Kirby Conrod
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kirbyconrod.bsky.social
Kirby Conrod
@kirbyconrod.bsky.social
4K followers 520 following 6.7K posts
assistant prof in linguistics at swarthmore; phd in linguistics from u washington; sociosyntax; they/them or ey/em.
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kirbyconrod.bsky.social
Kirby Conrod @kirbyconrod.bsky.social · Sep 26
btw i love being transgender and gay and teaching pronoun studies at a prestigious college
Reposted by Kirby Conrod
elinm.bsky.social
BOOK IS OUT WOOOOO

link.springer.com/book/10.1007...
Antinormative Interpretation
This book is an interdisciplinary project at the intersection of linguistics (semantics/pragmatics), experimental literature and art
link.springer.com
November 11, 2025 at 1:38 PM
Reposted by Kirby Conrod
leafhopper.bsky.social
I designed a horseshoe crab sweater and published it on Ravelry on National horseshoe crab day! If you ever thought to yourself “man, I really want a hand knit sweater with horseshoe crabs on it” boy do I have great news for ya

www.ravelry.com/patterns/lib...
June 20, 2025 at 2:29 PM
Reposted by Kirby Conrod
adamanlx.bsky.social
I presented at #NWAV53! An honor to present work coauthored with Jean Paul Ngoboka.

Materials available at theycallmezeal.me/publications
Me with my poster. It is called "How do we evaluate what we don't know?" Me presenting. The slide reads "What are the surface distributions of these forms?" I am describing "negated ra-" but "negated" is crossed out. Under it is written "most instances are expected and socially unmeaningful / only a few instances are unusual." I am comparing it to "g-" which is "always unusual."
November 11, 2025 at 3:39 AM
Reposted by Kirby Conrod
kathrynck.bsky.social
"Per compliance policy, certain Al-generated fields cannot be manually updated by clinic staff and require vendor correction."
cait.bsky.social cait (and adonis) @cait.bsky.social · 22h
a few months ago I said "having generative AI handle absolutely anything with regards to healthcare is a nightmare and should be banned" and a bunch of people made fun of me and called me stupid. anyways,
r/ExpectationVsReality u/Additional-Simple858 • 3d Join Al 'doctor' said my back pain is depression, not a slipped disc. Now physical therapy won't get approved. Al Expectation We are reviewing claim #& submitted on 09/28/2025. Our records indicate the claim was filed under diagnosis code F32.9 (Depressive disorder, unspecified), while the corresponding prescription and referral history list treatment for lumbar disc herniation (back pain). Re: Incorrect Diagnosis in Record Hi Thank you for reaching out. We have reviewed your visit documentation and can confirm that the notes in question were generated using our Al scribe system. It appears the Al tool assigned diagnosis code F32.9 (Depressive disorder, unspecified), while your visit notes and treatment plan reference lumbar disc herniation (back pain). Per compliance policy, certain Al-generated fields cannot be manually updated by clinic staff and require vendor correction. We have escalated this to our vendor support team and opened ticket # . We'll notify you once we receive confirmation or correction from the vendor.
November 10, 2025 at 5:08 PM
Reposted by Kirby Conrod
alexeibat.bsky.social
i know i’m almost never here but since so many of y’all are (!!), i’ll post:
here’s to #NWAV53 which was so fun, even though i am so sleep deprived! truly inspiring, encouraging, exciting, definitely educational — i got so much from this conference!
Me in front of my project launch poster at NWAV 53. I’m white, mid twenties, male, with brown and blue-green hair; wearing some brownish blazer, green-brown vest, white and blue checkered shirt. I am smiling but a bit in a silly way, posing with my name tag. My poster’s called “zines as anti colonial ethnography: engaging students through personal narratives in community-based adult ESL classrooms” Me lying on a bed, covering myself basically fully with my 48 inches by 32 inches poster, akin to a blanket.
November 8, 2025 at 8:05 AM
Reposted by Kirby Conrod
christianilbury.bsky.social
Since January 2022, we (me, 93% Club & SS) have been working a project that tackles accent bias in Higher Education, focusing on the 'elite' institution where we're based. Today, we're launching the project website which brings together all our work:

accentbias.ed.ac.uk
Accent bias logo. Four speech bubbles in four different coloured squares.
November 10, 2025 at 9:27 AM
Reposted by Kirby Conrod
hanaayoob.co.uk
Been thinking a lot about expectations, perfectionism and people pleasing recently

