Words for Granted

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Episodes

Date Title & Description Contributors
2024-01-02

  Lessons on Language with the Grammar Girl (Mignon Fogerty)

In this episode, Ray chats with Mignon Fogerty, aka the Grammar Girl. "Good grammar" may seem like the epitome of prescriptivism, but when it comes to her "Quick and Dirty Tips", Mignon leans on a more ideologically neutral approach. Might you even cal...
2023-07-08

  The Marvels of Translation: Interview with Keith Khan-Harris

What can we learn about the nature of translation by reading a warning message in hundreds of different languages? In this episode, Keith Kahn-Harris discusses his latest book, The Babel Message, in which the mundane, multilingual warning message found...
2023-05-20

  The Power (and Omnipresence) of Rhetoric: Interview with Guy Doza

Rhetoric has a bad reputation. We tend to think of it as a linguistic tool used by polticians and marketing execs to maipulate the masses. While this stereotype is true, rhetoric is more than just snake oil––we use it in apologies, negotions, and love ...
2023-04-27

  A Defense of "Bad" English: Interview with Valerie Fridland

Instead of criticizing deviations from Standard English as "wrong," what if we celebrated them as expressive lingusitic innovations? In this conversation with Valerie, we take a look at some of the quirky features of English that our language teachers ...
2023-03-19

  Learning New Languages: Interview with Rob Paterson

What goes into building a language learning curriculum? How do designers choose features within a language learing app? Are some approaches to language learning better than others, or is it up to the indiviudal? In this episode, I explore these questio...
2023-01-22

  Combatting Bias in Linguistic AI: Interview with Courtney Napoles

As Lead of Language Research at Grammarly, Courtney Napoles is building systems to better help people from around the world communicate. In this episode, we discuss things such as the fundamentals of linguistic machine learning and how AI learns lingui...
2022-12-20

  Origins of Place Names: Interview with Duncan Madden

Place names are not random––behind the name of every country is a story of how it came to be. From stories of invasion and rebellion to the fantastical and mundane, in his latest book, author Duncan Madden takes us on a journey across the world in his ...
2022-11-07

  Grammatical Gender (Interview with Danny Bate)

In this interview with linguist Danny Bate, we go deep on all things gender––grammatical gender, that is. Why do some languages have gender while others don't? Where does gender come from? What is the function of gender?  To get 50% off your first mon...
2022-09-14

  Episode 109: Trivia

Trivia refers to obscure or useless information, but this definition is a far cry from the word's etymology. Trivia, or tri-via, literally means "three roads," and in Ancient Roman times, it referred to three-way intersections. These heavily trafficked...
2022-08-02

  African American English: Interview w/ Tracey Weldon

In this episode, I speak with Tracey Weldon, linguist and board advisor on the Oxford Dictionary of African American English project. We discuss the origins of AAE, the role of code switching within its speech community, AAE's contributions to mainstre...