Andrew Perfors)
What is a woman? Or a man? Or a chair, or a sandwich? Or anything, really?
"Gender critical" people are making language into a vector to attack the rights of trans people. They treat categories like man and woman as binary and obvious.
But cognitive linguistics has a response, in the form of a new paper in Nature Human Behaviour. Are categories concrete, or are they mental, social, or something else? How do we categorise objects at all? Author Dr Andrew Perfors brings the science on this episode.
Customer Reviews
Shed your pet peeves!
If you are weary of cringing at the inevitability of ever-evolving language, and if you want to cast off that over-worked nerve, this Podcast is for you. Daniel, Hedvig and Ben are delightful, amusing and erudite while they keep us up on the latest slang, the history of usage, and a host of scientific and social studies and issues around language usage. Daniel even provides a 3-step approach to accepting and embracing change in language, and I’m on step 2 for my own aversions (“different THAN-should be FROM and CONVERSATE…I’m working on it!). Every episode educates and entertains optimally. Keep up the great work!
Undeniably Excellent; Undeniably Infuriating
I listen/have listened to seemingly all the linguistics podcasts and BL is top-tier. It features a truly wide variety of topics, a pleasing blend of the irreverent and the intellectual, and fascinating guests. That said, you will have to learn to live with one of the more frustrating trios of hosts out there: one is dependably excellent and obviously thinks about the audience, one is incredibly bright but often equally, painfully smug, and the last's sometimes affected brashness does little to conceal the brittle girders of his fragile ego.
But, truly, the excellence is more than worth learning to live with the bad, and I recommend it to anyone with an interest in language. linguistics, and words, just as I do to everyone else whose ear I can bend.
This is my favourite podcast by far
The three co-hosts — two linguists, Daniel and Hedvig, and the far-from-everyman teacher, Ben — play off each other wonderfully, full of humor, self-deprecation and wild tangents. Through it all, you learn a lot about linguistics and how people communicate.
They are on just about every possibly social media and pay attention to all of them. I mostly interact on their discord channel, and it’s great to be able to ask questions, answer questions (!), or just have a random discussion.
The combination of the humour and learning works wonderfully and has helped to keep me sane.