Dan Walter
spracheistleben.bsky.social
Dan Walter
@spracheistleben.bsky.social
Associate Professor of German and Linguistics at Emory University. Researcher in Second Language Acquisition with foci in Psycholinguistics, Language Pedagogy, and Morphosyntax. General interest in and love for anything and everything linguistics related
So proud of my undergrad for their work and their brave question in my German 101 class 4 year ago that started the project: "What pronoun should I use if I don't identify as male or female?" All I said was, "I don't know, why don't we find out together?"

utppublishing.com/doi/10.3138/...
Beyond xier: An Exploration of German Nonbinary Pronoun Usage and Discourse on Twitter | Gender and Language
Abstract Neopronouns are new pronouns created to address perceived gaps in the standard pronoun system. In the German language, neopronouns have neither stabilized around norms of usage nor has any singular neopronoun risen to prominence over others. However, many sources available to educators and researchers in a US context have foregrounded the neopronoun xier based on a small number of resources. To address this possible misrepresentation in the current pedagogical and linguistic literature, we conducted a study on nonbinary pronoun usage by German speakers on Twitter. Our findings indicate several neopronouns in use, with they, xier, dey, and sier being the most frequent. Further analysis indicated that these pronouns are often used in different ways by different speakers. These results document the unstable nature of neopronouns in the German-speaking world and provide a foundation for future neopronoun research.
utppublishing.com
October 10, 2025 at 1:58 AM
Reposted by Dan Walter
I wrote this for my US friends and colleagues, but also for all of us. Lessons from the past. open.substack.com/pub/verakemp...
Scholarship Under Autocracy
We Have Been Here Before
open.substack.com
February 25, 2025 at 7:17 AM
Very excited that the Special Issue of Die Unterrichtspraxis/Teaching German on trans and non-binary issues in the L2 German classroom is coming together! The full special issue will be released in the fall 25 issue but articles are coming out. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/17561221...
#linguistics
Die Unterrichtspraxis/Teaching German: Vol 0, No 0
<em>Die Unterrichtspraxis/Teaching German</em> is a German education journal devoted to the improvement & innovation of teaching and learning German language & culture.
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
June 27, 2025 at 10:16 PM
Very excited that the Special Issue of Die Unterrichtspraxis/Teaching German on trans and non-binary issues in the L2 German classroom is coming together! The full special issue will be released in the fall 25 issue but articles are coming out in Early View. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/17561221...
Die Unterrichtspraxis/Teaching German: Vol 0, No 0
<em>Die Unterrichtspraxis/Teaching German</em> is a German education journal devoted to the improvement & innovation of teaching and learning German language & culture.
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
June 27, 2025 at 10:09 PM
How are my fellow academics with kids holding up? Although I just got tenure last year, I'm feeling so exhausted managing my classes, service, and research with 3 young kids at home. This job gives me the flexibility to be there for them, but trying to be good at everything is frying my brain.
April 18, 2025 at 1:09 PM
Reposted by Dan Walter
Reposted by Dan Walter
You can now find three of the authors on bluesky!
@damianblasi.bsky.social
@asifamajid.bsky.social
@evangelia.bsky.social
Overreliance on English hinders cognitive science

– premature claims of universality (due to over-sampling of English speakers)

– limited cognitive constructs being examined (due to the use of English as a meta-language)

(doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2022.09.015) 🐦🐦
December 4, 2024 at 4:48 PM