Introduction
One of the reasons this website exists is to provide resources to visitors who want to know more about the topics this site concerns itself with. One of these major topics is linguistics. The purpose of this post is to provide just a few links to video lectures (or interviews) on linguistics by prolific scholars so that our audiences can either educate themselves or learn more about some of the big names in the field of linguistics and their ideas about language, culture, cognition, and more. We understand that these pioneering voices in 20th- and 21st-century linguistics are all somewhat on the older side, white, and male, which is why we will soon be doing a similarly structured companion piece to this post that provides links to lectures delivered by nonwhite and nonmale voices in the field.
Noam Chomsky
Fundamental Issues in Linguistics
Universal Linguistics: Origins of Language
Steven Pinker
Linguistics as a Window to Understanding the Brain
Linguistics, Style and Writing in the 21st Century
Human nature and the Blank Slate
What Our Language Habits Reveal
Language, Reason, and the Future of Violence
On Good Writing (with Ian McEwan)
On the Enlightenment Today (with Stephen Fry)
David Crystal
The Influence of the King James Bible on the English Language
On Language, Linguistics, and Literature
What’s New in the English Language
Texts and Tweets: Myths and Realities
William Labov
The Changing Dialects of American English
The Relation of Social to Structural Factors in the Explanation of Linguistic Change
References
Crystal, David. 28 July 2017. “David Crystal.” Wikimedia Commons, Wikimedia, 18 November 2020, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:David_Crystal_2017.jpg.
Pinker, Stephen. 2011. “Stephen Pinker.” Wikimedia Commons, Wikimedia, 18 November 2020, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Steven_Pinker_2011.jpg .
Starita, Augusto. 12 March 2015. “Noam Chomsky.” Wikimedia Commons, Wikimedia, 18 November 2020, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Noam_Chomsky_.jpg.
“William Labov.” 05 October 2015. Linguistic Society of America, Linguistic Society of America, 18 November 2020, https://www.linguisticsociety.org/news/2015/10/05/laurels-linguists-william-labov.