This is a transcript for Lingthusiasm episode ‘What makes for beautiful writing, scientifically speaking - Interview with Julie Sedivy’. It’s been lightly edited for readability. Listen to the episode here or wherever you get your podcasts. Links to studies mentioned and further reading can be found on the episode show notes page.

[Music]

Lauren: Welcome to Lingthusiasm, a podcast that’s enthusiastic about linguistics! I’m Lauren Gawne.

Gretchen: I’m Gretchen McCulloch. Today, we’re getting enthusiastic about the science of beautiful writing with Dr. Julie Sedivy, who’s a psycholinguist based in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, and the author of Memory Speaks and Linguaphile.

Lauren: But first, this episode originally aired on Patreon a year and a half ago. We heard from so many listeners who wanted to share it with their writing groups or with academics trying to make the transition from scientific writing to literary writing. We thought we’d make it available to everyone as part of our annual unlocking of a bonus episode in the main feed.

Gretchen: Which also gives us and everyone on the production team a mini break that keeps making the show sustainable for us.

Lauren: If you’d like to listen to over 100 other more Lingthusiasm episodes that are bonuses like this one, and maybe you’d like to suggest which one we should unlock next year, join us on Patreon.

Gretchen: We’ve also been posting more and more titbits for everyone who follows us on Patreon – both free and paid – including unlocking our very first bonus episode about swearing with added swear-y commentary.

Lauren: We’ve recently unlocked a bonus chat with Helen Zaltzman of The Allusionist about linguistics podcasting.

Gretchen: Or if you’re someone who’s always got a lot of podcasts on the back burner and doesn’t really need more listening material, but you’d just like to help us keep existing long into the future, there’s a new option on Patreon where you can purchase a community gift membership for us to give out to one of your fellow lingthusiasts who’d like to listen to the bonus episodes and can’t afford it right now.

Lauren: We’ve already given out seven of these community-gifted memberships thanks to the generosity of few people who found this feature before we had even figured out what we were doing with it.

Gretchen: If anyone else is inclined to join them, I think that was really a post that resonated in this economy. It helps us keep going at the same time.

Lauren: Stay subscribed to emails from Lingthusiasm on Patreon to hear about any future community gift memberships that become available.

Gretchen: Go to patreon.com/lingthusiasm for memberships for yourself, for a specific person you know, or for these new community gift memberships.

[Music]

Gretchen: Hello, Julie.

Julie: Hi, Gretchen. I am fulfilling a longtime fantasy of appearing on Lingthusiasm.

Gretchen: It’s so fun to have you since you’re already a listener.

Julie: Indeed.

Gretchen: Before we get into stuff about your book, Linguaphile, and your other book, Memory Speaks, let’s start with a question that we ask all of our guests, which is, “How did you get into linguistics?”

Julie: I stumbled into it. I had started university as an English major. I had always thought that I would be a writer from the time I was very small. I was reading through course descriptions, came across this thing called “linguistics,” and it made reference to “grammar” and other stuff that didn’t sound overly interesting to me, but I thought, “If I’m gonna be a writer, I probably need to know some of this stuff.” I took the class, and from the get-go, I was utterly mesmerised. I think my experience was a little bit like – imagine you’re a kid, and you love bugs. You’ve spent your life watching bugs and being fascinated by them, but you don’t realise you can be a scientist of bugs and that there is a science of bugs. Then suddenly you encounter this, you know, at the age of 18. That’s a little bit what it was like for me just to realise that you can study this scientifically, systematically. Of course, one of the things that comes out when you start looking at linguistics is the realisation that there’s so much about language that’s going on below the surface of conscious awareness that is not really easy to just introspect about unless you have the right tools.

Gretchen: You’d had a lot of language experiences before discovering linguistics as a named phenomenon.

Julie: I did. And I think that’s what gave me an orientation and an attunement to language and a desire to use it as a medium as a writer. I was lucky enough to have been dragged from one linguistic environment to another. I think my parents would probably not frame it that way. It was quite a difficult time for them to be bouncing around from one country to another. I was born in what was then Czechoslovakia, and then we lived in Austria for a while, and Italy, and back and forth a bit, and then finally landed in Montreal where I learned French as my fourth language. Finally, English as a fifth language in kindergarten for the first time.

Gretchen: Wow. I really enjoyed the Montreal aspects of your writing because I also live in Montreal. Hearing some of the things that were, like, before I lived here, before I was around in here, and the way that English and French interplay in that – and in your childhood brain.

Julie: Yeah, no, it was a real lesson to me in observing some of the sociolinguistic aspects of language because it was very clear at the time – so this would’ve been the early-to-mid ’70s when we first arrived – that French – I mean, it was the language spoken by the majority, but it was not the language of official business, and it was not the respected language.

