Leigh Crymble, a Behavioural Linguist and Amy Carmichael, a Data Analyst started a passion project about Caster Semenya.

Leigh, flew down to Cape Town to be on Tea Time with Bailey, and I’m grateful for her effort.

Over the past several months they’ve been analysing online conversations about Caster Semenya, and put together an analysis of what their findings were – inadvertently, it became a South African love letter to someone so dearly considered as a national hero.

Take a listen:

Part 1: Showing how much South African’s care about Caster Mokgadi Semenya wasn’t the initial objective they had, when they started their research, so we chat about how this project came about. Listen here:

Part 2: Leigh and Amy had 40 000 Tweets to analyse, so I asked how they went about their research, what their findings were and what surprised them the most. Listen here:

Part 3: I wanted to know if Caster Semenya has read the report. We got Amy(who sadly couldn’t join us) on the phone to find out what she took away from being a part of this project and we find out what’s next for the two of them.

It’s pretty interesting to see the way the language users have a choice in how we interact linguistically, and the timing couldn’t have been more perfect – especially in Women’s Month.

To read the full report I am Caster. Caster is Me click here: