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The Allusionist

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A PODCAST ABOUT LANGUAGE
BY HELEN ZALTZMAN

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The Allusionist

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Allusionist 205. Lexicat, part 2: now with added Dog

December 6, 2024 The Allusionist
a boggle board spelling out the word 'lexicat' in one corner and 'dog' in the opposite corner. Between them is a green die showing the number 2

In Lexicat part 1, we met the author Mary Robinette Kowal and her cat Elsie, and learned about how they communicate via a set of buttons programmed with words. In part 2, two talking dogs, Bastian and Parker - and their humans, Joelle Andres and Sascha Crasnow - join us too, and explain how they discovered some very unexpected things about what their animal companions are thinking and feeling thanks to the buttons, and how they changed the ways they communicate with other humans too. And animal behaviour expert Zazie Todd gives us some tips for interpreting cats’ and dogs’ body language.

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In episodes Tags Lexicat, animals, cats, dogs, companion animals, pets, communication, species, buttons, Mary Robinette Kowal, Elsie, Zazie Todd, animal behaviour, AIC, Augmentative Interspecies Communication, emotions, animal psychology, psychology, socialisation, canine, feline, pet directed speech, learning, semantics, syntax, Bastian, Parker, Sascha Crasnow, Joelle Andres, Parkinson’s Disease, dementia, two hand choice, choice, body language, wagging, tails, lies, deceit, yarborough

Allusionist 188. Lipread

January 28, 2024 The Allusionist

Lipreading has been in the news this month, thanks to gossip-stoking mouth movements at the Golden Globes that the amateur lipreaders of The Internet rushed to interpret. But lipreading tutor Helen Barrow describes how reading lips really works - the confusable consonants, the importance of context and body language - and gossip maven Lainey Lui explains why these regularly occurring lipreading gossip stories are unworthy of a second or even first glance.

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In episodes Tags Helen Barrow, Lainey Lui, Lainey Gossip, lipreading, lip reading, lipreaders, lip readers, gossip, ATLA, homophenes, visemes, phonemes, consonants, confusion, celebrities, stars, Hollywood, press, journalism, Golden Globes, Emily Blunt, John Krasinski, Taylor Swift, Selena Gomez, Kylie Jenner, Timothée Chalamet, Theresa May, Jeremy Corbyn, body language, sport, football, Raheem Sterling, John Terry, Leonardo DiCaprio, sign language, detectives, beards, East Asia, masks, portmanteau, blunge

Allusionist 102. New Rules

July 13, 2019 The Allusionist
A102 New Rules logo.jpg

I don’t know exactly when or where, but at some point in the past few years, I stopped putting punctuation at the end of sentences. Why? The internet made me do it

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In episodes Tags words, language, linguistics, education, comedy, entertainment, society & culture, arts, literature, Helen Zaltzman, etymology, lexicon, vocabulary, emoji, emojis, capitals, all caps, lower case, upper case, internet, website, social media, online, Gretchen McCulloch, etiquette, netiquette, capital letters, full stops, periods, gestures, body language, gifs, tone, punctuation, computation, autocorrect, conversation, informal, formal, emphasis, style guides, rules, -ize, -ise, Britishisms, Americanisms, manners
Allusionist Patreon
Featured
Allusionist 209: Serving C-Bomb
Allusionist 209: Serving C-Bomb
feed bullshit
Allusionist 208: Ffff
Allusionist 208: Ffff
WhatsApp Image 2025-04-27 at 23.06.37.jpeg
several bits of news! (nothing bad)
queer playlist
Allusionist 207: Randomly Selected Words from the Dictionary
Allusionist 207: Randomly Selected Words from the Dictionary
Allusionist 206. Bonus 2024
Allusionist 206. Bonus 2024
A Christmas Carollusionist
A Christmas Carollusionist
Allusionist 205. Lexicat, part 2: now with added Dog
Allusionist 205. Lexicat, part 2: now with added Dog
Festivelusionists
Allusionist 204. Lexicat, part 1
Allusionist 204. Lexicat, part 1
Allusionist 203. Flyting
Allusionist 203. Flyting
Allusionist 202: Singlish Singlish
Allusionist 202: Singlish Singlish
Allusionist 201: Singlish
Allusionist 201: Singlish
Tranquillusionist: Ex-Constellations
Tranquillusionist: Ex-Constellations
Creative Commons Licence
The Allusionist by Helen Zaltzman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.