Thread by @superlinguo

OK, I have to dust off my linguist brain for going back to work next week, so let's so how this goes. One like = one opinion about linguistics.

https://twitter.com/vgr/status/1205357296714280962

1. Understanding language structures, and how people use them, is relevant to so many fields. Linguistics is useful training for so many careers.
(I know this because I've interviewed lots of people about it superlinguo.com/tagged/linguis…)

2. Language changes. This isn't so much an opinion, as a fact.

3. It's great that language changes! Linguists will never run out of cool things to learn! Language change tells us fascinating things about brains, cultures, history, and power.

4. Linguistics still needs to make the diversity of language more central to our work. There is still a tendency to focus on a small subset of languages/dialects/varieties without acknowledging this limits what we can say about language. (cf. #benderrule in NLP)

5. The most aesthetically pleasing IPA characters: æ ŋ ɮ ɕ ɧ

6. Judging other people's grammar is boring, analysing it is much more fun.
I believe this so strongly that we put it on a tshirt: redbubble.com/people/lingthu…

7. Linguistic research needs to be built on transparent data. That includes introspection. Just tell us if a paper uses introspection, rather than making us guess.
for more on linguistic data citation see The Austin Principles: site.uit.no/linguisticsdat…

8. It's cool to endorse the Austin Principles!
docs.google.com/forms/d/1Q-af-…
Even if you're not doing all these things right now, incremental changes in your work can make big changes in the future. We're all still learning and improving!

9. Kazh > Wug
because hugs

10. Semantics is the best thing to study if you want to have the most dinner party conversation content (I've had whole rooms of people disagreeing over where a frown is on your face, if hotdogs are sandwiches and whether a fake gun is still a gun)

11. Linguistics is the study of language, but that also makes it the study of people, which should happen from a place of radical empathy and understanding. I wish I understood this more fully earlier in my linguistics career.

12. clitics are cooler than other affixes, because they tell you cool things about phrases (posessive -s is a clitic because it goes at the end of a whole noun phrase, 'the dog's tail' vs 'the dog from Melbourne's tail'

13. English is a poorer language for not having inclusive/exclusive 'we'. It would save so many awkward social situations for it to be clear if the 'we' in the plan included the person who was being talked to.

14. Linguists would appear to have fewer magic powers if we weren't quietly looking up Etymonline and OED every time someone asked about the etymology of a word. ✨

15. Linguists who don't tell me what language(s) their article focuses on in the abstract/keywords usually provoke a quiet 'tut' from me while I'm reading. Looking at you researchers of dominant languages:

https://twitter.com/superlinguo/status/930531363916210176?s=20

16. Teaching Intro to Linguistics is one of the greatest joys in my working life.

17. Students don't always believe me when I say this, but there are still SO MANY big fundamental questions to be asked in so many branches of linguistics. I'm excited for all the future linguistics who get to do this research.

18. Phonotactics are cool (what sounds go together in a syllable) and often where I have the most fun when starting a new conlang.
For more on syllables: lingthusiasm.com/post/187039068…

19. Evidentiality is one of the coolest parts of grammar. Marking your source of information is just SUCH a human thing to do. I thought it was so interesting I wrote a whole PhD about it. (The Lingthusiasm episode has a good summary: lingthusiasm.com/post/184928796…)

20. I used to think it was good to try and skill up in as many domains as possible (both linguistic and research methods), but now I'm a big fan of working in teams with sympathetic skills. (hi! if you need a gesture person on your next grant!)

21. Having said that, Research Communication is an area that all linguists should skill up in. So few people even know what we do, let alone how cool it is. And these skills help with communicating research in academic contexts.

22. The rates at which language endangerment and death are occurring is as great a catastrophe as ecological destruction. And similarly, it is not inevitable or the fault of the people who are compelled by social and economic circumstances to stop transmitting their language.

23. The implementation of law would be much better if police, lawyers, and judges had at least some linguistics training.

24. I don't give a shit about the reasons you're an arsehole about using someone's correct pronouns.

The best IPA sounds to say: y r ǀ ʃ m ḷ

26. It's wild that anyone learns language at all.

27. Any amount of learning to speak another language is better than monolingualism. Monolingualism is a historical and cultural aberration.

28. I find doing morphology problem sets very soothing. I use many different coloured pens.

29. MRI IPA charts are extremely fucking cool: sail.usc.edu/span/rtmri_ipa…

30. No your dog does not understand English.

31. It's disappointing that there are many subfields of linguistics that don't take academic conference posters seriously as a genre. It's disappointing that there are many conferences and many linguists who don't take academic conference posters seriously.

