Tomayto Tomahto

People often talk about language as "a window" into many things. Language can teach us about the mind, the brain, history, etc. But language is also a medium for discrimination, ridicule, oppression, unequal labor, and various other insidious practices. Linguistic oppression, as Kelly Elizabeth Wright tells us, isn't really about language, it's about how practices of oppression exploit language in their conquests. Kelly E. Wright uses language to study and address forms of oppression, labor, racism, sexism, ableism, and the ideologies of what makes something "standard." This episode will address the question of sociolinguistic labor: why it exists, why it persists, and how to address it. We discuss how language is used as a barrier, a tool for discrimination and inclusion, a proxy for race and gender and class, among other things. If nothing else, this episode will show how studying language empowers you to make a difference in the world and highlight systemic issues. For the full, unedited version of this episode, head to youtube. Kelly E. Wright Website Dr. Wright's Public Scholarship Housing Policy and Linguistic Profiling Hearing Rachel Jeantel You Met My Ambassador Shifting: The Double Lives of Black Women in America Sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology of US Latinos

There’s a lot that I can say about Emily M. Bender, but I think that a philosophy professor of mine said it best when he described her as the “cutting edge of technology and AI and linguistics and ethics.” Obviously some of her cutting-edge-ness concomitantly stems from the cutting-edge-ness of large language models,  deep fakes, and 'artificial intelligence' inventions. But out of all the computational linguists, Emily M. Bender stands out to me because she's made the problem of unregulated AI pertinent and understandable to everyone—linguists, computer scientists, climate activists, lawyers, everyone. Her message about LLMs and other AI inventions is clear: we have to do something, and soon, preferably yesterday. Because there is great incentive for AI to remain unregulated at the cost of our democracy, our right to privacy and ownership over our data, our planet, and (as she calls it) our "information ecosystem."   This episode answers all the questions you've had about 'AI' technology: how is the language of an LLM intrinsically different from the language of a human? What are the legal implications of un-watermarked synthetic media? What's going on with deep fakes? How can linguists use their knowledge to effect change? And throughout it all, you'll hear Emily's wisdom and empathy radiating through her wealth of knowledge. Emily's Website Collection of links about the 'Stochastic Parrots' paper and the subsequent firing of multiple coauthors On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big? 🦜 Baldwin: Understanding the link between joint attention and language George Carlin NBC News: Deepfake porn Patricia Kuhl TedTalk: The Linguistic Genius of Babies Language and Linguistics on Trial: Hearing Rachel Jeantel Abeba Birhane ⁠Wesley Leonard ⁠

To study language is to study something uniquely human. To study language throughout time and history is to study the evolution of something uniquely human, to determine the variables and constants which shape human existence. Historical linguistics remains one of my favorite subfields of linguistics because it’s so much more than just one subfield. To study language diachronically (through time), historical linguists can examine many different aspects of language at once. We can wonder about the social conditions that might cause semantic change, or think about biological evolution as a catalyst for sound change. Brian Joseph (OSU) has been in the field of linguistics since the late 70s. He’s written books on everything from syntax universals, to morphology, to clitics. He’s written papers on things as specific and niche as phonesthemes, to broader concepts like the connection between historical linguistics and sociolinguistics, or the problematic of “change” and historiography. On top of all that, he was the President of the Linguistic Society of America in 2019. Needless to say, I was humbled by the chance to speak with him. This conversation encompasses questions of why and how language changes. Whether through physical, cognitive, or social means, language responds to human evolution accordingly, leaving all linguistic utterances as evidence of both our history and our future. After all, what is "synchrony" if not a contradictory quality nearly impossible to qualify? Brian Joseph's Website Presidential Address: What is Time?

