Sneak peek of the 2020 LingComm Grantees! (Patreon)

We'll be announcing the 2020 LingComm Grant winners when we launch our main episode (about proto-languages!) on Thursday, but we wanted to give you, our patrons, the good news about these fantastic projects a couple of days early. 

We had over 75 applications from around the world and we'd like to thank all applicants for making the job of deciding extremely difficult! 

Here are the summaries of the 4 grantees, and we’re very excited to share more with you as they develop. They (naturally) don't have much online yet, but feel free to check them out and follow them on social media! 

The Black Language Podcast   

I am creating a podcast to engage members of the African diaspora in dialogue surrounding our linguistic practices. The focus of my project is on the English language variations of Black people, specifically in the Americas and the Caribbean. The podcast will be a space to discuss topics in linguistics (politeness, pronouns, discourse markers, etc) as it relates to English language variations of Black people, as well as language discrimination faced by Black people. It is my goal to make issues in linguistics more accessible to my community. To my knowledge, there aren't projects that expose Black people outside of academia to topics in linguistics. Additionally, while there are a handful of linguistics podcasts, many designate a few episodes to talking about Black English and other minoritized language variations, whereas, I plan to focus solely on English language varieties of Black people. See my 2019 TEDx talk Grammar Skool. 

Nonbinary Linguistics youtube channel   

I am interested in the intersection between linguistics and nonbinary gender identity.  Nonbinary people are generally an understudied population, and we are underrepresented in linguistic research. I want to highlight the research done by, about, and for nonbinary people. This project helps people understand what it means to be nonbinary, and to develop an interest in linguistics. I want to make a series of videos that explore different topics in this area. So far, I made a video about nonbinary gender construction through voice. I use the study as an example to introduce and illustrate concepts, such as the framework of sociolinguistics. Future videos will follow this same format. 

Jazicharnica (Јазичарница) blog 

Our idea is to start a blog in Macedonian that will serve as an accessible introduction to linguistics. As young linguists from Macedonia, we are well aware that there are very few resources on linguistics in our native language, and even less on pop linguistics. We will attract readers by presenting engaging content related to language in general and the Macedonian language in particular. The Macedonian language community has never had a pop linguistics project that mediates between linguists and the general public. Language minorities and multilingualism in the country are frequently misrepresented. Our blog will inform speakers of all languages in the country that there’s no right or wrong when they’re speaking their mother tongue and empower them to think about language outside of the deeply entrenched standardist and prescriptivist limits. We don’t have social media set up yet but you can contact us with ideas or suggestions as jazicharnica@gmail.com. 

War of Words podcast   

We propose the production and publication of the second season of War of Words, a spanish linguistics podcast whose content will be about linguistic topics and related sciences which are connected with their construction for scientific knowledge. In the first season we have shown a general outlook of the discipline through interviews to students and professors of this career. But in this second season we feel the necessity of bringing the theoretical concepts back down to earth and show their applications, not only for a specialized audience but also for linguistic students and other professionals. We are on Facebook and Instagram.