PODCAST · society
Structured Visions
by Jodie Clark
Linguist Jodie Clark explores creative ways of imagining social transformation.
Episodes
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114 The linguistics of loss
Join me on a journey from humanism to posthumanism with a focus on how we understand language, more-than-human communication, semiosis and information theory. We discuss Eduardo Kohn's How Forests Think, specifically his ideas about the Earth's open and emergent semiotic system, of which human...
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113 We are all grammatically distant
Join me in the pleasure of observing conversation, particularly times when people report the speech of others. They can do this using direct speech, indirect speech or narrative reports of speech events. Here are examples of all three: Mrs Jenkins told the class shat she was cancelling the field...
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112 Love language
To what extent is who(m) you're allowed to love analogous to syntactic structure? In this episode I explore the idea that human beings, in initiating themselves into language, surrender the higher consciousness that the rest of the non-human world enjoys. This is a problem when it comes to love.…
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111 The linguistics of tapping
What's your favourite way to alleviate anxiety? Mine is tapping, also known as Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT). Linguistically, tapping is fascinating, because it reveals an inherent contradiction that your body ends up resolving for you. When we tap into (pardon the pun) the world beyond...
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110 Clap if you believe in fairies
Do you believe in fairies? In his 1911 book, American anthropologist Walter Evans Wentz hypothesises 'tentatively' that the invisible world of fairies should be examined 'just as we examine any fact in the visible realm wherein we now live, whether it be a fact of chemistry, of physics, or of...
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109 What makes you so special?
The paradox of being human in a Western, settler, colonizing culture is you're supposed to be special and… you're not supposed to be special. It's a culture that's clinging to the idea of human exceptionalism, which is the assumption that humans are better, smarter and more conscious than the…
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108 Adulting, and stuff like that
Conversations with final-year university students has brought back all the fears that I had in my mid- to late twenties about having to be a grown up. The secret to soothing those fears for me was… studying linguistics. More specifically, it was 'like' and stuff like that (discourse markers and...
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107 Heaven and Earth
The idea that human language comes from the land is not new. It's rooted in Indigenous ontologies of language. But for those of us who haven't grown up in an Indigenous culture and are swimming in the ideas of a Western, colonising culture, it can be very difficult to see language as anything…
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106 Prosody and peak experiences
Have you ever had a peak experience? Did you ever try to tell someone about it? Also, how good is your singing voice? If you're a native speaker of a tonal language like Mandarin, you may have an excellent singing voice (or at least, you're more likely to pass a test for perfect pitch, according…
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105 Given, new and the selfless know-it-all
What if you could know everything, but you had to lose your self in the process? We discuss two layered structures in human languages. The first is word order, such as Subject-Verb-Object (SVO) and Subject-Object-Verb (SOV). The second is information structure, which is the system by which people...
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One from the archives: The Gift (Episode 24)
If you listened to last month's episode, you'll know that I've taken a short break from podcasting to finish off the book I'm writing. I'm thrilled to tell you that the book is now finished, and I'm very happy with it. I can't wait to tell you more. (In fact, if you sign up to my newsletter at...
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One from the archives: How linguistics can save the world (Episode 60)
I'm taking a short break from podcasting as I finish off the book I'm writing, but I'll be back in the New Year. In the meantime, please enjoy this episode from the Structured Visions archives. Episode 60, How linguistics can save the world, originally aired on June 1, 2018. This podcast has been...
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104 Consciousness is more than just a little cutie pie
Do human beings have more or less consciousness than the rest of the living world? Is language an addiction? We'll explore both points by examining the relationship between language and time. To participate in the world of human language, we have to reduce ourselves to little cutie pies known as...
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103 Inhabiting language
In this episode I'll try to convince you that using language to express the self is like a dog chasing its own tail… or a snake eating its tail, if you prefer ouroboros imagery. My perspective is that human language is the one-dimensional structure that shapes the self and thus limits access to…
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Episode 102 How to belong
Have you ever felt like you don't belong? My own red thread through the labyrinth of linguistics has been the theme of not belonging. We explore the grammatical shape belonging takes in everyday conversations about fitting in. We discuss how selves can grammatically 'detach' from bodies, and the...
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Episode 101 You, me and big egos
What's the difference between me and you? And what's so bad about big egos, anyway? In this episode we explore the relationship between ego and language. We move from Freud's psychoanalytic theory to D.T. Suzuki's explanation of the Zen Buddhist perspective. We explore Suzuki's analysis of two...
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Episode 100 Selfish wishes for social change
What are your top three wishes? Are they selfish? As it happens, your wishes may be worse than selfish—they may be toxically self-effacing. If you participate, on whatever level, in a society in which people are continually and oppressively bullied into thinking they need to be someone other than...
