Brynn Quick speaks with Dr. Lauren Gawne, Senior Lecturer at La Trobe University and co-host of the podcast Lingthusiasm with Gretchen McCulloch. Dr. Gawne also runs the generalist linguistics website Superlinguo, and from 2013 to 2021 she wrote ‘By Lingo’, a regular column for The Big Issue (Australia) about the history of everyday words. Dr. Gawne is especially interested in documenting and analysing how people speak and gesture. Her current research focuses on the cross-cultural variation in gesture use.
In this episode, Brynn and Lauren discuss a paper that Lauren wrote in 2024 with co-author Dr. Kensey Cooperrider entitled “Emblems: Meaning at the interface of language and gesture”. Brynn and Lauren talk all about how emblems are different to gestures, cultural uses of emblems, emoji, and how emblems might be changing in the digital age.
Discussions in this episode include references to Lauren’s book Gesture: A Slim Guide, the video episode on gesture that Lingthusiasm made and Gretchen McCulloch’s book Because Internet.
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