31.2942, Rising Stars: Meet Nick Bednar!

Tue Sep 29 23:27:54 UTC 2020

LINGUIST List: Vol-31-2942. Tue Sep 29 2020. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 31.2942, Rising Stars: Meet Nick Bednar!

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Date: Tue, 29 Sep 2020 19:27:21
From: LINGUIST List [linguist at linguistlist.org]
Subject: Rising Stars: Meet Nick Bednar!

Dear Readers,

This year we will be continuing our Rising Stars Series where we feature up
and coming linguists ranging from impactful undergraduates to prolific PhD
candidates. These rising stars have been nominated by their mentors for their
exceptional interest in linguistics and eager participation in the global
community of language researchers.

Selected nominees were asked to share their view of the field of linguistics:
what topics they see emerging as important or especially interesting, what
role they see the field filling in the coming decades, and how they plan to
contribute. We hope you will enjoy the perspectives of these students, who
represent the bright future of our field.

Today we present a piece from the outstanding student, Nick Bednar. He is a
senior undergraduate at the The Ohio State University who is known for his
great work as a research assistant. He has completed multiple research
projects with different faculty members including a sociolinguistics project
involving eye-tracking and a language acquisition project on child
communication. Since he works in a lab within a science museum he has spent
many hours doing educational activities about how language works with the
museum visitors and is known for doing a fantastic job at this as well. These
activities are on top of the fact that he already does great work in his own
studies while also being an amazing peer mentor. Nick's list of
accomplishments goes on but let's get to the piece.

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One of the most important emerging topics in language science and linguistics
is only adjacent to the field, a consequence of its existence more than a part
of its own domain: public outreach and education.

Linguistics is becoming increasingly important to the public and the interests
of those otherwise uninvolved. As we continue to develop new ways to interact
with technology using natural language, as we continue to challenge the ideas
of what language ought to be like, and as we continue to see more modern
examples of language contact and change alongside globalization and new
avenues of communication, good outreach will cement itself as a primary
objective for linguists. Language should be studied for its own sake, of
course, and not all future research need concern itself with social issues or
the public eye. Yet it will be increasingly difficult to separate this aspect
from the field itself. Linguistics can and should find its way into high
school classrooms, the conference rooms of policy makers, and into the
cultural zeitgeist overall. Not everyone will suddenly become interested in
creating syntactic tree diagrams or discussing their language’s phonotactics,
but they don't need to; just creating awareness of the qualities and varieties
of language is enough to begin addressing some of these emerging concerns.

In addition to public understanding related to linguistics itself, I also see
the scientific study of language becoming a gateway to improving science
attitudes, trust, and appreciation in general. Linguistics is inherently
interdisciplinary and blended between the concerns of the humanities and the
sciences. However, there exists a pervasive assumption that any given subject
must fall into one category or the other. Using this middle ground as not an
obstacle but a tool can allow us to persuade more individuals into seeing
themselves as ‘science people', and during the ongoing pandemic, this has
become a more apparent need than ever.

Though my focus is still on language itself, this side of informal science
outreach is just as important to the research I've been fortunate enough to be
involved with. One of the biggest, most important goals of the lab I work for,
The Language Pod here in Ohio, is to spread the love of language and get the
public involved with the scientific process. We have the incredible
opportunity to be operating within the major science museum in the city of
Columbus, with the lab sitting right inside of an exhibit and having glass
walls that allow passersby to see the work that we're doing. Researchers can
study language with the museum guests as participants while also performing
this public-facing duty. My undergraduate thesis work was designed to sit in
this same intermediary space between linguistics and science outreach. Over
the past summer, the BLNDIY Citizen Science project worked online alongside
everyday people to design a full-fledged language science experiment from
start to finish. The public suggested and voted on every step along the way,
from creating a research question to experimental design to methods of
analysis, and we were lucky enough to work with participants from all over the
world. I can't begin to express how exciting this opportunity and work like
this are to me. It's both gratifying and worthwhile to develop outreach
demonstrations, new debriefing methods, and unconventional science education
opportunities that can show people how wonderful language science is and how
they can be scientists in all kinds of different ways.

There's much work to be done, but in order to progress the field of
linguistics and the perception of scientific work in general, I'm going to
take that work up with more than a bit of enthusiasm.

******************************************************************

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