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Lauren Gawne

@superlinguo.bsky.social

4.6K followers 380 following 8.4K posts

Linguist Senior Lecturer, La Trobe University gesture/grammar/✨emoji/#lingcomm Podcast: @lingthusiasm Masto: [email protected] Blog: superlinguo.com She/her(/they)

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Lauren Gawne @superlinguo.bsky.social · May 5

Gesture a Slim Guide is available with a 30% discount code (AUFLY30) on the global.oup.com/academic website - for the hardcover (and it looks like it works for the very cute softcover too)

global.oup.com/academic/pro...

A bookshelf filled with various books about gesture, with a prominent book in the center titled 'Gesture: A Slim Guide' by Lauren Gawne. The book cover features a black line illustration of a person with abstract representation of eight different hands doing gestures.

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Reposted by Lauren Gawne

Gretchen McCulloch @gretchenmcc.bsky.social · 6d

Wow, the latest edition of @superlinguo.bsky.social's Linguistics and Language Podcast list has over 100 different shows! I've been watching this list grow since it was just a dozen or so podcasts, so great to see! www.superlinguo.com/post/1584480...

Linguistics and Language Podcasts

Looking for podcasts about language and linguistics? Here’s a comprehensive list with descriptions! I’ve also mentioned if shows have transcripts. If there are any I missed, let me know! If you woul...

www.superlinguo.com

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Lauren Gawne @superlinguo.bsky.social · 6d

Aww yeah, love the running dolls. I've seen talks from this team where they show the stimulus being made and there's just this suitcase full of dolls 😂

Lauren Gawne @superlinguo.bsky.social · 6d

Happiest of book birthdays!

Reposted by Lauren Gawne

Linguistic Discovery @linguisticdiscovery.com · 8d

Where did we get the letters of the alphabet from?

And why does English use them so strangely?

Here’s an excerpt from the new book, “Why Q needs U: A history of our letters and how we use them”, which takes you on a linguistic odyssey through the history of the alphabet:

Where does the alphabet come from? And why does English use it so strangely?

A new book takes us on a linguistic odyssey through the history of the alphabet

linguisticdiscovery.com

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Lauren Gawne @superlinguo.bsky.social · 12d

All I can think of with that packaging is margarine🌻

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Reposted by Lauren Gawne

Gerald Roche @geraldroche.bsky.social · 14d

I'm helping to set up a community of practice to end the bullying of autistic students in Australian schools. If you'd like to participate, please get in touch using the form below. Further details in the thread following.
forms.gle/RFPJag4wffdq...

Expression of Interest: Community of Practice to Prevent Bullying of Autistic Students

Please use this form to express your interest in joining a community of practice to help end the bullying of Autistic students in Australia. There are 11 questions on this form. 10 are compulsory a...

forms.gle

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Lauren Gawne @superlinguo.bsky.social · 18d

a green background with the word girls in yellow

Alt: a green background with the word girls in yellow

media.tenor.com

Lauren Gawne @superlinguo.bsky.social · 20d

A small piece of good news in the world: the Australian National Dictionary Centre has secured a source of funding, and forced redundancies are not being pursued.

Australian National Dictionary Centre @ozworders.bsky.social · 20d

We were very pleased to get the news today that the Australian National Dictionary Centre will be saved, thanks to an anonymous donation and the halt on involuntary redundancies under the Renew ANU plan. We thank everyone for their generous support through these difficult times.

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Lauren Gawne @superlinguo.bsky.social · 20d

Absolutely everyone on that panel works have 100% agreed with you

Lauren Gawne @superlinguo.bsky.social · 21d

Happy to announce that the La Trobe Working Papers in Linguistics are now hosted on the @latrobeuni.bsky.social library repository, which means there's now a DOI for every article in the collection:

doi.org/10.26181/c.8...

LTU WPL was published between 1989 and 2001, there's 90 articles available.

Working Papers in Linguistics

The La Trobe University Working Papers in Linguistics journal is an archive for papers, honours theses and similar works. The journal was published from 1988-2001. Cultural Sensitivity Some material...

doi.org

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Lauren Gawne @superlinguo.bsky.social · 23d

I endorse this nefarious scheme for my own self-interested reasons.

Lauren Gawne @superlinguo.bsky.social · 23d

Politely request you update your bsky profile to: "on the tasteful end of the Baroque scale"

Lauren Gawne @superlinguo.bsky.social · 23d

Congratulations! What a beautiful space!

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Lauren Gawne @superlinguo.bsky.social · 23d

It was fun having someone turn the tables on you!

Lauren Gawne @superlinguo.bsky.social · 23d

I mean, this type of detective work is why you're the editor of the Routledge Handbook of Routledge Handbooks.

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Reposted by Lauren Gawne

🌶️ ennifer 🌒aniel @jenniferdaniel.bsky.social · 28d

The good news is a fresh batch of emoji (fingerprint, harp, barren tree, root veggie, tired face, shovel, splatter) just landed on your device earlier this year!! They’re still new! Go play with them!! 🫩🫆🪾🫜🪉🪏🫟

And before you know it, hairy creature will be entering the group chat. 🫈

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Lauren Gawne @superlinguo.bsky.social · 29d

I'm really excited for trombone too!