32. Ethnologue is a failed resource partly because of the lack of citation and transparency, and partly because of the paywall.

33. The lack of funding for language documentation, and lack of support for language groups to self-determine their future is a travesty and a loss for the cultural wealth of humanity.

34. I miss linguistics blogs.

35. Pragmatics helps you understand why comedy is funny. I think this helps me appreciate good comedy more: lingthusiasm.com/post/164303700…

36. Singular 'they' becoming more entrenched in the standard is great and I am Very Here For It. It's so useful.

37. It's ok to like linguistics without doing linguistics yourself. Being a fan of linguistics is cool.

38. It's probably time we stopped using the 'I shot an elephant in my pyjamas' as the default example of ambiguity, when there are literally an infinite number of other sentences we can use

39. Linguistics adjacent: if you can't understand why NIPS changed to #NeuroIPS then you probably lack the insight and reflexivity to be a good researcher.

40. 🎉 Kids 🎉 These 🎉 Days 🎉 Aren't 🎉 Ruining 🎉 Language 🎉
lingthusiasm.com/post/159796192…

41. If you're doing anything with language and AI you need (more) linguists on your team.

42. Linguists, it's acceptable to be paid for your expertise, whether that's writing pop linguistics or consulting. You're an expert! Being paid is a way to build respect for linguistic expertise.

43. 20 minutes is too long for most conference talks.

44. I'll always have sympathy for conference newbies who struggle to nail the time on a talk. I have no sympathy for repeat offenders.

45. It took me too long to learn this, but we don't need to be combative to move the field forward (I blame being trained in the Tibeto-Burman tradition for this failure on my behalf, which is only partially a cop-out)

46. Most transcription and translation software has improved so much over the last decade, but translators and transcribers haven't been put out of work if you want the job done well.

47. Your dislike of the word 'moist' is just a weird meme and will probably make no sense to anyone in 2049.

48. The guy who knows how to rick is way cuter than the dude who spows. Would swipe right on rick.

https://twitter.com/biggleman/status/1211442550801723392?s=20

49. Discussions about UK vs US English are very tedious for me, an Australian English speaker - and the majority of English speakers in the world who do not conform to these standards lingthusiasm.com/post/173999864…

50. I have a working opinion that hyperlinks are evidentials. I mean, just look at how weird things are when you don't include them: superlinguo.com/post/152038837… (I want to turn this into a research paper at some point, but I have a pretty long list)

51. It's a travesty that Wikipedia has better pages on individual classes of Star Wars ships (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tantive_IV) than it does on many of the world's languages (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyabwa_la… as one random example). Join #lingwiki to help change that!

52. You should read Because Internet by @GretchenAMcC because it is full of many great opinions, observations and stories about how the internet is changing language in wonderful ways: gretchenmcculloch.com/book/

@GretchenAMcC 53. There should be MORE #lingcomm. I want more colleagues! I want new voices to reach new audiences with new perspectives. I want more linguistics for more people.

@GretchenAMcC 54. Australia and many colonial nation states have completely failed to acknowledge the peoples and languages that they have inflicted untold horror on. The small handful of counter examples just show us how far we have to go superlinguo.com/post/168403794…

@GretchenAMcC 55. Linguists can still do better at explicitly talking about research methods in our publications (I already opined about data, but the two are closely related) superlinguo.com/post/161559178…

@GretchenAMcC 56. Gesture is part of the linguistic system. A theory of linguistic communication that is mono-modal is missing out, cognitively and culturally superlinguo.com/post/160781021…

@GretchenAMcC 57. Speaking a single language won’t bring about world peace (sorry) lingthusiasm.com/post/154520059…

@GretchenAMcC 58. Classes where students get to draw on their own linguistic experience are always super fun.

@GretchenAMcC 58b (I should probably note they can also sometimes be super heavy and incredibly profound)

@GretchenAMcC 59. Drawing syntax trees by hand is still the best way to draw syntax trees (nb. I do not work in formal syntax)

@GretchenAMcC 60. I'm so glad I work digitally in an age of Unicode. Being able to just mash IPA straight into a document is a pleasure many of us now just take for granted.

@GretchenAMcC 61. "untranslatable" words aren't untranslatable if you provide a translation next to them. lingthusiasm.com/post/171912276…
Pity no one wants a listicle of "words without single lexeme equivalents in my own language"

@GretchenAMcC 62. Emailing Chomsky for lols is not actually lols.

@GretchenAMcC 63. I don't care what your Erdős number is.

@GretchenAMcC 64. Linguistics allows you to approach things like "students don't email the way I like" as "let's explore a genre together and learn something" superlinguo.com/post/165201183…

@GretchenAMcC 65. Linguistics is being held back by the lack of people who are exposed to it before undergrad. More linguistics in high school can only increase the pool of possible cool linguists.

@GretchenAMcC 66. Conferences should be more affordable for the precariously employed (that includes post-docs as well as students). Conferences should just be more accessible in general: blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocial…

@GretchenAMcC 67. Linguists should strive to show people how pervasive linguistic discrimination is, and help to push back.

@GretchenAMcC 68. There should be more puzzling video games that give the same buzz as solving a phonology problem set.

@GretchenAMcC 69. Word of the Year as a concept is overcooked lingthusiasm.com/post/155962380…

@GretchenAMcC 70. Most linguists could save themselves 3 hours of anxiety a year if we all just admitted we mostly delete @linguistlist emails without opening them.

@GretchenAMcC @linguistlist 71. @LangSciPress is doing the most interesting stuff in linguistic academic publishing at the moment. I regret that they were kicking off after I had a publisher for the Yolmo grammar.

@GretchenAMcC @linguistlist @LangSciPress 72. Opinion: Academic publishing is a toxic pyramid scheme
Hope: We move on to new models and leave for-profit publishers behind
Current reality: I need a job, I'm stuck publishing within established models and I hate it

@GretchenAMcC @linguistlist @LangSciPress 73: Linguistic “correctness” is just a lie from Big Grammar to sell more grammars (We also thought this one was important enough to put on a tshirt: redbubble.com/people/lingthu…)

@GretchenAMcC @linguistlist @LangSciPress 74. Understanding language is understanding your everyday life. Phonetics has helped me understand that part of my problem with spelling is unstressed vowel-reduction, and conversation analysis has helped me understand why come conversastions are hard: lingthusiasm.com/post/189762810…

@GretchenAMcC @linguistlist @LangSciPress 75. You don't have to go to uni to learn more about linguistics (this isn't an opinion, it's a fact, but the opinion part is that no one should ever shame you for gaps in your linguistics knowledge)

@GretchenAMcC @linguistlist @LangSciPress 76. There should be a top notch pop linguistics book for every subfield of linguistics (maybe YOU are the one who should write it?)

@GretchenAMcC @linguistlist @LangSciPress 77. Academic articles are fine, but we be less stuck up about citing blog posts and tweets. (I know I'm not the only one to have this opinion on this website recently, but it's an opinion I have anyway)

@GretchenAMcC @linguistlist @LangSciPress 78. If an established colleague gives you academic job advice without acknowledging the job market has changed, they are not good colleagues and you should be wary of their advice.

@GretchenAMcC @linguistlist @LangSciPress 79. Open educational resources make so much sense. It's why we make sure the main episodes of @Lingthusiasm are creative commons and come with transcripts. lingthusiasm.com/teaching

@GretchenAMcC @linguistlist @LangSciPress @lingthusiasm 80. Getting undergrads to engage with descriptive grammars is incredibly rewarding for everyone (fun fact, once some students found an interesting negation feature in Newari that Yolmo also has, I wouldn't have known if it wasn't for those students!)

@GretchenAMcC @linguistlist @LangSciPress @lingthusiasm 81. I don't care if you have word peeve, as long as you acknowledge that it's probably less about the word and more about the people using it:

https://twitter.com/superlinguo/status/1198752956192919553?s=20

@GretchenAMcC @linguistlist @LangSciPress @lingthusiasm 82. Emoji are gesture

(I believed in this opinion so strongly that @GretchenAMcC and I wrote a whole paper on it: superlinguo.com/post/186125689…)

@GretchenAMcC @linguistlist @LangSciPress @lingthusiasm 83. Intro to Linguistics should be fun, if it's not then you're doing it wrong.

@GretchenAMcC @linguistlist @LangSciPress @lingthusiasm 84. Linguistics can learn a lot from watching the Replication Crisis in Psychology.
I wrote a bit about this with @AndreaBerez1 earlier in the year, and have more to say about this with @suzyjstyles next year! superlinguo.com/post/183850345…

@GretchenAMcC @linguistlist @LangSciPress @lingthusiasm @AndreaBerez1 @suzyjstyles 85. Academic linguists should receive more professional credit for outreach and engagement.

@GretchenAMcC @linguistlist @LangSciPress @lingthusiasm @AndreaBerez1 @suzyjstyles 86. Academic linguists should receive more professional credit for creating sharable data. (cite your own data people!)