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Episode 99 Linguistics and astrology
What new language would you most like to know? Is astrology on your list? Does astrology count as a language? Maybe the language of the stars could be classified as a pidgin, a language without native speakers. But if, as discussed in Episode 96, 'The Earth's language', languages are ways of...
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Episode 98 Linguistic singularities
Counting… that's maths, right? Actually, it's language. And as we'll discover through a series of absurd tasks (like, 'count everything you can see'), you can't count anything until you know what 'counts as' a thing. Language draws the lines around what counts, and it shifts and changes as it…
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Episode 97 The intimacy of denial
What's the weirdest thing about human language? We explore linguistic polarity and all its bizarre implications. Embedded in every human grammar is a way of turning a positive clause (I'm listening) into a negative clause (I'm not listening). Grammatical negation is one of the ways we can do...
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Episode 96 The Earth's language
We start the episode, as always, with a couple of questions: 1. What are the differences between spoken/signed language and written/printed/digital language? 2. Where are you? There's an answer to Question 2 that will be true for anyone who says it. 'I am here.' But if you write it on a piece of...
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Episode 95 Your name without language
What would your name be without language? In this episode we explore the problem of names in truth conditional semantics, with a look at Gottlob Frege's explanation of sense and reference, Bertrand Russell's claims about the definite descriptors and Saul Kripke's term for proper names, which is...
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Episode 94 Language and the afterlife
What happens when we die? Ideas about the afterlife (or the lack of an afterlife) requires theory building based on either faith or experience. What if you don't have faith in stories about the afterlife and you've never experienced anything resembling a near-death experience (NDE)? In this…
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Episode 93 Where do you stop and the rest of the world begin?
Is there a distinction between you and the rest of the world? Where do you stop and the rest of the world begin? What's the meaning of the word 'now'? The gift of language is that it shapes and reshapes the experience of separateness. It's a gift because it's fluid. It's more a membrane than a...
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Episode 92 The grammatical shape of emotions
When was the last time you lost language? And… how do you feel? The one time it feels like I'm losing language is when I let myself feel what I really feel. (We're talking about weeping, wailing, keening—the dripping-nose ugly cry.) I've been thinking a lot about emotions and language because…
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Episode 91 The limits of language and selfhood
Linguistic interaction involves much more than simply sharing information. It requires shaping the information so that it will fit in to a pre-existing structure. This is where we might run into problems if we ever get the chance to chat with intelligent extra-terrestrial beings. To what extent…
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Episode 90 Language, intimacy and narcissism
What's the worst relationship you've ever been in? What's the difference between this and that? There are at least three ways of understanding that second question, each of which reveals a different level of abstraction: metalinguistic, anaphoric and exophoric. Our exploration of this and that...
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Episode 89 Grammar as a gateway to mystery
'Dreams, it turns out, are like clauses. They can be configured and reconfigured in an infinite number of ways. They are quanta of information about what could be transformed in the world, whether it's your own world or a bigger social world, or both.' —from my new book, Refreshing Grammar, p.…
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Episode 88 Grammar shame
What's your most mortifying experience of grammar shaming? Mine involved a misplaced apostrophe in an important email, and I still burn with shame to think of it. Grammar for many has a spectrum of negative associations, which ranges from the imposter syndrome you might get when you realise you...
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Episode 87 What if you're an alien?
If you were told, definitively, that you were an alien, would it relieve a burden? Would it explain, or affirm, a few things? Would you look to the sky and long for home? If you've ever felt like an alien, then the story I published recently on grammarfordreamers.com is dedicated to you.…
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Episode 86 Feelings are, like, inside things
When you were a kid, was there something that inspired wonder in you? Is there anything that has inspired wonder for you more recently? For me as a child it was something I read in a picture book: 'Colours are outside things. Feelings are inside things.' As an adult it was the idea that language...
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Episode 85 How spooky is language?
What makes Ouija boards spooky? Is it language? After all, it's the letters of the alphabet that take up the most space on these devices, and they're just waiting for something to be spelled out. Who's doing the spelling? And what kind of spells are they, after all? In this episode we'll be...
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Episode 84 Language before language
Where's home? What's your first language? What was your language before your first language? Join me to explore linguistic frames of reference in Guugu Yimithirr, polyglot newborns and the beauty and tyranny of language, self and home. The story I read in this episode is 'Poor Magellan', and it's...
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Episode 83 Language goes viral
How often have you prepared for a job interview by articulating your weaknesses? Apparently describing yourself as an empathic sponge who absorbs all the moods and emotions of the classroom is not the best self-promotional strategy when applying for an academic job. In this episode we explore...
