Lightning Talks is a new type of session making its LingComm debut at LingComm25! In these sessions, a lineup of lingcommers share the highlights and hard lessons from their various lingcomm projects. Through five-minute talks, they offer a glimpse into their work and pass on key insights—what to embrace and what to steer clear of. Sessions 1 and 2 feature experiences with lingcomm in popular media, the use of “new tools” like ChatGPT, creative approaches in education contexts, and more!
Read on and get excited for the pearls or pitfalls you’ll be hearing about at LingComm25’s Lightning Talks sessions! 🌟
Lightning Talks, Session 1
(LingComm25 Day 1, Hour 1)
Eatymology: Viral Storytelling with Linguistics and Food
Sophia Smith Galer
“Over the last year, my series on “Eatymology”- sharing etymologies of food words via historic recipes – has had more than 10 million views on TikTok and Instagram, with one video winning me more than 140,000 followers in the space of one month. I’d like to deliver a talk on how I have been able to combine traditional video storytelling with new niches to develop novel ideas for linguistic communication online, as well as highlight endangered and minority languages.”
My Experiences Making a Video for Wired
Gareth Roberts
“I have been talking about language to students and other linguists since I started grad school two decades ago. Sometimes, however, I also talk to people outside the field! Recently this led to me being invited to do a video for Wired, which people seem to have enjoyed. In my lightning talk I’ll say a little about my experiences doing this and share some thoughts I took away with me.”
How to Use Video Games to Get Players Interested in Linguistics
Pascal Wagner
“The goal of languageatplay.de is to lightheartedly communicate ground-level linguistic concepts by explaining them with video games. A concept that has proven popular for me is to find usage of a linguistic concept in a game and explain it within the game’s world so players can connect their hobby with something they have learned. I want to briefly show in this talk how it can work to get video game players interested in languages and linguistics by using this small-scale connection between a basic concept and a fun experience.”
Substack – The Good and the Bad
Heddwen Newton
“Unlike other newsletter platforms, Substack already has a community of readers, plus a recommendation system that’s like a built-in growth hack. Unlike social media sites like Bluesky or Instagram, Substack attracts an audience willing to set aside time to read and engage with longer-form content. Compared to video platforms like YouTube or TikTok, Substack is less stressful to maintain. Finally, Substack lets you make the leap from free content to paid subscriptions if you want to monetize. Of course, it isn’t perfect. There was that controversy about its content moderation, and it keeps a lot of creators’ revenue for itself. My own experience is that it has been slow to grow, and I am terrified of monetizing, but I’m still happy with my choice. I will share my own experience, and links to other LingCommers on Substack, and a callout to all recommend each other.”
How to Pass the Bar As a Linguist
Marina Beccard
“A linguist and a biologist walked into a bar… and had to keep everyone entertained for 60 minutes of SciComm! This was me in November 2024 during my talk at the science pub festival “Beerology” organized by the “Live Science” association in Dresden, Germany. When I chose my topic, I thought it would be easy to make my research relatable. After all, most people have heard of “Agathe Bauer” songs (misheard song lyrics like “I’ve got the power”) or Freudian slips. However, explaining the psycholinguistics behind slips of the tongue and slips of the ear, and weaving an interesting story out of it took me a lot of trial and error, which I’d like to share with the LingComm community.”
LingComm in the Theatre
Heike Pichler
“Using autobiographical interview data from adults aged 70+, we co-developed a research-based play about older adults’ language use and lived experiences. The verbatim performance, where actors re-tell research participants’ stories in their real words and accents, offers a real-time illustration of language variation in the older adult community. Storytelling scenes are interpolated with audience-directed monologues in which actors advocate the linguistic legitimacy of the staged characters’ linguistics choices. The theatre programme provides supporting explanations. By illustrating, validating and explaining later-life language variation in this way, the play enhances audiences’ understanding of linguistic diversity and promotes sociolinguistic equality.”
Weirdly, How Not To Lingcomm
Adam Schembri
“In 2019, I wrote a piece on the English as a ‘weird’ language, drawing on a survey of data from the World Atlas of Language Structures which drew on a range of structural characteristics from 239 spoken languages. This survey ranked English in the top 15% of ‘weirdest’ languages, having relatively more unusual features compared to the other languages in the survey. In this presentation, I will discuss my aims in writing this piece, how wildly successful it was in reaching new audiences, but also the dangers of engagement bait and the criticism I received from academic colleagues on social media.”
Lightning Talks, Session 2
(LingComm25 Day 3, Hour 3)
Sharing Your Expertise with Respect
Laura Wagner & Cecile McKee
“Many scientists approach the general public from a deficit perspective: The audience lacks knowledge and the scientist will provide it. A more effective way of engaging with the public uses their Funds of Knowledge. This approach respects what people bring with them to a conversation and encourages scientists to connect with those funds of knowledge for more meaningful interactions. We will model conversations that do – and do not – effectively consider a listener’s funds of knowledge. We will also suggest a way to begin assessing variations in funds of knowledge.”