@GretchenAMcC @linguistlist @LangSciPress @lingthusiasm @AndreaBerez1 @suzyjstyles 87. There is no place in linguistics for racism, sexism, transphobia, audism, or any other form of discrimination. Our work and our community has to be reflexive, intersectional and progressive or we will fail to understand the complexity of language and how it is used.

@GretchenAMcC @linguistlist @LangSciPress @lingthusiasm @AndreaBerez1 @suzyjstyles 88. gavagai > wug

@GretchenAMcC @linguistlist @LangSciPress @lingthusiasm @AndreaBerez1 @suzyjstyles 89. Linguistics tattoos are usually pretty damn great (if I got a tattoo it would probably be a linguistics reference). Please share your good linguistics tattoos.

@GretchenAMcC @linguistlist @LangSciPress @lingthusiasm @AndreaBerez1 @suzyjstyles 90. There should be more linguistics content for primary school and middle grade. There are seven million 'science for babies' in my local bookshop but not one about linguistic diversity. (yes, 7 million, I counted)

@GretchenAMcC @linguistlist @LangSciPress @lingthusiasm @AndreaBerez1 @suzyjstyles 91. Emoji are going to back themselves into a corner just making more object emoji. We'll get far more mileage if we encode a bunch of hand shape gestures - we're working on it! (for the argument behind this see

https://twitter.com/superlinguo/status/1211507641618288640?s=20

)

@GretchenAMcC @linguistlist @LangSciPress @lingthusiasm @AndreaBerez1 @suzyjstyles 92. Being interested in linguistics is for everyone

https://twitter.com/GretchenAMcC/status/1211496625912401920?s=20

@GretchenAMcC @linguistlist @LangSciPress @lingthusiasm @AndreaBerez1 @suzyjstyles 93. It's ok to just take Intro to Linguistics, have fun, and not formally study linguistics again. I will never think less of you. It's what @lingthusiasm producer @clairefgawne did and she's turned out ok.

@GretchenAMcC @linguistlist @LangSciPress @lingthusiasm @AndreaBerez1 @suzyjstyles @clairefgawne 94. Bill Labov is playing the long game in variation studies by encouraging us all to pronounce his name in different ways.

@GretchenAMcC @linguistlist @LangSciPress @lingthusiasm @AndreaBerez1 @suzyjstyles @clairefgawne 95. People talk about Twitter being bad, but I think Linguistics Twitter is pretty great. Lots of people just happily twooting about linguistics (I change who I follow a lot, turn of RTs a lot and have a bunch of mute words, so your mileage may vary)

@GretchenAMcC @linguistlist @LangSciPress @lingthusiasm @AndreaBerez1 @suzyjstyles @clairefgawne 96.
Every
Word
Is
A
Real
Word
lingthusiasm.com/post/179193327…

@GretchenAMcC @linguistlist @LangSciPress @lingthusiasm @AndreaBerez1 @suzyjstyles @clairefgawne 97. Writing a descriptive grammar is one of the best ways to have to consider language at every level of analysis. It's one of the hardest but most rewarding things I've done: openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au/handle/1885/11…

@GretchenAMcC @linguistlist @LangSciPress @lingthusiasm @AndreaBerez1 @suzyjstyles @clairefgawne 98. Life would be a lot easier for a lot of people if they learnt the IPA and could write new words they encounter in a way they could subsequently pronounce lingthusiasm.com/post/159237203…

@GretchenAMcC @linguistlist @LangSciPress @lingthusiasm @AndreaBerez1 @suzyjstyles @clairefgawne 99. auto-correct that automatically changes your swear words is bad linguistic praxis

@GretchenAMcC @linguistlist @LangSciPress @lingthusiasm @AndreaBerez1 @suzyjstyles @clairefgawne 100. Linguistics is for everybody, and should be about everybody. I'm very excited to see the future of the field.

@GretchenAMcC @linguistlist @LangSciPress @lingthusiasm @AndreaBerez1 @suzyjstyles @clairefgawne OK, I made it to 100 numbered opinions, but this twitter account is basically a Linguistics Opinions stream, so stay tuned for more unnumbered opinions.
Otherwise, I do monthly free linguistics opinions on my podcast @lingthusiasm: soundcloud.com/lingthusiasm

@GretchenAMcC @linguistlist @LangSciPress @lingthusiasm @AndreaBerez1 @suzyjstyles @clairefgawne I also have a blog with weekly linguistics posts: superlinguo.com

@GretchenAMcC @linguistlist @LangSciPress @lingthusiasm @AndreaBerez1 @suzyjstyles @clairefgawne Thanks for playing along, I'm really looking forward to heading back to work next week!