Inspired by britchida’s work
Collaged image - a stack of blocks labelled ‘what I expect of myself’ next to a few blocks, one lop sided, and a heart and star labelled ‘what I can achieve’
November 9, 2025 at 8:21 PM
Reposted by Kirby Conrod
sarahmackattack.bsky.social
This year we have sold 31% of the advent calendars that we sold last year 😓

The art is so pretty and colorful 🥺
The facts are so good 🥺
Eels are so cool 🥺

Get an eel facts advent calendar at EelFacts.net
Sarah holds up an eel facts advent calendar in front of blooming flowers on her sidewalk. It says eel facts an advent calendar. It has 24 boxes with orange and yellow zigzags and yellow circles in the middle with numbers one through 24 in the middle of the boxes there are six eels depicted on this calendar, one green Moray, two splendid garden eels, one blue and yellow ribbon eel, and one American eel and one European.
November 9, 2025 at 2:24 PM
Reposted by Kirby Conrod
emckean.bsky.social
I think we should bring back vibe spelling. Just add extra letters wherever, as you feel ‘em. Things can be frantick or hectick if you need that superfluous ’k’ edge. Resist the tyranny of received orthography!
November 9, 2025 at 4:19 AM
Reposted by Kirby Conrod
lhlew.bsky.social
Not sure I've ever published something so blatantly personal -- and it's a book review, of all things! I even cited my mom's book! Here's to normalizing the practice of positionality statements. Thanks to the editors and authors for the opportunity. #inclusion journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
Book Review: Inclusion in Linguistics - Lauren Hall-Lew, 2025
journals.sagepub.com
November 8, 2025 at 3:23 PM
kirbyconrod.bsky.social
anyone aware of any attempts to do an open source ASR tool?
November 8, 2025 at 2:14 PM
Reposted by Kirby Conrod
wynkenhimself.bsky.social
I am older than gender markers on passports! How do you regulate gender? By making it a form of government ID. It has nothing to do with state security, only regulation
State-issued documents aren't just tools to allow identification; they're also tools to enforce hierarchies. In his book "The Passport in America," the historian Craig Robertson argues that the document has served both to affirm and to assign such attributes of identity as class, race and gender. That last category didn't show up on the U.S. passport until 1976, after a panel of experts convened by the State Department noted that the rise of "unisex attire and hairstyles" had made it harder to determine a person's sex. "Gender markers thus were born out of the fear that gender was becoming ungovernable," wrote the immigration attorney Lauren Des Rosiers.
November 7, 2025 at 5:41 PM
kirbyconrod.bsky.social
sociolinguistics / raciolinguistic ideologies / linguistic racism
erichaywood.bsky.social Eric Haywood @erichaywood.bsky.social · 3d
Um, @variety.com?

That’s…not what that means. 😳 variety.com/2025/music/n...
Screenshot from a Variety article: “Kendrick Lamar, the man who put the phrase ‘they not like us’ into the lexicon, will now have to admit: They like him, they really like him.”
November 8, 2025 at 3:34 AM
kirbyconrod.bsky.social
uw linguistics at #nwav53
lots of linguists smiling in a group pic in the conference ballroom
November 7, 2025 at 11:26 PM
kirbyconrod.bsky.social
betsy nwav owls dress <33333333333
November 7, 2025 at 4:11 PM
kirbyconrod.bsky.social
i took Exactly One Quarter of irish in undergrad and one of the more enduring impacts it has had on me is the urge to do the irish vocative prefix + initial consonant mutation when i address a friend by name
November 7, 2025 at 1:21 PM
Reposted by Kirby Conrod
katelynburns.com
"biological pronouns" is an insane phrase
chrisgeidner.bsky.social Chris Geidner @chrisgeidner.bsky.social · 4d
BREAKING: The Sixth Circuit, in a 10-7 en banc decision, holds that an Ohio school district's anti-bullying policy that requires students to use children's preferred pronouns is likely unconstitutional on these facts.