Picture this: it's early January, 2024, and hundreds upon hundreds of linguists have gathered for the Linguistic Society of America (LSA)'s annual meeting in New York City. With so many language nerds in one place, I couldn't help but interview as many people as I could about their favorite linguistics fact. This episode contains tantalizing tidbits of information about everything from onomastics, non-concatenative morphology, and the McGurk effect—to historical events effecting language change, and statistics about sociolinguistic judgements. There are allusions to the debate of creole uniformitarianism vs exceptionalism, as well as examples of the Great Vowel Shift and the ongoing discussion of language's encapsulation of culture. From etymology facts, to tricky syntactic constructions, to cross-linguistic phonological observations, to the entrenchment of misogyny through language, you will be entranced and entertained for the entire episode. The voices showcased here represent a diverse field; linguists hail from all backgrounds and subfields, and they work in industries like academia, healthcare, technology, journalism, and media. Who knew linguistics was such a versatile discipline that can totally and most definitely aid you in a lucrative career where you'll never have to worry about "tenure"?? Several interviews were filmed and posted to Nicole Holliday's tiktok page, accessible here. Thank you to all who participated in this episode. Being a linguist is one of the greatest privileges I have ever known. I feel immeasurably lucky to be able to share that title with all of you. Voices heard throughout the episode, in the order they appear: Daniel Ginsberg, Director of Strategic Initiatives at the American Anthropological Association Nicole Holliday, Professor at Pomona College Heidi Harley, Professor at University of Arizona Canaan Breiss, Professor at USC Caitl Light, Academic Advisor at Loyola University Chicago Kirby Conrod, Professor at Swarthmore College Allison Casar, PhD candidate at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Joshua Dees, PhD candidate at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Walt Wolfram, Professor at North Carolina State University Gretchen McCulloch, Internet Linguist and host of Lingthusiasm: a podcast that's enthusiastic about linguistics Kelly Elizabeth Wright, Post-doc at Virginia Tech Jordan Douglas Tavani, PhD candidate at UCSB Rachel Burdin, Professor at UNH Gabby Poplawski, Undergraduate student at Pomona College Jamaal Muwwakkil, Post-doc at UCLA Michel DeGraff, Professor at MIT Aaliyah Bullen, Undergraduate student at Swarthmore College Paul Reed, Professor at University of Alabama Alex Johnston, Professor at Georgetown and Consultant Brad Davidson, Director of Medical Anthropology at Havas Health and You; Penny Eckert, Professor Emeritas at Stanford Ceci Cutler, Professor at CUNY Graduate Center and Lehman College Valerie Fridland, Author of Like, Literally, Dude, and Professor at University of Nevada, Reno Mike Stern, PhD student at Yale Katie Russel, PhD candidate at UC Berkeley Bruno Ferenc Segedin, PhD student at Brown Alexa Little, Learning Experience Designer at Veeam Software Emily Bender, Professor at University of Washington Ben Zimmer, Columnist for the Wall Street Journal Aiden Malanoski, PhD candidate at CUNY Graduate Center Jon Stevenson, PhD candidate at University of York Byron Ahn, Professor at Princeton and me, Talia Sherman, Undergraduate student at Brown

Steven Pinker, the Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, has studied the mind through a myriad of lenses, including language. Throughout Steve's career, he’s published books and articles on topics such as language acquisition, rationality, human nature, trends of global violence, writing and style, and language structure. He went from academic, to public intellectual—in 2004, he was named one of Time Magazine's 100 most influential people in the world today. And inevitably, the algorithms suggested I listen to his speeches. As a younger linguist, I spent many an hour watching Youtube videos of Steve Pinker. Through his speeches, informational videos, interviews, and TedTalks, I learned how to use language as a means to learn about humanity and cognition. I began to see language as a product of evolution and culture and society: language exists because of human existence, but also in light of human proclivities, as a tool to advance our relationships and inventions. So naturally I spiraled into jittery nervousness when he responded to my email. But as it turns out, Steve is a really nice guy. He’s brilliant, he’s famous, he’s certainly well-read, but no amount of accolades, I’ve come to realize, can darken Steve’s blinding elucidations or his ability to educate any individual, regardless of their background. This is the genius of Steve Pinker: he’s able to educate the general public about all sorts of topics without diluting the significance or complexity of his message. It was an honor to interview him not only because of his impact, but because of his passion for interdisciplinary theories and inquiry.  After explaining the trajectory of his career, Steve talks about his research on language and language acquisition, including his work on pragmatics and their social and political implications—why do humans say things like “wanna come up for Netflix and chill?”? If language is an evolutionary adaptation, how can we use that insight to better understand the evolving purpose of language? What makes language so essential to the human experience? And what’s Steve working on right now?  Steve's Website What our language habits reveal Linguistics, Style and Writing in the 21st Century Linguistics as a Window to Understanding the Brain  The natural history of song The 4th law of behavioral genetics

