“There’s so much you can learn from linguistics when you apply it to the business of naming”

Deborah Ball has been working in naming, branding, content creation, marketing, and communications for more than 10 years in the UK and the US. Her special focus has been brand naming. She has a Master’s in Linguistics from the University of Oxford and an MBA from Durham University Business School. Over the years, she has immersed herself in the study of naming, including the grammar of brand names, to understand how meaning is more fully shaped when phonetic forms are placed in context.

Deborah Ball on LinkedIn

“Exploring the landscape of proper names and their grammatical characteristics to understand how brand names fit in” ANS Presentation on YouTube

NAMES, the journal of the American Name Society

Topics include:

– naming

If you’d like to support this show, we’ve got a Patreon!

The post Episode #82: Deborah Ball first appeared on Linguistics Careercast.

“We take so much of communication for granted – until we can’t communicate”

Emelia BensonMeyer is a speech-language pathologist specializing in evaluation and treatment of voice, airway, and swallowing disorders. She has an undergraduate degree in linguistics and a Master’s in Communicative Sciences and Disorders. Her background in linguistics has equipped her to critically consider and be mindful of the disparities in the profession of speech-language pathology as they apply to the culturally and linguistically diverse populations who are served.

Emelia BensonMeyer on LinkedIn

ASHA (American Speech-Language-Hearing Association)

Topics include:

– speech pathology

If you’d like to support this show, we’ve got a Patreon!

The post Episode #81: Emelia BensonMeyer first appeared on Linguistics Careercast.

“I created Minority Languaging as a place to communicate, to share, and to debate”

Eukene Franco-Landa is sociolinguist with a Ph.D. from the University of Miami who works at the intersection of language, identity, and legitimacy, especially in minoritized and bilingual communities, especially Basque, of which she is a speaker. Her dissertation explores how linguistic features become tied to perceptions of authenticity and nativeness. She is the founder of Minority Languaging, an Instagram-based platform that connects linguistic minorities so they can reflect and learn about minority languages, cultures, and history.

Eukene Franco-Landa on LinkedIn

Minority Languaging on Instagram

Minority Languaging website

Topics include:

– Basque

The post Episode #80: Eukene Franco-Landa first appeared on Linguistics Careercast.

This episode is an audio version of a virtual panel held online via the Linguistic Society of America, on August 16, 2025. This is part two of our conversation on GenAI and linguistics, this time focusing on Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna, Ph.D.’s recent book “The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech’s Hype and Create the Future We Want.” I am joined again by our amazing panel of linguists to talk about the problems of anthropomorphizing AI, how AI magnifies inequalities affecting minoritized people, and what linguists can do to push back against the constant AI hype.

Panelists:

Part 1 of the discussion is here

Topics include

If you’d like to support this show, we’ve got a Patreon!

The post Episode #79: The AI Con Discussion Panel (Live) first appeared on Linguistics Careercast.

This episode is an audio version of a virtual panel held at the Linguistics Career Launch in the summer of 2024, titled “User Experience Research for Linguists”. The moderator is Darrell Penta, and the two panelists are Josh Martin and Midam Kim. In this session, the panelists explore their journeys into UX research and what prepared them for the kind of work they do now. They share insights into the variety of UX careers, relevant experience in academia, and how to approach your job search.

Darrell Penta on LinkedIn

YouTube video of this panel

Topics discussed include:

The post Episode #78: User Experience Research for Linguists (LCL Audio) first appeared on Linguistics Careercast.

“Don’t be afraid to reach for the job you want”

Erin Kuester has a Master’s degree in Applied Linguistics from Ohio University, and is a copywriter and content creator for service businesses, as well as a writing mentor and editor. She is also an experienced instructional designer. She is very active on Instagram and Tiktok, and at her own website.

Erin Kuester on LinkedIn

Topics include:

– instructional design

The post Episode #77: Erin Kuester first appeared on Linguistics Careercast.

This episode is an audio version of a virtual panel held at the Linguistics Career Launch in the summer of 2024, titled “Societal Impacts and the Ethical Use of AI”. The moderator is Aubrie Amstutz, and the two panelists are Patricia McDonough and Alfonso Sánchez-Moya. In this session the panelists reflect on the ethical impacts of AI and how qualitative researchers and linguists alike can address these issues in tech industries. We explore and recognize how linguistics is an integral component of the human evaluation of AI.

Aubrie Amstutz on LinkedIn

YouTube video of this panel

Resources doc mentioned in this panel (readings, orgs, people)

Topics discussed include:

The post Episode #76: Societal Impacts and the Ethical Use of AI (LCL Audio) first appeared on Linguistics Careercast.

Live Linguistics Careercast coming your way on August 16! Join us for part two of our conversation on GenAI and linguistics, this time focusing on Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna, Ph.D.’s recent book “The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech’s Hype and Create the Future We Want.” And we’ll follow the taping with a networking event in Gather!

Host Laurel Sutton will be joined again by Alicia Beckford Wassink, Katie Swindler, and Aubrie Amstutz to continue the conversation from our live episode at LingFest25, which we released as a podcast on April 22, 2025.

The 90 minute panel will take place in Zoom and will include a Q&A portion. After the panel, we’ll move to Gather for an hour of networking. We invite attendees to mix and mingle, and to have space to process the great conversation.

PANEL DISCUSSION/LIVE PODCAST: 10:00 – 11:30 AM Pacific Time (US and Canada)

Tickets are $5 for LSA members, and $7 for the general public. Registration can be found on Linguistic Society of America (LSA)’s website:

https://www.lsadc.org/ev_calendar_day.asp?date=8/16/2025&eventid=106&mc_cid=d47d2d569b

Big thanks to LSA for sponsoring this event!

Haven’t read the book yet? Pick up a copy or stop by your local bookstore!

The post Live Linguistics Careeercast August 16 2025 – The AI Con Discussion first appeared on Linguistics Careercast.

“Software makes me money, but linguistics makes me happy”

Logan Kearsley is an experienced software engineer with a history in the education, solar power, and entertainment industries. He earned a BS in Computer Science and an MA in Linguistics, both from Brigham Young University, and is currently employed as a software engineer at Idaho National Laboratory. He blogs about conlangs and xenolinguistics, and he has a YouTube channel where he reads Beowulf.

Logan Kearsley on LinkedIn

Logan Kearsley’s blog

Logan Kearsley on YouTube (Daily Beowulf)

A Hybrid Approach to Cross-Linguistic Tokenization: Morphology with Statistics

Topics include:

– computational morphology

The post Episode #75: Logan Kearsley first appeared on Linguistics Careercast.

This episode is an audio version of a virtual panel held at the Linguistics Career Launch in the summer of 2024, titled “Content Creation – A Path to Alternative Careers”. The presenter is Erin Kuester, who has a Master’s degree in Applied Linguistics from Ohio University, and is a copywriter and content creator for women and queer-owned businesses.

This workshop presents content creation and social media usage as skills, and how these skills can be leveraged as an alternative career or to boost an alternative career. This is especially useful for anyone who is interested in starting their own business, freelancing (whether full-time or part-time), or becoming a content creator in general. In it, you’ll learn about finding and understanding an audience, types of content, carving out a niche, platform-specific strategies, using content to market a business, monetization, and alternative careers.

Erin Kuester on LinkedIn

Erin’s “Vent” on TikTok

Deck used in this presentation

TikToks in the video:

Topics discussed include

– alternative careers

This episode of the podcast is generously sponsored by Amazon Science.

The post Episode #74: Content Creation – A Path to Alternative Careers (LCL Audio) first appeared on Linguistics Careercast.