Recently I have been re-reading James Thurber’s “Ladies’ and Gentlemen’s Guide to English Usage”, a parody of Henry Watson Fowler’s Dictionary of Modern English Usage.… Read More »Ladies, Gentlemen, and English usage
“Variable or non-standard realizations of inflectional morphology in English” sounds rather dry and academic, but the placement of suffixes within compound words or phrases can… Read More »Variation in inflectional morphology
Dear Graduate Students, This year, the American Ethnological Society (AES) is sponsoring three faculty-students workshops to provide an intimate environment for discussing issues important to… Read More »AAA Workshops for Graduate Student SLA and AES Memebrs
The phrase, “women and children” to mean non-combatants killed by war strikes me as somewhat outdated. Non-combatants are not necessarily women or children, and women… Read More »Is “women and children” an outdated cliche?
Ethnic distinctions are drawn among specific Jewish sub-communities in Mexico City. Ashkenazi, Sefaradi, and non-Jews tend to evaluate Syrian Jews negatively. This negative evaluation (implicit… Read More »Syrian Jewish Mexicans and the Language of Everyday Orientalism
Due to a discrepancy in posted dates, submissions for the undergraduate student essay contest will be accepted until July 15.
The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer says conservative Evangelical Christians view President Obama as “the avatar of godless socialism”. Do American Christian conservatives use ‘socialist’ to… Read More »Another possible definition of “socialist”
Record fans insist that the plural of ‘vinyl’ to mean “a vinyl record” is the zero-plural ‘vinyl’. This irregular form serves as a shibboleth for… Read More »The birth of a shibboleth
Chad Nilep reflects on work with Akiyo Cantrell to analyze reports from the Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011 and its aftermath. Evacuees from Fukushima… Read More »Can analysis of discrimination help overcome fear?
Lauren Collister, a Ph.D. candidate in sociolinguistics at the University of Pittsburgh, describes how digital ethnography deepened her understanding of multimodal communication within a team… Read More »Digital ethnography of linguistic multitasking in World of Warcraft
Here are some films that people on the linganth list have mentioned as good to show in class: Mickey Mouse Monopoly (good with Lippi-Green): http://www.mediaed.org/cgi-bin/commerce.cgi?preadd=action&key=112 Multilingual… Read More »Films to show in class
This is the famous Jimmy Smits SNL skit that Jane Hill talks about in her discussion of Mock Spanish. https://www.onesnladay.com/2019/05/
NPR’s Morning Edition and the Sunlight Foundation suggest that congressional speech-making is becoming less sophisticated. The presentation appears to validate conventional wisdom that American politics… Read More »Sophmoric application of readability tests
The 2013 LSA Linguistic Institute is currently soliciting proposals for workshops and conferences. If you’ve been thinking about a workshop you’d like to create, this… Read More »Call for workshops at 2013 LSA Linguistic Institute
On behalf of the SLA Executive Committee, I invite you to participate in this year’s Society for Linguistic Anthropology student essay prize competition for the… Read More »SLA Undergraduate Student Essay Contest
This HUD video on housing discrimination shows a White man taking on various accents when making phone calls to ask about apts for rent. Useful… Read More »Linguistic profiling
Many of the clips in the 2001 film Mickey Mouse Monopoly: Disney, Childhood, and Corporate Power are useful for pairing with Lippi Green http://www.mediaed.org/cgi-bin/commerce.cgi?preadd=action&key=112… Read More »Language and character in Disney movies
Black Comedian Steve Harvey compares white and black communication styles. He imitates a white man’s voice at 2:35-4:13. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICsHscXzXw0 (2:35-4:13) [Video no longer available due… Read More »Steve Harvey’s white voice
Several episodes of MacGuyver included Hollywood portrayals of “Injun” English. MacGuyver is not currently available to stream, but episodes including Season 4, Episode 9: “Cleo… Read More »Hollywood Injun English in MacGuyver
Examples of Mock Asian Margaret Cho gave examples of Mock Asian http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAmcPS6xoZA&feature=related (8:32-end) [Video no longer available on YouTube]. Gedde Watanabe (Long Duk Dong) on… Read More »Mock Asian in Margaret Cho and Long Duk Dong