Popular linguistics

"Popular Linguistics" is an idea for a magazine presented in a plenary address to the 2007 LSA meeting by Mark Liberman (PDF of talk slides, see page 34), originally as "Linguistics Today". The name isn't terribly important at this point.

This page is set up to organise thoughts about how to go about maintaining such a magazine. I'd really like to see something like this happen, so I'm soliciting ideas. Feel free to do anything you want to this page, as long as it's constructive :)

Ideas for headlines

So articles, ads, etc in this thing will have to be things that

• appeal to the general public
• are accessible to the general public
• will also, in principle, be interesting to linguists (who can go find the academic papers that certain articles might be based on for more information)
• stand alone
• are based on interviews, an academic paper or two, or other primary sources, but which are not academic papers themselves; see #Sources
• are colourful :)

Basics

• A relatively short introduction to linguistics and sources for more information in the beginning of each issue (individual articles will still have to provide some background information to make it interesting for the general reader).

Sources

• There are countless articles in newspapers, bigger popular scientific magazines (such as Discover, and Popular Science), and all over the internet in people's blogs

Linguistics flubs in popular culture

• "Hyrkanian demi-vowels"
• "Asian languages and glottal stops on Law & Order"

Advertisements

• An overview of summer language and linguistics, with information on:
  • what's taught at each programme
  • total cost of attending each programme
  • where to go / who to contact for more information
• Information on graduate and undergraduate linguistics and linguistics-related programmes which are accepting applications