iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Jen Nycz @jennycz.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

first year seminar group has decided on the group project topic: we'll be looking at Louis Tomlinson, comparing his sung and interview speech during his One Direction era and his solo career to see if/how his Yorkshire features have waxxed or waned over time. STAY TUNED #linguistics

static.klipy.com

Louis Tomlinson Flirty Smile

Alt: gif of singer Louis Tomlinson grinning and raising his eyebrows

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Pavel Iosad @anghyflawn.net · 17/09/2026

Among the degrees that have been cut at Edinburgh are Persian Studies (and Persian and Middle Eastern Studies), and Africa and International Development. If only there was any need for specialists in any of these areas in the current state of affairs.

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🎃 Imani Gandy Corn 🎃 @angryblacklady.blacksky.app · 12/09/2026

The international chess Federation banned trans women from playing women's chess. CHESS. It's not about fairness. The fairness argument is intended to radicalize people into more violent forms of transphobia.

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Preeti Chhibber @runwithskizzers.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

i love that this has had literally no impact on my day lol

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Victor Ray @victorerikray.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

I'll again note that the folks willing to sign a letter supporting a raging eugenicist (purportedly in defense of his academic freedom to be racist) aren't nearly as motivated when it comes to *actual* threats to academic freedom, like this.

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Jen Nycz @jennycz.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

Make a band bigger: Indigo Women

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Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

Fifteen years and i have never seen good evidence of this.

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Jen Nycz @jennycz.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

I love it and will absolutely be buying a Meat Clarinet boxy tee to wear on the day I talk about the vocal tract in my Fall sociophonetics classes (maybe some stickers too, for office hour attendance incentives)

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Prof. Nicole Holliday @mixedlinguist.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

This is the part that breaks my heart. "Generative AI has broken the sacred contract between professors & students: that the professors are there to teach and the students are there to learn. The understanding has been broken...That’s a very deep part of the grief” www.chronicle.com/article/thes...

chronicle.com

These Professors Are Retiring Early. AI Was the Last Straw.

What is the point of teaching, they ask, if students are just pretending to learn?

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Paul Renfro @renfro.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

This is the tragic yet logical result of a decades-long project—undertaken by rightwing politicians and “business-minded” administrators alike—to distort the meaning of higher education, to deny the intrinsic value of the pursuit of knowledge, to deprive us all of richer, more purposeful lives.

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Brendan Keogh @brkeogh.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

Surely the solution here is just *don't use AI tools* for your writing and research and continue to do your writing and research in ALL the ways you were doing it before you started using AI instead of doing the work??

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Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani @mayor.nyc.gov · 14/07/2026

This morning in Biddeford, Maine, a 26-year-old man said goodbye to his wife and daughter and left for work. Moments later he was dead, shot in the head by ICE agents, the second man ICE has killed in six days. ICE is killing our neighbors. ICE cannot be reformed. Abolish ICE.

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Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 12/07/2026

Is Harry Kane standard cockney slang for complain?

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Tobias Wilson-Bates @phdhurtbrain.bsky.social · 17/06/2026

The point of having students do peer review is not to fix the essay, it’s to give the students a concrete experience of delivering their ideas to an audience and being in community caring about their compositional choices.

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Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 16/06/2026

This whole thread up & down is important and insightful. I want to add one linguistic point here:

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Jen Nycz @jennycz.bsky.social · 13/06/2026

Dramatic, tsunami-esque storm cloud above the Newark St Community Garden in McLean Gardens! @capitalweather.bsky.social

Photo of a community garden with a large, tsunami-esque storm cloud above

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Jen Nycz @jennycz.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

The LSA First Gen Access & Equity (FGAE) Committee is awarding $500 for travel assistance to a first-generation student in #linguistics to attend the 2027 LSA Annual Meeting in San Francisco. Learn more and apply at this link by July 31st! docs.google.com/forms/d/1Qza...

Flyer with the following text: First Gen Access and Equity Travel Assistance $500 Submissions open until July 31. The LSA First Gen Access and Equity (FGAE) Committee is awarding
$500 for travel assistance to a first-generation student in linguistics
to attend the 2027 LSA Annual Meeting in San Francisco. This annual award is intended to increase the participation of first-gen students in the LSA and FGAE committee.
The recipient will have the opportunity to explore linguistics topics or pursue their own areas of interest further by
connecting with peers and scholars at the Annual Meeting. Eligibility: Applicants must:
◦ Be a first-generation graduate or undergraduate student.
◦ Be a first-time attendee at LSA 2027.
◦ LSA member at time of receipt of award.
Applicants do not need to be US citizens to apply. Applicants do not
need to have an accepted abstract to the Annual Meeting.
Apply by July 31:
Scan the QR code to submit your personal statement and resume/CV.
The instagram handle for the committee is las_firstgen.
A QR code for the application form is also included

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Jen Nycz @jennycz.bsky.social · 09/06/2026

