Welcome to Superlinguo
Superlinguo is a blog for those who like and use language. It has been run by Lauren Gawne since 2011. This welcome page is a directory to help you navigate the content of this blog.
For more about the history of Superlinguo, Lauren, using content from this blog and contact details, visit the About page.
For a chronological view of all of the content on Superlinguo, check out the Archive page.
Aggregate posts
Below are the aggregate posts of regular series I run:
- Superlinguo Linguist Job Interviews full list (see also the resource set)
- Superlinguo linguistics books list - fiction and non-fiction
- Linguistics Books for Kids - the Superlinguo list
- Christmas words: The full Superlinguo list
Regular posts
Below are some other regular and annual posts I run:
- Academic publications
- Seasonal gift guide
- Year in review posts
- Writing about creating the Aramteskan Language for P.M. Freestone’s Shadowscent books
Resource and advice posts
I have a small number of posts I regularly update with resources as advice, these fall into two broad categories: academia advice and lingcomm advice.
Lingcomm advice
- Linguistics and Language Podcasts
- Practical advice if you want to start a podcast
- Communicating Research: An online self-guided slide set
- Making public events accessible: Interpreters and Live Captions
- Planning communication access for online conferences: A Research Whisperer post about LingComm21
Academic advice
- Managing Breakout Rooms in online Tutorials and Workshops
- Email is a genre: A genre you can be awesome at
- Lauren’s PhD/Postdoc tips
- Academic productivity tips to start 2019
- 3 things I learnt about PhD supervision from midwives
- Advice to New Fieldworkers
- Reasons you should use video in language documentation
- The (messy, unwieldy, misbehaving, mind-hurting) reality of grammar writing
I also used to answer a lot of Tumblr asks about academia and linguistics, which you can find as Ask Posts in the Superlinguo archive.
Linguistics posts
I’ve written about a variety of topics on the blog over the years:
Posts about gesture
- Blind people gesture (and why that’s kind of a big deal)
- The relationship between gesture and thinking/speaking
- What gesture can teach us about emoji
- Gestures in podcasting
- Secret meanings of the Nose Tap gesture
- Gesture emoji: contributing to the Unicode Standard
- Gesturing in a second language, and the influence of your first language
- Handy Gestures: A great paper looking at how we help each other when we communicate
Posts about sounds
- [ə̞̃ə̃ə̝̃] - That’s the way you mumble ‘I dunno’, and it has implications for the nature of meaning
- Vowel terminology - high/low vs open/close
- The Real Phoneticians of My Fair Lady
Posts about words
- ‘A pee’ vs. ‘a wee’
- Durex in different countries
- Why say ‘nieces and nephews’ when you can say ‘niblings’?
- “Where is a frown?” Americans say mouth, Brits say forehead (my mind=blown)
- The etymology of Kangaroo (especially for those who’ve seen Arrival)
- Old English compounds
- “Put out your X” - the evolution of an Aussie snowclone
- Animal Crossing in the UK - Toucans and Puffins and Penguins (oh my!)
- How do you say Moët? Linguistic snobbery and knowledge
- Chop/chope - The most useful Singaporean word I’ve learned so far
- Heroes in a Noun Phrase (Turtle Power)
- 1-for-1 and 2-for-1: who’s getting the better deal?
- Dude, this is how you can tell you’re in trouble
- Factoid Facts
Posts about the internet
- Gender Variations for Person in Suit Levitating Emoji - Emoji Proposal
- Your dislike of voicemail is generational, but it’s also cultural
- The linguistics of hyperlinks
- Emoji Deixis: When emoji don’t face the way you want them to
- Don’t run towards the fire (the on-going problem with emoji directions)
- Intergenerational texting conventions
- What do emoji sound like?
- What Blissymbolics can teach us about emoji
- Sparkly unicorn punctuation is invading the internet
Posts about linguistics and careers
- Linguistics Jobs Interviews - directory of posts and resources
- Linguistics Jobs resource set
- Superlinguo Linguist Job Interviews full list
- Linguistics education and its application in the workplace: An analysis of interviews with linguistics graduates (new publication in Language)
Miscellaneous posts
- Conversation, cooperation and dementia
- Digital Daisy Bates - turning 90,000 words and 4,500 pages into an online portal to explore
- The many lives of the Asterisk
- Ke garne? The linguistic expression of Nepali resilience
- Ordering coffee in Singapore - when more means less
- Planet of the Apes and the history of human language
- Before we get to ergativity, unaccusitivity and other kinds of morphosyntactic funtimes…
- Flattery and respect in Nepali and English
- Barb Kelly
- 10 years of a PhD
Meme posts
- Top five linguist pregnancy announcements
- The Signs, for linguists
- The Swadesh 100 list as emoji
- Wells Lexical set as emoji
Old series
There are a few types of posts from the early days of the blog that haven’t survived.
Other things I’ve done on the internet