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Episode 82 The hills are alive
A question for the writers among us (writers of anything—novels, memoirs, short stories, theses, academic articles, monographs): What's your relationship with words? Are you ringing in the New Year with a commitment to a daily, achievable word count target to ensure you achieve your writing goals...
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Episode 81 What are your pronouns?
'What are your pronouns?' How often do you get asked that question? How does it make you feel to be asked? When did the question first start making sense to you? This episode explores the ways that pronoun usage has shifted over time to reflect new ways of thinking about the relationship between...
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Episode 80 Is nothing sacred?
Is nothing sacred? What images or memories does this question conjure for you? Also, what are your aims? (Don't answer that. This is not a self-help podcast.) When I ask my undergraduate students to articulate the aims for their entrepreneurial projects, I hope and pray they won't ask me mine.…
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Episode 79 Possession, duality and other grammatical mysteries
In this episode I share what I believe are my most radical ideas, which normally I try to hide so that people don't think I'm crazy: Human beings are the only living things that experience separation from the rest of the world. What separates us is human language. The experience of separation...
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Episode 78 Love, language, music and aliens
Have you ever been in love? And if you could send a message to outer space, what message would it be? We'll use these questions to guide us through an exploration of the evolution of language, music, intimacy and transformation. The book I discuss in this episode is Steven Mithen's The singing...
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Episode 77 The erotic power of syllables
What propels you, what drives you, what directs you in your life? Is it inner guidance? Or is it some external power or sense of exterior obligation? And, on a more light-hearted note, what's your favourite syllable? In this episode we're exploring selves, bodies, phonology and phonetics, and…
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Episode 76 Quantum linguistics
Where do you get your ideas? The question presumes instrumentality and exchange, as if you could take a trip to your favourite high street shop and come home with the best ideas you can afford. That same sort of instrumentality comes into play when we think of language as a tool, a means by which...
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Episode 75 Accidentally born again
What's your relationship to religion? This could be a tricky question, for lots of reasons. People may not understand your faith. People may not understand how your faith is connected to your culture. People may not understand why you aren't part of a religion. Maybe your experiences of religion...
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Episode 74 Create nothing
Is there anyone in your life who truly 'gets' you? What's your favourite fairy tale? Have you ever received guidance from a wiser, more loving version of yourself? Believe it or not, there is a connection between all these questions. The first question came into the foreground for me when I first...
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Episode 73 The structure of selfhood
How is language like water? Both are all around us. Both are within us. Both have fascinating structuring mechanisms that we may not know much about. Think about the structure of a water molecule. Its single oxygen atom has a slightly negative charge, and the two hydrogen atoms have a slightly...
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Episode 72 Apocalypse fantasies
Have you ever entertained an apocalypse fantasy? The one I invented relieves humanity of its language. Language produces selves, which is not a bad thing. It's a beautiful thing. It's the window to intimacy. But what happens when the amount of language we use increases to the extent that we've…
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Episode 71 Good news and bad news
Ferdinand de Saussure likened language to a collective treasure that every member of the linguistic community can draw from without its stores diminishing. This idea is quite heartening – almost magical – but it's also ruthlessly oppressive. What do you want first: the good news or the bad news?...
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Episode 70 The meanings of life
Happy New Year! The end of the year is a great time for reflection. Why not reflect upon the meaning of life? Or, even better, why not reflect on why we would think there is a meaning to life, and what type of meaning we expect to find (meaning itself has lots of meanings, as linguist John Lyons...
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Episode 69 Our relationship with our world
'It's easy to forget,' said Sir David Attenborough in his address to COP26, 'that ultimately the emergency climate comes down to a single number — the concentration of carbon in our atmosphere.' That one number, he goes on to say, 'defines our relationship with our world.' According to...
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Episode 68 Life, language and other mysteries
In this episode we're going to address three questions. What's a word? What was did it feel like when life first emerged on the Earth? When's the first (or the last) time you made a real decision? And I'm going to try to convince you that these questions all have something to do with each other.…
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Episode 67 Imperative blessings
When did you learn that the earth travels round the sun and not the other way round? And when you talk to yourself, which one of the dialoguing characters is you? Language generates multiple selves, and each self comes with its own built in worldview. Is it superstitious to think of selves that…
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
Linguist Jodie Clark explores creative ways of imagining social transformation.
HOSTED BY
Jodie Clark
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Structured Visions have?
Structured Visions currently has 117 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Structured Visions about?
Linguist Jodie Clark explores creative ways of imagining social transformation.
How often does Structured Visions release new episodes?
Structured Visions publishes regularly with 117 episodes available. Check the episode list for the typical release schedule.
Where can I listen to Structured Visions?
You can listen to Structured Visions on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts Structured Visions?
Structured Visions is created and hosted by Jodie Clark.
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