Three of my doctoral students have new papers in the latest issue of the Proceedings of the Linguistic Society of America (PLSA)! 🧵 #linguistics 1) "Sounding Black, looking White: Perceptions of racial identity in pop music" by Abby Killam

journals.linguisticsociety.org

Sounding Black, looking White: Perceptions of racial identity in pop music | Proceedings of the Linguistic Society of America

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Jen Nycz @jennycz.bsky.social · 05/06/2026

Submitted my book manuscript to the publisher last night!! "Second Dialect Acquisition: Theory, Findings, and Methods", coming soon (well, "soon" in academic terms; maybe in a year 🙃) #linguistics

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Jen Nycz @jennycz.bsky.social · 20/05/2026

"What a time to be alive! We are finally freeing you from the rat race and placing you on the rat unemployment line. Is your dream to be an artist? Well, it is the dream of your employers to push a button that extrudes art. And guess who has more funding for their dream?"

theatlantic.com

My Mention of AI in This Commencement Speech Is Bound to Be a Hit

Why are you booing?

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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 20/05/2026

I feel that one way of expressing the combined effect of growing up, becoming socialized, getting an education, and having a personality is: not needing “all-day help… spoken into your ear privately” by Google

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Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 18/05/2026

If ours was a world where AI (the ideology, politic, and tech) were, uh, asking these graduates to shape AI this might resonate. But it’s not. Look, you cannot go out and market your new corporate monopoly widget as the death kneel to American workers and then ask new workers to be excited.

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Megan Figueroa @meganfigueroa.bsky.social · 17/05/2026

Child language development expert here. No. The answer is absolutely not. So-called baby talk is culturally specific. Developing language is not. #linguistics

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Dr. Holly Walters @manigarm.bsky.social · 17/05/2026

I'm sorry, what? In writing my first monograph, I spent six weeks trying to track down a citation in TWO languages I didn't know. And good thing too, because the citation was wrong. That's scholarship. That's research. You know, the thing we're trained to do?!?

The reactions of some researchers on Twitter finally being held responsible for not having read the very paper they submitted are... something. Mainly, they don't think they should have to check every citation or make sure the data is real and accurate. Because it's too hard, I guess.

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Jen Nycz @jennycz.bsky.social · 14/05/2026

writing some text that involves the phrase "rec room" and remembering how when I was a child (and for perhaps even longer than that...) I thought it was "wreck room" because of course the room where you played/had fun was always in massive disarray 😆 #linguistics

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Berna Devezer @devezer.bsky.social · 07/05/2026

gotta love when a whole education system makes itself vulnerable by making a large number of institutions dependent on a proprietary lms whose continuity or reliability they have no control over *chef's kiss* now let's do it again, but bigger, with ai

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Linguistic Society of America @lingsocam.bsky.social · 30/04/2026

Tell Congress: Protect NSF’s Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences Directorate, which is quietly being eliminated while attention is focused elsewhere. Now is the time to act—contact your representatives today. #WhySocialScience #SaveSBE cossa.org/action-cente...

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Kirby Conrod @kirbyconrod.bsky.social · 30/04/2026

new blog post about, like. why i teach syntax, i guess. may be a little bit inside baseball, curious about your thoughts kconrod.medium.com/build-me-a-b...

kconrod.medium.com

build me a bird

or, an apologia for (still) teaching syntax

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Jen Nycz @jennycz.bsky.social · 28/04/2026

enraging; they scraped videos from prof's Canvas sites. I don't post video lectures to Canvas but I guess I should think harder about uploading handouts & other content, in case my own uni decides to go this route? Feeling like it's time to go back to course readers & everything on paper, 90s style!

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Julia M. Rohrer @dingdingpeng.the100.ci · 24/04/2026

Researchers writing about their work frequently rely on clichés. Yet, little is known about how such clichés affect

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Jacob Rubashkin @rubashkin.bsky.social · 22/04/2026

Burchett is right: the most DC thing ever *is* a member of Congress blaming the city for something he and his colleagues did themselves.

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Jen Nycz @jennycz.bsky.social · 17/04/2026

Just got my exam copy from CUP in the mail, excited to read this and figure out how I might use it in my undergrad classes!

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Sam Brody @samuelhayimbrody.bsky.social · 22/03/2026

What these admins will never tell you is that the *courses* in these majors are often full. Students don't *major* in these fields, but they really want to take the classes. They use number of majors as a metric on purpose so they can achieve their cuts.

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Jen Nycz @jennycz.bsky.social · 10/04/2026

filling out check-in forms online before an appointment and impressed by the inclusivity of this urgent care's "preferred language" options #linguistics

partial drop-down menu of options including Dutch (middle), Dutch (flemish), Dyula, Erik, Egyptian (ancient), English, English (middle), English (old), Esperanto, Estonian, Ewe

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Pam Herd @pamherd.bsky.social · 07/04/2026

We do now know the NSF is proceeding with dissolving the Social and Behavioral Sciences Division. Congress might reverse it, but it is now already underway. YOU CAN NO LONGER SUBMIT FUNDING PROPOSALS TO SBE. Program officers are being moved to different parts of the agency. Call your Congress member

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Septima P. Snark @drsubini.blacksky.app · 07/04/2026

This. AI claims to do my job. I don’t want that. I love the work of writing, research & teaching. I want someone to take all the additional work that has been added over the years in the name of austerity off my plate. Dismantle the harmful structures that make it hard to do my job, please.

