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Another possible definition of “socialist”

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 mean ‘insufficiently religious’? If so, their usage parallels that of Osama bin Laden.

The birth of a shibboleth

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 audiophiles. Since the form was regular (‘vinyls’) during the 1960s, I conjecture that the irregular form must have arisen relatively recently.

Can analysis of discrimination help overcome fear?

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 face discrimination based on vague fears of radioactivity or other danger. Nilep expresses hope that academic work can make a positive contribution to recovery.

Digital ethnography of linguistic multitasking in World of Warcraft

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 of World of Warcraft game players. Players use text, voice-over-IP talk, and face-to-face talk to accomplish distinct functions.

Jimmy Smits SNL skit

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/

Sophmoric application of readability tests

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 has taken an anti-intellectual turn of late, but the story shows flawed methods coupled with confirmation bias.