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.
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.
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.
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.
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. (you will need to subscribe to… Read More »Jimmy Smits SNL skit
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.
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 would be a great opportunity.
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) [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICsHscXzXw0[/youtube]
See 8:27-9:38 in this episode of MacGuyver for a Hollywood portrayal of Injun English http://www.cbs.com/classics/macgyver/video/?pid=oBrc4c2saVHcDEu5v_LJhILTs6IMa4mX&vs=&play=true (8:27-9:38)
Examples of Mock Asian Margaret Cho http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAmcPS6xoZA&feature=related (8:32-end) [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAmcPS6xoZA&feature=related[/youtube] Gedde Watanabe (Long Duk Dong) on NPR http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=88591800
On the “Late Show,” David Letterman aired a new segment in 2009 called the “Sonia Sotomayor Pronunciation Round-Up.” The video, found at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/02/lettermans-sonia-sotomayo_n_210264.html shows the myriad ways… Read More »Justice Sotomayor’s name
AAA video Race: Are You So Different?
This clip from the TV show Friends demonstrates a media representation of male and female interactional styles. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGoC8FTLKSI&feature=related [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGoC8FTLKSI&feature=related[/youtube]
This website demonstrates regional variation in pronunciation with examples of how people in different parts of the US pronounce the word “bought.” http://www.utexas.edu/courses/linguistics/resources/socioling/boughtmap/index.html Creole, Gullah* http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPGx1icFdLQ… Read More »Regional variation in pronunciation/ dialect map
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPGx1icFdLQ[/youtube] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPGx1icFdLQ John Baugh discusses linguistic profiling (see also: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KCL97s1lJg). [youtube]https://youtu.be/3KCL97s1lJg[/youtube] It also discusses the creolist theory of the origins of African American English. Around… Read More »Linguistic profiling, history of AAVE, Gullah
This video shows an example of the endangered Smith Island dialect of English