A small piece of good news in the world: the Australian National Dictionary Centre has secured a source of funding, and forced redundancies are not being pursued.

Happy to announce that the La Trobe Working Papers in Linguistics are now hosted on the @latrobeuni.bsky.social library repository, which means there's now a DOI for every article in the collection: doi.org/10.26181/c.8... LTU WPL was published between 1989 and 2001, there's 90 articles available.

The good news is a fresh batch of emoji (fingerprint, harp, barren tree, root veggie, tired face, shovel, splatter) just landed on your device earlier this year!! They’re still new! Go play with them!! 🫩🫆🪾🫜🪉🪏🫟 And before you know it, hairy creature will be entering the group chat. 🫈

Happy Unicode 17.0 Day! Includes seven new emoji that are rolling out on your phones and computers in the coming year: treasure chest, trombone, avalanche, big foot, bulging face, fight cloud, orca @jenniferdaniel.bsky.social has the lowdown: jenniferdaniel.substack.com/p/tomorrows-...

I appreciate life's certainties.

It's my newsletter for the second quarter of 2025, officially caught up! In which I shamelessly take credit for egging on @superlinguo.bsky.social to write a book so I can have an introduction to Gesture research (I'm generously letting you read it too) gretchenmcculloch.com/2025/09/08/a...

Reading into a new field and there are so many words I have to stop and look up and gosh I love learning new things.

Linguistics and Language Podcasts - 2025 list update www.superlinguo.com/post/7940729... Tumblr has a link limit and I'm beginning to think I might be hitting it soon, which might mean a big rethink of what I do with this list for 2026.

Finally! 🤩 Our position piece: Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia: doi.org/10.5281/zeno... We unpick the tech industry’s marketing, hype, & harm; and we argue for safeguarding higher education, critical thinking, expertise, academic freedom, & scientific integrity. 1/n

I loved talking with @superlinguo.bsky.social for this episode! Listen to our chat today and impress your friends this weekend with wild tidbits about the way people gesture! 👊👍👉

A bonus segment from my chat with @grammargirl.bsky.social is now available for all listeners on the GG feed. We chatted all about the different ways people gesture and talk about time (one of my all time favourite topics): podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/t...

LingComm IRL is a new interview series on the LingComm blog where people can share their face-to-face #lingcomm projects. The first post was about doing linguistics with Girl Scouts in the US, the second is about a a high school linguistics club in Estonia: lingcomm.org/2025/08/27/l...

Find out how science was used to spite the Nazis in the latest episode of Let's Learn Everything! "91: Lauren Gawne, Is Pointing Rude, and Gesture Studies" wherever you get podcasts.

Our cohost @superlinguo.bsky.social is on Let's Learn Everything!

👉 Is pointing rude? 👈 I had an extreme amount of fun chatting about gesture with the Let's Learn Everything crew. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/9... We touched on medieval manuscripts, rainbows, archers and Just Dance (absolutely not Dance Dance Revolution)

Tell Lauren about any new linguistics podcasts you're aware of, in any language! And if you're looking for more linguistics to listen to, boy do I have a treat for you:

I'm doing my annual update to my list of linguistics and language podcasts: www.superlinguo.com/post/1584480... If you listen to anything that's not already on the list, please let me know about it! (I wait until something has 5 episode before adding it to the list)

I'm doing my annual update to my list of linguistics and language podcasts: www.superlinguo.com/post/1584480... If you listen to anything that's not already on the list, please let me know about it! (I wait until something has 5 episode before adding it to the list)

Murderbot is one of my all time favourite series - this is a fabulous price and great cause.

the first crash course linguistics video now has a million views, @superlinguo.bsky.social @jessgrieser.com aren't you glad we worked on this in 2020 anyway if you want some fun 10 min linguistics videos to watch you can still do that!

Many cities are host to hundreds of languages that don't show up on official records. In this episode we get enthusiastic about urban multilingualism!

Thanks. Very useful.

Linguists know babies come from the 14th century diminutive of 'babe', but the origin of that word (and hence all babies) is ultimately uncertain.

Lovely to see @dontattempt.bsky.social’s piece on gestures in today’s Herald, featuring my IMMORTAL GESTURES alongside @superlinguo.bsky.social and others: www.smh.com.au/culture/book...

So nice to see references to some of my favourite bits of Gesture: A Slim Guide featured in this weekend's SMH column from @dontattempt.bsky.social www.smh.com.au/culture/book... [paywalled, sorry]

Do you take photos of linguistically interesting signage? Join the club!

I'd love to hear any feedback on this position statement we have developed. It aims to clearly communicate to students our approach to using AI, and the underlying reasons and motivations for our approach. Would you use something like this in your teaching? What changes would you make?

The Linguistics Discipline at La Trobe University have developed a discipline-specific position statement on the role of generative AI in our classrooms. www.superlinguo.com/post/7908973...