Judge Murphy, a Trump appointee, writes the court's decision.
OPINION MURPHY, Circuit Judge. An Ohio public school district bars its students from referring to transgender and nonbinary classmates using the pronouns that match their biological sex if the classmates prefer to go by different pronouns. The plaintiff in this case has parent and student members who believe that a person's sex is immutable. The members want to express this view by using biological pronouns. And they believe that they would convey a falsehood —that a person's gender is fluid—if they use preferred pronouns. So the plaintiff challenged the school district's speech ban on behalf of its members under the First Amendment's Free Speech Clause. This case about pronouns pits two important interests against each other. On the one hand, the school district has prohibited speech (biological pronouns) that expresses a message on a matter of pressing public concern. And because the district requires other speech (preferred pronouns) that expresses a competing view, it has discriminated based on its students' viewpoints. Its approach thus raises serious free-speech concerns. On the other hand, the school district rightly responds that it has a duty to protect all students- including transgender and nonbinary students— from bullying and harassment. And this protection, while necessarily restricting speech, does not violate the Free Speech Clause. So which of these competing concerns should prevail in this case? The Supreme Court's cases provide a clear answer. A school district may not restrict personal speech on matters of public concern unless the speech would "materially and substantially disrupt" school activities or infringe the legal "rights of others" in the school community. Tinker v. Des Moines Indep. Cmty. Sch. Dist., 393 U.S. 503, 513 (1969). In this case's current posture, the school district has fallen far short of meeting this demanding standard. It introduced no evidence that the use of biological pronouns would disrupt school functions or qualify as harassment under Ohio law. Our society continues to debate whether biological pronouns are appropriate or offensive just as it continues to debate many other issues surrounding transgender rights. The school district may not skew this debate by forcing one side to change the way it conveys its message or by compelling it to express a different view. We thus reverse and remand Case: 23-3630 Document: 253-2 Filed: 11/06/2025 Page: 4 No. 23-3630 Defending Educ. v. Olentangy Loc. Sch. Dist. Bd. of Educ., et al. Page 4 for the entry of an appropriately tailored preliminary injunction barring the district from punishing students for the commonplace use of biological pronouns. Yet nothing we say here forecloses the district from enforcing its anti-harassment policies against the abuse of transgender students just as it enforces those policies against the abuse of all other students.
November 7, 2025 at 4:22 AM
kirbyconrod.bsky.social
i miss my cat
November 7, 2025 at 3:49 AM
Reposted by Kirby Conrod
rinewithoutacat.bsky.social
Snoozy
A grey cat is zonked out, sleeping on her front paws
November 7, 2025 at 3:49 AM
Reposted by Kirby Conrod
americandialect.org
The 2026 annual meeting conference schedule for New Orleans is announced: americandialect.org/2026-sked/ Also includes words-of-the-year information!
American Dialect Society 2026 Annual Meeting Conference Schedule
This is the schedule for the annual American Dialect Society meeting to be held in conjunction with the Linguistic Society of America Thursday, January 8, through Sunday, January 11, 2026…
americandialect.org
November 6, 2025 at 2:02 PM
Reposted by Kirby Conrod
americandialect.org
Make your 2025 words-of-the-year nominations for the only vote that matters! bit.ly/2025WOTYNOMS
November 6, 2025 at 2:20 PM
Reposted by Kirby Conrod
hatulimyafim.bsky.social
Perfect beautiful angels don't exis-
My tabby cat Dijon lying on the bed looking back at the camera with his eyes huge and his lips slightly apart
November 6, 2025 at 6:37 PM
Reposted by Kirby Conrod
gretchenmcc.bsky.social
Next in the LingComm IRL series:

Marisa Brook and Daniel Currie Hall doing demos and answering very enthusiastic high school students' questions at a Canadian university science summer program!
lingcomm.org/2025/11/05/l...
November 6, 2025 at 11:39 PM
Reposted by Kirby Conrod
dreardrgz.bsky.social
poster session #2 all done 🤍very happy to have had so many people let me yap about memes and the next steps of my CS project :) #nwav53
November 6, 2025 at 10:58 PM
Reposted by Kirby Conrod
mixedlinguist.bsky.social
In her #NWAV53 plenary, King discusses an example of a juror being dismissed from the pool due to forestressing in the word police (so PO-lice), because the prosecutor claimed that the pronunciation showed animus towards law enforcement. And this is exactly why I study prosody!
November 6, 2025 at 4:27 PM