1. How can a tiny grammatical choice change the persuasive force of an opinion?

2. Why does present tense make a speaker sound more confident, and why does that confidence matter for persuasion?

3. What does verb tense reveal about the difference between sharing an experience and making a claim?

• What are some emerging linguistic trends in the workplace, and how do these trends vary by age or position in the company?

• Where does slang come from, how do we interpret different people’s uses of slang depending of age, gender, race, and sexuality?

• What is codeswitching, why do linguists study it, and why is it important to consider in business settings?

• Who codeswitches? Is race the only relevant demographic category for code-switching?

• What is the “freedom from codeswitching” movement, and is it realistic to eliminate codeswitching in business settings?

• What is swearing? Why do humans collectively decide that some words are “bad words”?

• How is swearing interpreted differently based on speaker and context? Where does the workplace fit into all of this?

• How do younger generations impact swearing norms in the workplace?

• What are “demographics”, what is the connection between language and demographics, and why is this important to consider in the workplace?

• What do linguists know about how individual interpretation of different speech patterns impacts our perception of demographic categories?