Chad Nilep
Linguistic Anthropology Roundup #15
There hasn’t been a Roundup post made since September, and I have a horrible sinking feeling that the person who was meant to post the missing Roundups was me. So with apologies and without further delay, here is Roundup #15.
Ellen F. Prince
Ellen F. Prince, Professor Emerita of Linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania, died in her home in Philadelphia on Sunday 24 October. The Linguistics Society of America (via an email to members) and Language Log have reproduced an announcement from the University of Pennsylvania. Although Professor Prince was not an anthropologist ― her work on [...]
Multikulti in context
Ingrid Piller at Language on the Move looks and English-medium news coverage of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s recent declaration, “Multikulti ist absolut gescheitert.” Piller says that the English language press largely seems to misunderstand the comments.
Macaronic Orthography; or The Devill Kis his 肛門
My commute to my new job at Nagoya University this morning revealed that macarone is alive and well among Japanese taggers.
John McWhorter on Talk of the Nation
Yesterday John McWhorter discussed the recent call by the DEA to hire “Ebonics translators” on Talk of the Nation. He did a good job describing his positions on translation and education, but his parting remarks on the nature of language variation were cut short. I presume to expand the description.
Linguistic Anthropology Roundup #13
Roundup #13 looks at fear of the number thirteen, as well as the study of WEIRD subjects in psychology.
They are them; we are me and others.
Stanley Fish notes that critics of the so-called ‘Ground Zero mosque’ see the terrorist attacks of September 11 as an act committed by Islam, for which all Muslims are responsible. In contrast, the stabbing of a cab driver by an attacker who reportedly asked the driver if he is Muslim is seen as “the act of a disturbed individual,” not a representative of an anti-Islamic position.
Linguistic Anthropology Roundup #9
This week’s Roundup comes from the sports department.
Caster Semenya, gender tests, and bodies out of place
Sumo scandal
World Cup woo woo
North American English Dialect Survey
From Claire Bowern:
Some colleagues at the University of Auckland and I are conducting a survey on North American English and trialling the use of flash web recording for phonetic analysis. If you would like to participate by recording a short wordlist, please visit our web site.
Idioms are hard
Carl-Henric Svanberg, the chairman of BP, has apparently upset some Americans with his reference to “the small people.” My first reaction when I heard Svanberg’s remarks was that he must have been aiming for “the little guy” and produced a near miss.
