LingFest is a program of online linguistics events aimed at a general audience, from Friday, April 11 to Friday, April 18, 2025. Just as a fringe festival compiles a list of independently-organised events on a particular theme, LingFest is an way for linguistics communicators to organise an online event, a way for fans to meet fellow linguistics enthusiasts (use #LingFest25), and a handy way to find out about more lingcommers who you might want to start following!
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Events
Performing Sociolinguistic Variation
‘From You to Me’ – a verbatim theatre production
Fri, April 11, 2025
14-16:00 UTC (15-17:00 BST, UTC +1)
Check your local time here.
In this live watch-party and Q&A session, Heike Pichler will first screen a video of a live performance of ‘From You to Me’ – a verbatim theatre production developed to illustrate, validate and explain language variation to non-linguist theatre audiences. Afterwards, she will open the floor to attendee questions about the conception, development and reception of the play, and its value as an entertaining and engaging sociolinguistic engagement initiative.
The watch-party will last about 70 minutes, followed by the 50-minute Q&A session beginning at 4:10pm BST. Attendees who can only attend the Q&A session can watch the video in advance here (> Performance > Video).
This is a free event that will be streamed live. You must register for the event using this link.
Linguistics Careercast live podcast
Saturday, April 12, 2025
17-18:30 UTC (10:00 PDT, UTC -7)
Check your local time here.
On this special live edition of the Linguistics Careercast, host Laurel Sutton (Co-founder, Catchword Branding, and host of Linguistics Careercast) will talk with a panel of linguists about how artificial intelligence (especially genAI) is impacting linguistics as a field. They’ll discuss topics like AI bias, challenges in training data curation, and implications of GenAI on online language data collection. Join us to hear linguists sharing the conversations they’re having behind the scenes about the future of this changing technical landscape.
Panellists:
- Aubrie Amstutz, Responsible AI Research Scientist at Grid Dynamics
- Alicia Beckford Wassink, Director of the Sociolinguistics Laboratory and Professor of Linguistics at the University of Washington
- Katie Swindler, Content Management for Generative AI at Mother Tongue AI
This is a free event held on Zoom. The live podcast episode will be recorded and later posted to the Linguistics Careerlaunch YouTube channel. Please register via Eventbrite here to access the live show—please use the code CAREERLING to access tickets. (Still a free event, but hopefully the hidden tickets will keep the ticket-stealing bots at bay!)
Talklin NG Podcast
Sound Check – Unpacking accents and everything in between
Friday, April 18, 2025
11:00 UTC (12:00 WAT, UTC +1)
Check your local time here.
In this special episode of the Talklin NG Podcast, we explore the fascinating world of accents and their impact on interpersonal communication. We discuss accents—whether they’re good or bad—and how they differ from dialects. We also talk about accent-shaming, the challenges of mastering a second language, and the stigma often attached to accents. As a bonus, we dive into a trending video in the Nigerian social media space about diction classes and the concept of “wannabeism” in second language acquisition. Join us for an engaging conversation about language, identity, and how we perceive the way people speak!
This is a free event, streaming on YouTube Premiere.
Join here: https://youtu.be/-7YGiylWZa4
Because Language Live Show
Sometimes It Feels Like I’m the Only One Trying to Fix English Around Here (live for LingFest25)
Sunday, April 20, 2025
7:00 UTC (15:00 AWST, UTC +8)
Check your local time here.
For this wild LingFest25 edition of Because Language, we are cramming all the patrons we can fit into a room, and solving tough English usage questions in the time-honoured way: by voting. Because that’s how language works!
- If you repeat a process “twice”, how many times did you do it?
- Can one thing be more “perfect” than another thing?
- If a conference changes cities “every other year”, is it A B A B, or A A B B?
Information will appear at patreon.com/becauselangpod. All patrons are invited, including patrons at the free level.
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