Bonus 75: 2022 Survey Results - kiki/bouba, synesthesia fomo, and pluralizing emoji (Patreon)

In late 2022, we ran our first Lingthusiasm audience survey! We wanted to get to know you better and try out some linguistic experiments with you, so we got formal ethics approval from La Trobe University in case we want to use any of these findings in a research paper later. Thank you to the over 1000 people who filled it out! We have ethics approval for 3 years, so if you missed it this time around, keep an eye out in the future!

In this bonus episode, Lauren and Gretchen get excited about the results of the 2022 Lingthusiasm Survey. First, some demographics: we had respondents from over 50 countries, in which Canada and Australia are tied (phew!), and a mix of genders, in which about 1 in 5 respondents are not a binary gender (including nonbinary, agender, and genderqueer; from responses to the "other" category it looks like we should add genderfluid for next year!). Also about 1 in 5 people answered some version of "all of them??" to the "what languages are you interested in?" question, which was honestly unfair of us to make you pick. We also 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!

Read the transcript here. 

Here are the links mentioned in this episode:

• Lingthusiasm episode 'What words sound spiky across languages? Interview with Suzy Styles'
• 'When Does Maluma/Takete Fail? Two Key Failures and a Meta-Analysis Suggest That Phonology and Phonotactics Matter' by Suszy Style and Lauren Gawne
• Lingthusiasm episode 'Emoji are Gesture Because Language'
• 'Emblems: Gestures at the interface' by Lauren Gawne and Kensy Cooperrider
• Lingthusiasm episode 'Speaking Canadian and Australian English in a British-American binary' for more on frowning
• Wikipedia entry for Chrząszcz, the Polish tongue twister

You can listen to this episode on this page, via the Patreon RSS or download the mp3. A transcript of this episode is available as a Google Doc. Lingthusiasm is also on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and Mastodon. Email us at contact [at] lingthusiasm [dot] com or chat to us on the Patreon page. Gretchen is on Twitter as @GretchenAMcC and blogs at All Things Linguistic. Lauren is on Twitter as @superlinguo and blogs at Superlinguo.

To chat about this episode and other lingthusiastic topics with your fellow linguistics fans, join us on the Lingthusiasm Discord server.

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.