Although Cory Shain (currently at MIT, soon to be at Stanford) studies language, therefore making him a “linguist,” his research could easily be classified as belonging to a number of other disciplines. To understand the computations responsible for language processing, he engages heavily with computer science. To study the functional organization and architecture of language in the brain, he uses methods of neuroscience. To round out the complexities of his research, he pulls from the theories and insights of cognitive science and psychology. Thus, Cory Shain actively questions the boundaries between language and other parts of human communication and cognition by remaining curious about how language works, not just what language is.  In this episode we first dig into the section of his research that’s dedicated to understanding the problem of difficulty in language processing. What mediates the difficulty of processing cost: a sentence's predictability or its frequency?  Then, we come to a truly awe-some question: how and why do we define what counts as language? Is language solely the processes that a specific network or cortex carries out? Can language encompass our intuitions into what someone else might be thinking? Why is there a common assumption that a language-specific network exists, and how does such an assumption influence our understanding of both the brain and of language? No matter your previous understanding of language processing, the language network, or theory of mind, you will finish this episode having learnt something new about language, the brain, dependency locality, the importance of similar results across studies with varied methods, or perhaps the overlap between industry and academia. Cory Shain's publications: No evidence of TOM reasoning in human language network Word frequency and predictability dissociate in naturalistic reading Robust Effects of Working Memory Demand during Naturalistic Language Comprehension in Language-Selective Cortex Eve Federenko Language and thought are not the same thing: evidence from neuroimaging and neurological patients Broca-Wernicke Theories: A Historical Perspective Rebecca Saxes Ben Deen

I've heard it said that the best way to concretize a friendship is to interview your friend on a podcast. So that's what this episode is: a conversation between myself and my brilliant friend, Joseph Rager. Despite studying both Linguistics and Romance Languages and Literatures at Harvard during undergrad, Joseph is now pursuing a doctorate in Comparative Literature at UC Berkeley. How does his knowledge of linguistic methods and theory inform his analysis of literature and poetry? If literature is truly language, how do we study it scientifically? How can literature represent our spoken language, with all its indexicalities and quirks? Joseph and I discuss all these questions and more. We talk about his thesis, which investigated the role of Spanglish and code switching in poetry and poetic analysis. We dive into the politics of aestheticizing of sound, of translanguaging, of linguistics itself; this episode is a reminder that language can and has been used as a means of exploitation and colonization. We express wonder and even frustration at the many barriers to education, the existence of genre, the way that language mediates our world, our conception of self, and our identity presentation. We inevitably gab about literary theory (Derrida! Barthes! Structuralism!), his favorite books, and the "brutal" world of academia—all this encapsulated in an episode that could be mistaken for a conversation between two people on a cross country flight at 3am (which, by the way, we've had). In all teary-eyed-ness, I would like to thank Joseph for being so thoughtful, so intelligent, so kind. He's brought so much joy into my life and he will soon light up yours. I believe we can all learn from his experience and example: literature is fun, and it can be inaccessible, but at the end of the day, anything can be analyzed as a literary object. And it is the methods that matter, not the content of what you read. So start analyzing and questioning, and you might end up in academia. Which can't be such a bad place to be if people like Joseph are in it, right? Roland Barthes' The Death of the Author Unspeakable Sentences by Ann Banfield Tato Laviera Nicolás Guillén Negra, Si Tú Supieras: song based on works of Guillén, heard throughout episode