Short-Form Video Linguistics: Balancing Accuracy and Engagement when Presenting Linguistic Facts and Studies
Dan Mirea
“I make content about linguistics, psychology and their intersection on TikTok and Instagram (@danniesbrain) to an audience of ~400k people. Some of my videos feature established facts or factoids (e.g. “some languages do not have a specific possessive verb”), while others cover recent exciting studies (“all languages convey information at the same rate”). I will talk about challenges and tricks I’ve learned to balance accuracy of information with ‘engagingness’ of delivery across the two fields of study and the two types of content.”
From Students to Students: Ethics of Language Technology Explained to School Children by University Students
Malvina Nissim
“As final project of “Ethical Aspects in Language Technology”, third year bachelor course in Information Science, my students, relying on the contents we discuss in class, must give a presentation to high school children on… well, Ethical Aspects in Language Technology. This format (I experimented with it twice) has proven amazing for both my university students and the high school students. For the former, trying to convey what they have learnt in class to a younger, less technically skilled, but extremely interested audience (and primary users of that technology) increased both their knowledge and their sense of responsibility, and prepared them better for conversations outside of the classroom. For the latter, the interaction with people who are just a tad older has proven key to attention, engagement, and knowledge, together with increased awareness. A win for all!”
Learning from Your Mistakes: How Impact Evaluation Can Help
Sharon Unsworth
“Evaluating your LingComm activity can be a scary prospect: what happens if you’re not actually having the impact you intended? Over the past couple of years, we have carried out numerous ‘impact measurements’ in various contexts. Luckily, quite a few showed that we had the intended impact, but there have also been cases where this wasn’t the case. Sometimes, this was a problem with our instrument, but in other cases we simply didn’t obtain the effect we’d hoped for. In this talk, I’ll show how these ‘failures’ can be very informative rather than reason to panic!”
Language and Linguistics Day for High Schoolers
Frances Blanchette
“This lightning talk highlights an annual event we hold for high school students in Central Pennsylvania. Students and their teachers come to the Penn State campus for a day of hands-on workshops and activities on topics in basic linguistics and beyond, including sociolinguistics and linguistic diversity, pragmatics and artificial intelligence, prosody–the “music of language”, and more. The day culminates in a linguistics competition using puzzles adapted from the North American Computational Linguistics Olympiad. We present examples of workshops and activities and discuss some of the lessons we’ve learned over six years of organizing this annual event.” Project and presentation co-authored by Deborah Morton.
Neuroccino: Science Communication Through Interactive Discussions and Podcasts
Marcela Ovando Tellez
“Neuroccino is a dynamic journal club where PhD students, early-career postdocs and senior researchers engage in weekly discussions on cutting-edge neuroscience papers, fostering critical thinking and leadership skills. Now chaired by female scientists with various academic seniority, these sessions mirror plenary management and promote inclusive science communication. We host discussions on Zoom, accessible to all, and stream live on YouTube. Additionally, we produce digestible “sips” of Neuroccino—summarized in simple language for social media and podcast platforms—broadening public engagement. Many of our topics focus on language research, aligning with one of our team’s expertise. Neuroccino is part of the Clinical Neuroanatomy Seminars (CNSeminars), connecting over 3.3k neuroscience enthusiasts worldwide.” Project organized and created by Stephanie Forkel. Talk co-created with Eva Guzmán Chacón.
ChatGPT As a Weapon of Mass Communication!
Ricardo Joseh Lima
“We’ve used ChatGPT to help us create products to communicate sociolinguistic ideas. We will tell how this experience was, including its pitfalls and its potentials. Examples will be shown, such as the series “Poetic Linguist”, in which 60 poems were created in two afternoons, using literary styles as different as Classicism and Postmodernism. Also, two child tales were adapted to include themes such as variation and linguistic prejudice. We’ll discuss, then, the next steps with this kind of work and its implications for linguistics communication.”
LingComm Collaborations Between Academics and Non-Academics
Gretchen McCulloch
“The academic and media/business worlds bring different strengths to linguistics communication. For example, academics have access to journal articles, grants, and academic networks, whereas working outside academia provides more opportunities to develop communication skills, business models, and contacts across an array of industries. As the non-academic cohost of Lingthusiasm, product of a longstanding collaboration with Lauren Gawne of La Trobe University, I highlight how our combined perspectives have made for a more successful podcast than both of us being either academic or non-academic, and provide pointers on how to foster these kinds of working relationships.”
Are you excited yet? We are! Head over to Eventbrite to register. You won’t want to miss any part of the programme at LingComm25!
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