Lauren Gawne @superlinguo.bsky.social · 29d

THIS is a wasted loot crate opportunity

Lauren Gawne @superlinguo.bsky.social · 29d

Happy Unicode 17.0 Day!

Includes seven new emoji that are rolling out on your phones and computers in the coming year:

treasure chest, trombone, avalanche, big foot, bulging face, fight cloud, orca

@jenniferdaniel.bsky.social has the lowdown:
jenniferdaniel.substack.com/p/tomorrows-...

treasure chest, trombone, avalanche, bigfoot, bulging face, bust up cloud, orca

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Lauren Gawne @superlinguo.bsky.social · Sep 9

I appreciate life's certainties.

A pack of Assorted Cream biscuits with 4 of the 5 orange creams left

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Reposted by Lauren Gawne

Gretchen McCulloch @gretchenmcc.bsky.social · Sep 8

It's my newsletter for the second quarter of 2025, officially caught up!

In which I shamelessly take credit for egging on @superlinguo.bsky.social to write a book so I can have an introduction to Gesture research (I'm generously letting you read it too)
gretchenmcculloch.com/2025/09/08/a...

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Lauren Gawne @superlinguo.bsky.social · Sep 7

Reading into a new field and there are so many words I have to stop and look up and gosh I love learning new things.

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Lauren Gawne @superlinguo.bsky.social · Sep 7

Linguistics and Language Podcasts - 2025 list update

www.superlinguo.com/post/7940729...

Tumblr has a link limit and I'm beginning to think I might be hitting it soon, which might mean a big rethink of what I do with this list for 2026.

Linguistics and Language Podcasts

superlinguo: Looking for podcasts about language and linguistics? Here’s a comprehensive list with descriptions! I’ve also mentioned if shows have transcripts. If there are any I missed, let me k...

www.superlinguo.com

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Reposted by Lauren Gawne

Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · Sep 6

Finally! 🤩 Our position piece: Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia:
doi.org/10.5281/zeno...

We unpick the tech industry’s marketing, hype, & harm; and we argue for safeguarding higher education, critical
thinking, expertise, academic freedom, & scientific integrity.
1/n

Abstract: Under the banner of progress, products have been uncritically adopted or
even imposed on users — in past centuries with tobacco and combustion engines, and in
the 21st with social media. For these collective blunders, we now regret our involvement or
apathy as scientists, and society struggles to put the genie back in the bottle. Currently, we
are similarly entangled with artificial intelligence (AI) technology. For example, software updates are rolled out seamlessly and non-consensually, Microsoft Office is bundled with chatbots, and we, our students, and our employers have had no say, as it is not
considered a valid position to reject AI technologies in our teaching and research. This
is why in June 2025, we co-authored an Open Letter calling on our employers to reverse
and rethink their stance on uncritically adopting AI technologies. In this position piece,
we expound on why universities must take their role seriously toa) counter the technology
industry’s marketing, hype, and harm; and to b) safeguard higher education, critical
thinking, expertise, academic freedom, and scientific integrity. We include pointers to
relevant work to further inform our colleagues.

Figure 1. A cartoon set theoretic view on various terms (see Table 1) used when discussing the superset AI
(black outline, hatched background): LLMs are in orange; ANNs are in magenta; generative models are
in blue; and finally, chatbots are in green. Where these intersect, the colours reflect that, e.g. generative adversarial network (GAN) and Boltzmann machine (BM) models are in the purple subset because they are
both generative and ANNs. In the case of proprietary closed source models, e.g. OpenAI’s ChatGPT and
Apple’s Siri, we cannot verify their implementation and so academics can only make educated guesses (cf.
Dingemanse 2025). Undefined terms used above: BERT (Devlin et al. 2019); AlexNet (Krizhevsky et al.
2017); A.L.I.C.E. (Wallace 2009); ELIZA (Weizenbaum 1966); Jabberwacky (Twist 2003); linear discriminant analysis (LDA); quadratic discriminant analysis (QDA).

Table 1. Below some of the typical terminological disarray is untangled. Importantly, none of these terms
are orthogonal nor do they exclusively pick out the types of products we may wish to critique or proscribe.

Protecting the Ecosystem of Human Knowledge: Five Principles

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Reposted by Lauren Gawne

Mignon Fogarty @grammargirl.bsky.social · Sep 5

I loved talking with @superlinguo.bsky.social for this episode!

Listen to our chat today and impress your friends this weekend with wild tidbits about the way people gesture! 👊👍👉

Lauren Gawne @superlinguo.bsky.social · Sep 5

A bonus segment from my chat with @grammargirl.bsky.social is now available for all listeners on the GG feed. We chatted all about the different ways people gesture and talk about time (one of my all time favourite topics):
podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/t...

The surprising ways we gesture about time and space, with Lauren Gawne

Podcast Episode · Grammar Girl Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing · 09/04/2025 · 23m

podcasts.apple.com

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