The Linguistic Society of America is pleased to name Ben Zimmer as the first recipient of our Linguistics Journalism Award. Zimmer is well-known for his linguistic contributions to mainstream media, most notably as the language columnist for the Wall Street Journal.

Ben Zimmer headshot

The Linguistics Journalism Award, newly established by the LSA in 2014, honors "the journalist whose work best represents linguistics during the 12-month consideration period indicated in the call for nominations". (This year's consideration period ran from June 1, 2013 to May 31, 2014.) In addition to his work for the Wall Street Journal, Zimmer has recently written articles on linguistic topics for the Boston Globe, The Atlantic, Slate's "Lexicon Valley" blog, and Language Log, among other media. Zimmer is also the executive producer of Vocabulary.com and the Visual Thesaurus.

The Linguistics Journalism Award is the seventh of the 2015 LSA Awards to be announced; the final award for this year, the Leonard Bloomfield Book Award, will be announced in the coming weeks. All LSA awards will be presented at the 2015 LSA Annual Meeting on Saturday, January 10, 5:30 PM PT at the Hilton Portland & Executive Tower.