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Nick Fleisher @nickfleisher.bsky.social · 04/04/2026

Looking forward to the next time the associate dean tells our department to "get grants"

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Leslie Rissler @ljrissler.bsky.social · 03/04/2026

I am shocked to see this language from the NSF. “The U.S. National Science Foundation's Fiscal Year 2027 Budget Request reflects a strategic alignment of resources in a constrained fiscal environment while eliminating woke and weaponized grant programs that previously funded radical DEI projects.”

nsf.gov

Fiscal Year 2027 Budget Request to Congress

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Jen Nycz @jennycz.bsky.social · 03/04/2026

📗More book promotion: for the next month, you can download and read Chapter 1 of my & @lhlew.bsky.social 's new book, Sociophonetics: Implications for Phonological and Phonetic Theory, for free! #linguistics academic.oup.com/book/61815/c...

academic.oup.com

Sociophonetics: Opportunities for phonology and phonetics

Abstract. This chapter provides a broad overview of the field of sociophonetics, and argues that sociophonetic research provides a crucial empirical basis

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Josef Fruehwald @jofrhwld.bsky.social · 01/04/2026

I’ve been thinking about the construal of LLMs as tools for research automation, and as someone who’s put a lot of effort into research facilitation tools, I don’t agree

jofrhwld.github.io

LLMs are Not Just Another Research Automation – Væl Space

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Joshua Foust 🪖🎮 @joshuafoust.com · 01/04/2026

Again and again, executives don’t want AI to enhance work, only to replace workers, while telling us it will enhance work, while the AI vendors say “this is your problem if it screws up.” They seem to think we don’t notice this. www.microsoft.com/en-us/micros...

• Copilot is for entertainment purposes only. It can make mistakes, and it may not work as intended. Don't rely on Copilot for important advice.
Use Copilot at your own risk.
• WITHOUT LIMITING SECTION 12
OF THE MICROSOFT SERVICES AGREEMENT IN ANY WAY, BUT FOR THE SAKE OF CLARITY, WE DO NOT MAKE ANY WARRANTY OR REPRESENTATION OF ANY KIND ABOUT COPILOT. For example, we can't promise that any Copilot's Responses won't infringe someone else's rights (like their

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Erin J. Wamsley 🧠📈😴 @wamsleylab.bsky.social · 31/03/2026

NSF's Social, Behavioral and Economic Directorate has awarded only 16 grants since October. No big budget cuts went through. No freeze. The courts have acted to keep funds flowing at every turn. The money just isn't going out. Why...? 1/x source: grant-witness.us/funding_curv... 🟦🧠 #academicsky

A line graph showing awards over time at NSF's SBE. The line for this year, 2026, is extremely FLAT compared to prior years. By this time in 2025, 179 grants had been awarded. In 2021, it was 243. This year... 16.

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Jen Nycz @jennycz.bsky.social · 30/03/2026

Linguistics on The News: A lot of "Gen Z slang" comes from African American Language - w/comments from Minnie Quartey Annan, Sonja Lanehart, and Jamaal Muwwakkil youtu.be/6GtW_PHNjo4?... #linguistics

youtu.be

How Black culture is shaping Gen Z slang

YouTube video by NBC News

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Jonathan Kasstan @jrkasstan.bsky.social · 22/03/2026

We are fast moving from cold spots to blackout. This is not trivial and the impact in terms of access to languages education will be inter generational. How do you “level up” or promote “growth” without a multilingual workforce and the know-how to deploy? www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

tandfonline.com

‘Cold spots’ in language degree provision in England

People have been raising the alarm about a language education crisis in the UK, particularly in England, for twenty years. Yet the crisis continues: the number of young people studying languages at...

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Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 21/03/2026

There's a learned helplessness here that feels a lot like obeying in advance. Use your brain, don't let anyone tell you you can't, and definitely don't tell others they can't.

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Jen Nycz @jennycz.bsky.social · 20/03/2026

Mulling whether to buy my book w/@lhlew.bsky.social, Sociophonetics: Implications for Phonological & Phonetic Theory? With code AUFLY30 you can get it for 30% off via OUP at global.oup.com/academic ! Spend down those research funds (if you have them) before the end of the fiscal year! #linguistics

picture of the book Sociophonetics: Implications for Phonological and Phonetic Theory, edited by Jennifer Nycz and Lauren Hall-Lew, with promotion code AUFLY30, which can be used for 30% of the book at global.oup.com/academic

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Prof. Nicole Holliday @mixedlinguist.bsky.social · 11/03/2026

She's right, and has thought way, way more about LLMs, language, and society than almost every reply guy on here, but they simply can't resist fighting with a world-class expert.

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