Chi Luu
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Defining Writing
For JSTOR Daily, Chi Luu examines the long-conflicting ideas of whether writing is a form of technology or a separate dialect of its spoken form. Luu references the upcoming film Arrival and the sci-fi novella it’s based on, Ted Chiang’s…
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Searching for Your Next Band Name
For JSTOR Daily, linguist Chi Luu looks at the “my next band name” meme to identify not just trends in pairing interesting words, but also the social phenomenon of how we understand what words mean.
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Losing Language
At JSTOR Daily, linguist Chi Luu looks at language loss in victims of trauma, specifically trauma in wartime. Luu’s case studies range from a monolingual teenaged prisoner isolated in Guantanamo Bay to POWs in Russia isolated from their native cultures…
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The Art of Inventing Language
Chi Luu writes for JSTOR Daily on the popularity of invented languages, ranging from the mystical language created by a 12th century abbess to contemporary constructed languages such as Esperanto and Klingon. Invented languages found in literature are really examples…
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The (Im)Purity of Language
At JSTOR Daily, linguist Chi Luu makes a case for emphasizing grammar rules that follow popular usage, rather than the pedantic standards set by centuries-dead classicists. Here are the plain facts: many of these pop grammar rules… were magically pulled…
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The Last of Their Words
Chi Luu writes for JSTOR Daily on the rapid extinction of the world’s languages and linguists’ efforts to preserve these dying languages for future generations. On the surface, there isn’t anything wrong with people wanting to communicate with each other…