I've joined the board of the International Society for Gesture Studies as the organisation's Public Relations Officer. I love sharing Gesture Studies with different audiences, and I get to work with an amazing team, so it's pretty much a dream role! www.gesturestudies.com/board

The lingcomm mailing list now has over 100 members! If you're a #lingcomm practioner who wants to hear about lingcomm conferences, events, journal special issues, and so on, please feel free to subscribe!

The latest round of cuts at ANU include an outrageous plan to close the Australian National Dictionary Centre (ANDC). ANU has forgotten its vital function as the national university. Please sign this petition urging ANU to reconsider and protect the ANDC: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

Blind people gesture (and why that’s kind of a big deal) - original post from 2016, with a new research update from last year. The language you speak influences gesture structure in a way that shows they're deeply linked in the way we learn and use language: www.superlinguo.com/post/7896289...

Is a burrito a sandwich? Is ravioli? What about an ice cream sandwich...? So wait, does any word mean anything anymore? Have we just broken language?? It's okay, linguistics has a solution! In this episode we solve the problem with definitions!

There's now a @lingcomm.bsky.social mailing list! This group is a space to share information about #lingcomm practice. This includes, but is not limited to, conferences, events, journal special issues and other information of interest to lingcomm practitioners. lingcomm.org/2025/07/18/l...

Emoji aren’t ruining language 🚫🗑️🗣️ They’re a natural substitute for gesture 🙌🤌 @superlinguo.bsky.social theconversation.com/emoji-arent-... #emoji #gesture #linguistics #language

As I noted in my petition comments, dictionaries and dictionary centres have a vital civic role to play in pushing back against misinformation, marginalisation and erasure. While a lot of the commentary in the last few days has about the control of language in the US as yet another assault on civil

Happy #WorldEmojiDay! Here's a sneak peek at what's coming in Unicode 17.0 later in the year! blog.unicode.org/2025/07/say-...

The latest round of cuts at ANU include an outrageous plan to close the Australian National Dictionary Centre (ANDC). ANU has forgotten its vital function as the national university. Please sign this petition urging ANU to reconsider and protect the ANDC: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

Linguists, did you know LINGUIST List runs a review section? It's a fun way to get copies of books you want to read, and then have a good and useful reason to read them! (and, uh, yeah, Gesture: A Slim Guide is currently available for review 😅 linguistlist.org/issues/36/20...)

Linguists, did you know LINGUIST List runs a review section? It's a fun way to get copies of books you want to read, and then have a good and useful reason to read them! (and, uh, yeah, Gesture: A Slim Guide is currently available for review 😅 linguistlist.org/issues/36/20...)

What to do with the infiltration of AI across so many platforms: 1. Resist the myth of inevitability 2. Support the humanities!!

Lovely to spend an evening listening to @emilymbender.bsky.social chatting with Kobi Leins about #TheAICon, and the weird technological moment that we find ourselves in.

A Decade of Lingwiki: An informal history 2025 marks ten years of lingwik. I like round numbers, documenting informal histories and lingwiki, and so I wanted to celebrate this anniversary by sharing the parts of the lingwiki story I am familiar with. www.superlinguo.com/post/7870922...

Great podcast and conclusion: Even though Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis might not be necessarily scientifically based, it still invites/provokes people to delve deeper into communication understandings with people of other cultures/language @superlinguo.bsky.social open.spotify.com/episode/0TiM...

Gesture a Slim Guide is available with a 30% discount code (AUFLY30) on the global.oup.com/academic website - for the hardcover (and it looks like it works for the very cute softcover too) global.oup.com/academic/pro...

It finally happened, I've started working on a project where I need to use NVivo. It's been a comedically bad experience so far (I've had to download it on my PC so I can then download a converter, so I can move it to my mac, and the project has additionally been "upgraded" for system updates twice)

From the vault: hear me and @superlinguo.bsky.social talk about why the word for "seal" sounds like "fuck" in so many European languages, shifts in meaning from "sucks" to "rawdogging" and more sweary commentary from the very first Lingthusiasm bonus episode, now updated and free-with-email!

I've noticed 'unhinged' in my own lexicon and around me a lot in the last month or so, but apparently this is something that's been building for a couple of decades and only now hitting my perceptual filter.

What your hands are saying (even when you’re not thinking about it) I had so much fun talking about gesture with @grammargirl.bsky.social, this is the first interview I recorded with someone who had read Gesture: A Slim Guide. You can probably hear my delight: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/w...

New ✨episode✨ with Lauren Gawne @superlinguo.bsky.social about her new book "Gesture: A slim guide" We're talking about all the gestures, but we delve into emoji, and we're even on video! Find it all here, or in your favourite podcatcher www.patreon.com/posts/120-ge... @lingthusiasm.bsky.social