It’s rare to meet your academic inspiration incarnate, and even rarer to take a class with them, so I was enthralled, overjoyed, and sweating my pores out when I got the chance to take Professor Nicole Holliday’s Language and Society class. This past semester, I witnessed all that Professor Holliday brings to linguistics: superb teaching, endless energy and enthusiasm, an insatiable love of learning, and innovative research methods. Her experiments seek truth and action: from politicians, to ASR, to digital voice assistants, to biracial individuals, she studies prosody and suprasegmentals, aiming to answer one question: what does it mean to sound black? Throughout this episode, Professor Holliday and I discuss the impact of her research and findings; we talk about how AI can discriminate and reinforce linguistic bias against people of marginalized identities. We parse apart theories of dialect evolution and the development of African American English, and we examine the intersections between different subfields of linguistics. Finally, Professor Holliday explains how studying language will help you make sense of the world, humans, and human invention. This is an episode for sociolinguistic nerds, avid, prospective, or otherwise.  Dr. Nicole Holliday, an Assistant Professor of Linguistics at Pomona College, is a recipient of the LSA's Early Career Award. Check out the links below. . . Professor Holliday's Website Professor Holliday's Google Scholar ⁠Language-specific Effects on Automatic Speech Recognition Errors for World Englishes⁠ Holliday and Dan Villarreal--"How Black does Obama sound?": ⁠Intonational Variation and Incrementality in Listener Judgments of Ethnicity⁠ Perception in Black and White: Effects of Intonational Variables and Filtering Conditions on Sociolinguistic Judgments, With Implications for ASR ⁠Siri, you’ve changed! Acoustic properties and racialized judgments of voice assistants⁠ Professor Holliday's Twitter Joey Stanley, BYU Rachel Weisler: U of Oregon Rob Podesva: Phonation type as a stylistic variable: the use of falsetto in constructing a persona John Rickford

What can the bilingual brain accomplish more efficiently than the monolingual brain? Megan Zirnstein, a cognitive science professor at Pomona College, researches bilingual cognition, a topic of particular interest throughout this episode. In addition to discussing Professor Zirnstein's research, we talk about the field of cognitive science and bilingualism research: where it's headed, where it came from, and why it's such a multidisciplinary and slightly amorphous corner of academia. And of course, in a move that will surprise no one, we talk about the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, linguistic determinism, linguistic relativity, and the causal relationship between the emotional resonance of a language and decision making. Key topics and concepts mentioned in this episode include: psycholinguistic literature (eg, Alan Green's adaptive control hypothesis), Lera Boroditsky, the eugenicist history of bilingualism research, ways to confront and address bias in research methods, and the fundamental differences between cognitive scientists and linguistics. Check out the links below to watch Lera Boroditsky, read Prof Z's research, and much more! Prof Z's research: Google Scholar -- All publications Bilingualism reveals fundamental variation in language processing Cognitive Control Ability Mediates Prediction Costs in Monolinguals and Bilinguals On The Dynamics of Lexical Access In Two or More Languages Literature/TedTalks mentioned throughout episode: Lera Boroditsky: "How language shapes the way we think" Adaptive Control Hypothesis On Bilingual Advantage Language control in bilinguals: The adaptive control hypothesis Behavioral evidence for differences in emotional resonance during processing first and second language

We did it, Joe: Tomayto Tomahto has been in existence for over a year. That's one year, 12 episodes, and way too many instances of editing audio into the wee hours of the morning. But it's all been worth it. In this episode, I'm joined by Professor Donna Jo Napoli from Swarthmore College—an absolute legend in the field of linguistics. She's an author, a mathematician, a linguist, a teacher, a dancer, and she's so, so passionate about the power of language. We talk about the intersection between math and linguistics, how biomechanics effect the lexicon of sign languages, the physical and mental properties of articulatory ease, the various social meanings of prosody, automatic processing in relation to linguistic judgments, and the joys of studying language scientifically. We touch on the difference between quantitative and qualitative linguistic studies, Donna Jo's reverence for teaching, and most importantly, how studying linguistics "frees your brain." Because it does. It will. Donna Jo's wikipedia page, articles, TedTalk, teaching profile, personal website, and more are linked below. REACTIVE EFFORT AS A FACTOR THAT SHAPES SIGN LANGUAGE LEXICONSProduction, perception, and communicative goals of American newscaster speech Spotlight Interview with Linguistic Society of America Professor Napoli: Swarthmore profile TedTalk List of all Publications Personal website Wikipedia Page

