The Conversation

Endangered languages are being preserved using cheap mobile phones. Steven Bird

Cyberlinguistics: recording the world’s vanishing voices

Steven Bird, The University of Melbourne

Of the 7,000 languages spoken on the planet, Tembé is at the small end with just 150 speakers left. In a few days, I will head into the Brazilian Amazon to record Tembé – via specially-designed technology…

Macquarie is changing its definition of misogyny… but it still applies to the leader of the opposition. AAP/Pan Macmillan

Tony Abbott is a misogynist, however the dictionary defines it

Megan Clement-Couzner, Western Sydney University

As an academic, I often become obsessed with the meaning of words. They lure me in with their conceptual promise, and then I get hooked and tangled on distinctions and disciplinary nuance. Perhaps unsurprisingly…

Few have made such a significant contribution to political thought as Noam Chomsky. AAP/Tracy Nearmy

Chomsky, linguistics, politics and a response to an unfair allegation

Peter Slezak, UNSW Sydney

Noam Chomsky’s political detractors typically resort to misrepresentation and vilification but one might expect a higher standard from academic colleagues, especially in his own discipline of linguistics…

Noam Chomsky explicitly rejects the idea that language may be implicated in politics. AAP

The paradox of Noam Chomsky on language and power

Annabelle Lukin, Macquarie University

In his recent speech accepting the Sydney Peace Prize, Chomsky returned to a recurrent theme from his work in political science: that the violence perpetrated by the West is not represented in our media…