Keep reading

Lingthusiasm Episode 117: What makes for beautiful writing, scientifically speaking - Interview with Julie Sedivy

Sometimes, a phrase seems to leap off the page and lodge into your mind, crisp and shining like a precious jewel. Other times, you’re reading something and it just won’t stick, your eyes wandering away no matter how hard you try.

In this episode, your host Gretchen McCulloch gets enthusiastic about what psycholinguistics can tell us about creative writing, with Julie Sedivy, who’s a psycholinguist based in Calgary, Alberta, Canada and the author of two general-audience linguistics books, Memory Speaks and Linguaphile. We talk about moving from the style of scientific writing to literary writing by writing a lot of unpublished poetry to develop her aesthetic sense, how studying linguistics for a writer is like studying anatomy for a sculptor or colour theory for a painter, and how you could set up an eyetracking study to help writers figure out which sentences make their readers slow down. We also do a small linguistic experiment on air using the following words, which you can play along with: luggage, liminal, withstand, tremulous, pulchritude, zoo.

Note that this episode originally aired as Bonus 96: What makes for beautiful writing, scientifically speaking, and we’ve added an updated announcements section to the top. We’re excited to share one of our favourite bonus episodes from Patreon with a broader audience, while at the same time giving everyone who works on the show a bit of a break.

Click here for a link to this episode in your podcast player of choice or read the transcript here.

Announcements:

In this month’s bonus episode we get enthusiastic about linguistics podcasting with Helen Zaltzman, host of The Allusionist podcast! We talk about being nearly teenaged in the world of language podcasting (Lingthusiasm turns 10 later this year, and The Allusionist turned 10 last year!) and alternative careers that we had on the way to becoming podcasters (did you know Helen once worked for a reality TV show?). We also talk about breaking the kiki/bouba test, the importance of publishing “failed” experiments, the Bender Rule and the Holliday Rule (both previous Lingthusiasm guests!).

Note that this particular bonus episode is available to everyone who follows us at any level (including free!) on Patreon, so welcome if you’re joining us as an Allusionist fan (or a broke lingthusiasm fan tbh, we’re trying to give you some treats while also trying to keep the show running!!).

Speaking of which…a few people found Patreon’s new community gifting feature before we even knew what to do with it so we’ve been able to give out 7 community-supported memberships so far to people who follow us for free on Patreon. If anyone else is feeling comfortably off in this economy and wants to help both us and your fellow lingthusiasts, we’d be happy to do this again! Follow us as a free member to get announcements whenever we might have gifted memberships to distribute!

Join us on Patreon now to get access to this and 110+ other bonus episodes. You’ll also get access to the Lingthusiasm Discord server where you can chat with other language nerds. Plus: we’ve been posting more and more fun things for free followers on Patreon, such as helping us decide what bonus episode to unlock next and this exciting new announcement about zines!

Here are the links mentioned in the episode:

• Original Patreon bonus episode ‘What makes for beautiful writing, scientifically speaking’
• Julie Sedivy’s website
• Julie Sedivy on Bluesky
• Julie Sedivy on Twitter
• 'Julie Sedivy on Amplifying the Pleasure of Language’ on Lit Hub
• Excerpt from 'Linguaphile: A Life of Language Love’
• Lingthusiasm episode ’What it means for a language to be official’
• 'Linguaphile: A Life of Language Love’ by Julie Sedivy on Goodreads
• 'Memory Speaks: On Losing and Reclaiming Language and Self’ by Julie Sedivy on Goodreads

You can listen to this episode via Lingthusiasm.com, Soundcloud, RSS, Apple Podcasts/iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also download an mp3 via the Soundcloud page for offline listening.

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You can help keep Lingthusiasm ad-free, get access to bonus content, and more perks by supporting us on Patreon.

Lingthusiasm is on Bluesky, Instagram, Facebook, Mastodon, and Tumblr. Email us at contact [at] lingthusiasm [dot] com

Gretchen is on Bluesky as @gretchenmcculloch.com, on instagram @gretchen.mcculloch and blogs at All Things Linguistic.

Lauren is on Bluesky as @superlinguo and blogs at Superlinguo.

Lingthusiasm is created by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our senior producer is Claire Gawne, our production editor is Sarah Dopierala, our production assistant is Martha Tsutsui Billins, our editorial assistant is Jon Kruk, and our technical editor is Leah Velleman. Our music is ‘Ancient City’ by The Triangles.

This episode of Lingthusiasm is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike license (CC 4.0 BY-NC-SA).