White people here’s a thing you can do: absolutely and relentlessly shut down people who use the ok gesture👌as a white power symbol. I research gesture and I want to take a moment to reflect on how the co-opting of this gesture has been particularly pernicious. 1/
This kind of gesture is an ‘emblematic’ gesture: 👍👎✊✋✌️. Emblematics are really useful because they have a stable form (a thumbs up has a thumb, up) & a stable meaning (👍 = yes, 👎 = no) for a particular group of people (✌️ it’s broad, flip it & it’s rude in UK/Aus/NZ) 2/
Dec 29, 2019 • 105 tweets • 60 min read
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.
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…)
Sep 19, 2018 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
Hi folks working on un(der)documented languages - Language Documentation and Description is trialing a new article type: Language Snapshots are 1500 words providing the basic information on a language! Why, you ask? (thread! 1/)
For SO MANY languages this information doesn't exist in an easy-access public location. There is so much information about the world's languages locked away in never-read grant applications. Language Snapshots provides a streamlined process to get this information out there 2/
Aug 19, 2018 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
Recently I spent a day doing job interviews - but for the first time in an academic job, I was part of the panel rather than facing it. Being on the other side was very instructive, here's what I learnt:
The panel really want you to do your best. They don't want to waste 30-45 minutes of your/their time. If they ask a question, it's ok to ask questions to clarify what they're getting at, or how it applies to the job. 2/