What if I told you that it was ChatGPT, not I, who wrote each and every one of these scintillating episode descriptions? Well, you'd probably laugh uncontrollably at my hilarious joke. Robots can't use the word "scintillating" correctly—or can they? Whether we like it or not, linguistically conscious AI are becoming more and more prevalent. In light of the decline in actual writing, I thought it would be prudent to interview the brilliant, funny, talented computer scientist and computational linguist, Ellie Pavlick. In addition to teaching at Brown University, Professor Pavlick is a research scientist at Google AI. We talk about natural language processing, pre-trained models, the importance of training models to both understand language form (syntax) and language meaning (semantics), and all that's still unknown about the role of language in neural nets. Noam Chomsky gets a shoutout (how could he not?), as does ChatGPT, prejudice in pre-trained models, and a few different philosophical thoughts on how teaching and writing and learning will evolve in the wake of excellent natural language processing models. Curious about Ellie Pavlick's research? Check out the links below. Questions, comments, or suggestions for the podcast? Email tomaytotomahtopodcast@gmail.com   Ellie Pavlick's teaching profile  Google Research Profile  Measuring and Reducing Gendered Correlations in Pre-trained Models  What Do Models of Natural Language "Understanding" Actually Understand  AND does not mean OR: Using Formal Languages to Study Language Models’ Representations  Colorless green ideas...

This is a truly interdisciplinary episode. Pressor Susan Blum (Notre Dame) is an anthropologist, a cultural, linguistical,  anthropologist. We talk about the intersections between linguistics, politics, legislation, food, semiotics, literary theory, pedagogy, as well as such icons as Saussure and CS Pierce. In other other words, this is a truly teleological episode, one that will teach you why and how linguistics applies to other disciplines and to the world around us. Listen, go read Professor Blum's books and articles, and then check out some of the resources below!  Courtney Cazden Elise Berman  The Early Catastrophe by Hart and Risley The Semiotic Perspectives of Peirce and Saussure: A Brief Comparative Study Twenty Years after “Meaningful Differences,” It's Time to Reframe the “Deficit” Debate about the Importance of Children's Early Language Experience  What is Semiotics? Ferdinand de Saussure’s Linguistic Revolution Peirce’s Theory of Signs Selling the Language Gap   Chinese language and social justice Tasty Talk, Expressive Food: An Introduction to The Semiotics of Food-and-Language

Ladies an gentleman...the director of Brown's Language and Thought Lab: Professor Roman Feiman!! Have you ever wondered about the intersection between psychology and linguistics? Well, wonder no more. Listen to this episode and learn about everything from psycholinguistics, to child language acquisition, to language and thought; semantics and pragmatics; descriptions vs. grammar when mapping words to the world; philosophy of the mind; marketing techniques enhanced by an understanding of linguistics; and language as an abstract object, as the most fascinating thing to ever exist. All that, plus an excellent defense for why to study linguistics in the first place. If you're looking to learn from a genius with a PhD, I recommend this episode. If you're interested in learning about interdisciplinary research and findings, I also recommend this episode. Really, this episode is for anyone who values curiosity. In the end, there are very few tidy answers to the colossal questions Professor Feiman asks everyday, or to the slightly less colossal questions I asked him. But that's the point. Check out the links below... Roman Feiman's Research Profile Mapping Words to the World: Adults Prioritize Grammar, but Children Prioritize Descriptions Reference and Definite Descriptions (Keith Donnellan)

