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cover of episode 87: Trans-Inclusive (with Andrew Perfors)

87: Trans-Inclusive (with Andrew Perfors)

2023/12/1
logo of podcast Because Language - a podcast about linguistics, the science of language.

Because Language - a podcast about linguistics, the science of language.

Shownotes Transcript

What is a woman? Or a man? Or a chair, or a sandwich? Or anything, really?

"Gender critical" people are making language into a vector to attack the rights of trans people. They treat categories like man and woman as binary and obvious.

But cognitive linguistics has a response, in the form of a new paper in Nature Human Behaviour. Are categories concrete, or are they mental, social, or something else? How do we categorise objects at all? Author Dr Andrew Perfors brings the science on this episode.