Podcasting past the paywall: How diverse media allows more equitable participation in linguistic science

Abstract

Abstract The paywall blocks broad participation in scientific discourse, and it is both financial and psychological. The financial paywall makes access to peer-reviewed research prohibitively expensive for many researchers. The psychological paywall refers to the gatekeeping nature of academic language. Elites hoard the products of scientific research and gatekeep membership in the specialist communities via arcane vocabulary and discourse structures, together with imposition of a tone that demands dispassionate engagement with topics that are urgent and painful to the participants of their research. To exclude the perspectives of those outside the ivory tower is to dismiss unique experiences and epistemologies, essentially blocking diversity of thought in linguistic science. A range of tools is needed to undermine this power structure. Here I highlight one, which is diverse media, in general, and podcasting, specifically. Podcasting brings diverse views into the conversation and allows racially offensive ideas to be understood as such so they can then be challenged. I present the case study of the putative so-called “30-million-word gap”—the claim that, by the time they are four years old, historically marginalized children are exposed to thirty million fewer words than middle- and upper-class white children. I use this notion, which is preposterous on its face, to illustrate the emancipatory potential of the podcast medium.