03: Arrival of the Linguists - Review of the Alien Linguistics Movie

Lingthusiasm - A podcast that's enthusiastic about linguistics

Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne

Science

4.8 • 791 Ratings

🗓️ 15 December 2016

⏱️ 32 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Lingthusiasm Episode 3: Arrival of the linguists - Review of the alien linguistics movie Linguists are very excited about the movie Arrival, because it stars a linguist saving the day by figuring out how to talk with aliens. Which, if you compare it to previous linguists in film (being obnoxious to poor flower girls, for example) is a vast improvement. In this episode of the podcast that’s enthusiastic about linguistics, Gretchen and Lauren come to you having just watched Arrival, to tell you what it got right and wrong about life as a linguist, how linguists have been reacting, and the linguists who consulted on the film. We also talk about some other books and films that feature linguistics, if Arrival caught your interest. We also discuss what we’ve been up to lately. Gretchen is busily writing the latest draft of her book about internet English, and Lauren has just published a grammar of a language spoken in Nepal. For more information visit the show page http://lingthusiasm.com/post/154520817516/lingthusiasm-episode-3-arrival-of-the-linguists Listen to bonus episodes, suggest future topics, and help keep the show ad-free by supporting us on Patreon: http://patreon.com/lingthusiasm

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to L' Enthusiasm, podcast that's enthusiastic about linguistics.
0:10.0	I'm Lauren Gorn.
0:11.0	And I'm Gretchen McCulloch, and today we're going to be talking about the linguist film arrival.
0:17.0	But first, Lauren, what have you been up to these days?
0:20.0	I am enjoying getting a fair amount of work done and published, which is a rare and exciting feat
0:26.9	in academia sometimes. So I have a descriptive grammar of Yolmo, which is a language that I worked
0:34.5	with for my PhD, and that's now available. I'm really excited because it's an open
0:39.0	access book which means that anyone can download it and read it for free. Yay! I'll put the link to
0:44.4	that in the show notes for those who are in any way interested in the grammar of Tibetan dialects
0:50.5	of languages spoken in Nepal. I know many of you are, but it's really, really exciting.
0:54.9	It's a bit niche.
0:56.3	Yeah, you've seen a rival, now read, detailed descriptions of the distribution of
1:02.2	ergativity. No, that's been happening and I'm going to a conference called LDLT, so it's
1:08.6	language documentation and linguistic theory in December
1:12.4	at SOAS University, which is also the university I'm at. So, no travel required conference,
1:18.0	always a bonus. So if there's anything interesting to report there, I will report back.
1:23.5	I look forward to hearing about it. What have you been up to? I have been working away in the background on my book about internet language and the future of English,
1:32.2	which is something that occupies a lot of my time, but currently has nothing that I can share with people.
1:36.8	So yeah, so I'm trying to get the second draft done and into my editor.
1:41.3	So it's, you know, it's making progress.
1:43.3	It's, you know, taking shape to be a real book, which is exciting.
1:47.0	Yay!
	...

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