Key academic publications
- Erard, M. (2021). The death of Gregory Bateson, or why linguists should study language at the end of life. Language & Communication, 80, 114-123. doi: 10.1016/j.langcom.2021.06.003
- Erard, M. (2021). Beyond Last Words: Patterns of Linguistic and Interactional Behavior in a Historical Sample of Dying Hospital Patients. Omega-Journal of Death and Dying. doi: 0.1177/00302228211000938
- Erard, M. (2021). Concevoir une linguistique de la mort (note de recherche). Anthropologie et Sociétés, 95-108. doi: 10.7202/1083796ar.
- "Air Traffic Control for your Brain: The use of metaphor as a science communication tool." Journal of Applied Communication Research, 41(4), 2013. With Nathaniel Kendall-Taylor and Abigail Haydon.
- "Writing Centers in Professional Contexts," Writing Centers Journal. 2006.
- "Writing Consulting in the Wild," Praxis: A Writing Center Journal. Fall, 2003.
Key journalism
- "How can doctors find better ways to talk – and listen – to patients close to death?" Mosaic Science, Aug. 27, 2019.
- "David Foster Wallace’s Pen Pal," Paris Review Online, Aug. 9, 2019.
- "A Cultural History of First Words," The Paris Review Online, July 16, 2019.
- "The Mystery of Babies’ First Words," The Atlantic, April 30, 2019. Feature about babies’ vocabularies.
- "Pete Buttigieg’s Language Magic is Textbook Polyglot Mythmaking," The Atlantic, April 29, 2019.
- "What People Really Say Before They Die," The Atlantic, January 16, 2019.
- "Creating some slack," Aeon, Dec. 20, 2018.
- "Why You Can Understand a Language But Not Speak It," The Atlantic, Nov. 26, 2018.
- "What Adults Can Learn from Dutch Children’s Books," The New York Times, July 23, 2018.
- "The Deep Roots of Writing," Aeon, April 21, 2018.
- "Is this 100,000-year-old hashtag the first humanmade symbol—or just a pretty decoration?" Science, April 20, 2018.
- "How Your Online Style Gives You Away – And How to Hide it," New Scientist, Nov. 22, 2017.
- "Why Sign Language Gloves Don’t Help Deaf People," The Atlantic, Nov. 9, 2017.
- "How English has Evolved Like a Living Creature," Science, Nov. 1, 2017.
- "How the Appetite for Emojis Complicates the Effort to Standardize the World’s Alphabets," The New York Times Magazine, October 18, 2017.
- "Why Australia has One of the Biggest Language Families in the World," Science, Sept. 21, 2016.
- "ISIL demands many things of its top commanders, but good Arabic isn’t always one of them," Quartz, August 5, 2016.
- "ISIL isn’t merely tolerant of people who speak languages besides Arabic; it needs them," Quartz, August 4, 2016.
- "ISIL is using the language barriers within its ranks to evolve jihad beyond Arabic," Quartz, August 3, 2016.
- "Street talk," Aeon, April, 2016. People who speak more than one dialect may have the same cognitive benefits as bilinguals.
- "The Reason You Discriminate Against Foreign Accents Starts with What They Do to Your Brain," Quartz, February 25, 2016.
- "How Societies Learn to Count to 10, " Science, Oct. 7, 2015. How small-number systems evolve in hunter-gatherer languages.
- "What it means to talk like a Mainer," Down East, August 2015.
- "See Through Words," Aeon, June 19, 2015. Essay on metaphor design work.