#episode 80

[uyallstars]

[dailyimodna]

[rakuceal]

Our little blorbos (Dorian please come back)

[dailyshowwithjonstewart]

Fuckface von Clownstick Rages at Pope Leo, JD Vance Fumbles Iran Deal and Hungary Ousts Viktor Orban 

Jon dives into the backlash over Fuckface von Clownstick Jesus-ifying himself with AI, the president claiming he was just depicting himself as a “doctor” (treating a bedridden Jon Stewart?), and Fuckface von Clownstick starting an Easter beef with Pope Leo. Plus, JD Vance fails to secure a deal with Iran while ALSO failing to get Hungarian strongman Viktor Orban reelected.

Aziz Abu Sarah and Maoz Inon - The Future Is Peace

“We don’t have to be on opposite sides. We can be on the same side, fighting for justice together, fighting for peace together.” Peace activists and authors of The Future Is Peace, Aziz Abu Sarah and Maoz Inon sit down with Jon to share their inspirational story of family loss and choosing reconciliation over revenge in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Through honest dialogue, visits to Holocaust and Palestinian sites, and confronting painful stories, they spread the message of how empathy can break cycles of violence and war. They also challenge the idea that empathy is naive and share what it was like meeting Pope Francis.

[bardic-irritation]

why tf is Michael always here fucking around in the archives and failing to either help or terrorize anyone??

fear entity more like here entity!?

[snocatapeller]

Posting Goku pictures day (#3)

HES SO SHORT 😭

[lingthusiasm]

Lingthusiasm Episode 80: Word Magic

The magical kind of spell and the written kind of spell are historically linked. This reflects how saying a word can change the state of the world, both in terms of fictional magic spells that set things on fire or make them invisible, and in terms of the real-world linguistic concept of performative utterances, which let us agree to contracts, place bets, establish names, and otherwise alter the fabric of our relationships. 

In this episode, your hosts Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne get enthusiastic about word magic! We talk about how the word magic systems are set up differently in three recent fantasy books we like: Babel by R.F. Kuang, Carry On by Rainbow Rowell, and the Scholomance series by Naomi Novik. We also talk about linguistic performatives: why saying “I do” in a movie doesn’t make you married, aka Felicity Conditions, aka an excellent drag name; performativity as applied to gender (yup, Judith Butler got it from linguistics); the “hereby” test; and how technology changes what counts as a performative.  

Click here for a link to this episode in your podcast player of choice or read the transcript here.

Announcements:  People often ask us to recommend interesting books about linguistics that don't assume prior knowledge of linguistics, so we've come up with a list of 12 books that we personally recommend, including both nonfiction and fiction books with linguistically interesting elements! Get this list of our top 12 linguistics books by signing up for our free email list. Email subscribers get an email once a month when there's a new episode of Lingthusiasm, and this month existing subscribers will see a link to our linguistics books list! If you find this any time in the future, you'll get the books list in the confirmation email after you sign up.  In this month’s bonus episode, we get excited about the results of the 2022 Lingthusiasm Survey. We talk about synesthesia fomo, whether people respond differently to kiki/bouba depending on whether they're aware of them as a meme, complicating the "where is a frown?" map, the plural of emoji, and more! Plus, we mentioned swearing in this episode? Yeah, we’ve got bonus episodes about that too.  Join us on Patreon now to get access to this and 70+ other bonus episodes, as well as access to the Lingthusiasm Discord server where you can chat with other language nerds! Our patrons let us keep making the main episodes free for everyone and we really appreciate every level of support.

Here are the links mentioned in the episode:

Sign up to our newsletter and get our list of 12 linguistically interesting books!

Etymonline entry for ‘spell’

Etymonline entry for ‘glamour’

‘Babel’ by R. F. Kuang on Goodreads

‘Carry On - The Simon Snow series’ by Rainbow Rowell on Goodreads

‘A Deadly Education - The Scholomance Series’ by Naomi Novik on Goodreads

Lingthusiasm episode ‘Cool things about scales and implicature’

Wikipedia entry for ‘performative utterances’

Superlinguo post on ‘I do’ and performatives in weddings

Government of Canada post on ‘hereby’

All Things Linguistics post on performatives

Judith Butler Wikipedia entry

‘Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity’ by Judith Butler on Goodreads

‘Universality and specificity in infant-directed speech: Pitch modifications as a function of infant age and sex in a tonal and non-tonal language’ by C. Kitamura et al

Tambiah 1968 on word magic

Lingthusiasm bonus episodes on swearing:

‘Real swear words vs pseudo swears’

‘The grammar of swearing’

‘What makes a swear word feel sweary? A &⩐#⦫& Liveshow’

You can listen to this episode via Lingthusiasm.com, Soundcloud, RSS, Apple Podcasts/iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also download an mp3 via the Soundcloud page for offline listening.

To receive an email whenever a new episode drops, sign up for the Lingthusiasm mailing list.

You can help keep Lingthusiasm ad-free, get access to bonus content, and more perks by supporting us on Patreon.

Lingthusiasm is on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Mastodon, and Tumblr. Email us at contact [at] lingthusiasm [dot] com

Gretchen is on Twitter as @GretchenAMcC and blogs at All Things Linguistic.

Lauren is on Twitter as @superlinguo and blogs at Superlinguo.

Lingthusiasm is created by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our senior producer is Claire Gawne, our production editor is Sarah Dopierala, and our production assistant is Martha Tsutsui Billins. Our music is ‘Ancient City’ by The Triangles.

This episode of Lingthusiasm is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike license (CC 4.0 BY-NC-SA).

[thegraylushipper]