It is a truth universally acknowledged that Professor Toni Cook is a genius. That's why I'm taking her Intro to Linguistics class at Pomona College. In this episode, Prof Cook and I tackle a lot: language as a tool for social control, the importance of understanding historical linguistics, intensive vs diminutive verb reduplication, various prestigious characteristics of dialects, linguistic colonial legacies, the relationship between world-view and language, and feminist semantics. Will you be bored? No. But you will learn a lot. You will guffaw. You might even tear up. If all goes according to plan, you'll stop, drop, and become a linguist. While you're at it, go ahead and investigate the research and publications of Prof Cook... Prosodic evidence for syntactic phrasing in Zulu  The inclusion of prefixal material in Zulu reduplication  Adjectival Reduplication in Zulu  Questions? Confessions? Email tomaytotomahtopodcast@gmail.com 

AAAaand I'm back! I'm back with a banger of an episode and a smashing success of a guest: the fabulous Robin Danzak, a professor of Communication Studies at Emerson College. Join me as she takes us on the journey (pun intended) of her career. We'll talk about language and community, bilingualism, antiracist pedagogy, and so much more. We'll travel to Italy, Florida, and New England; we'll touch on power, identity, storytelling, politics, and the importance of education. Professor Danzak is one of the most passionate and curious people I've ever had the privilege to speak with, so settle in and enjoy the next 30 min. And after you listen, check out the resources below... April Baker Bell  We Been Knowin: Toward an Antiracist Language & Literacy Education  Dismantling anti-black linguistic racism in English language arts classrooms: Toward an anti-racist black language pedagogy Barbara Arfe Elaine Silliman Bilingual spelling patterns in middle school: it is more than transfer Ofelia García  Translanguaging  Clarifying translanguaging and deconstructing named languages: A perspective from linguistics Francois Grosjean  Neurolinguists, beware! The bilingual is not two monolinguals in one person

What's the relationship between language and power? Why are dialects a gatekeeper? What exactly is sociolinguistics? Join me and Professor Heather Littlefield as we discuss the relationships between language and gender, race, ethnicity, economic opportunities, and power. Any study/paper/TedTalk/article/person she mentioned in the interview is linked below. Special thanks to Molly Herman, Lindsay Villone, Eleza Kort, and, of course, Heather Littlefield.  Ted talk by John Baugh  Further work by John Baugh  Leaders with Lower Voices Vershawn Young  "Linguistic prejudice is one of the last widely socially acceptable ways to discriminate" Bell Hooks on the Language of Power 

How do languages evolve? Why do dialects emerge and then fade? What happens if a language dies out? What does culture have to do with language? In this episode, Professor Luke Gorton answers all these questions and more. So please, sit back, relax, and welcome into your ears...an actual, real, linguist!  Special thanks to Luke Gorton, Eleza Kort, and Jim Kernohan.  If you have any questions, please feel free to email Prof Gorton at lagorton@unm.edu. 

Welcome to episode 4, where my interviewees will answer question three: what sorts of privileges and/or limitations does your accent give you? Join me on this emotional journey as I, along with several fully grown adults, unpack our frustration over the fact that people don't talk about accents and dialects more often. Stay tuned for future episodes where I interview college professors! 

Historic milestone alert: this is the 3rd episode of Tomayto Tomahto. I know most of you must be squealing in excitement at the very thought of this podcast's longevity, and so I'll ask you to kindly pipe down so you can fully appreciate this episode in all its glory. In this tertiary episode, you'll hear from the interviewees as they answer question two: what does your accent mean to you and what does it signify about you? All that, plus three gripping commercials centered around the theme of style and types of clothing. The next 17 minutes will be full of laughter, analytical tension, and questionable audio quality. Enjoy! 

Welcome back to Tomayto Tomahto! For episode two, my interviewees answer question one: How do you define your accent and/or dialect?  Special thanks to Phil Robson, John Lee, Sarah Jacobs, Kate Hamblet, Mark Connolly, Jeanine Bell, Patrice Jean-Baptiste, and Marisela Funes.