“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 sound surprising and even amusing. Arnold Zwicky and Mark Liberman recently noted unusual verb conjugation. Non-standard pronouns can be equally interesting.
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The phrase, “women and children” to mean non-combatants killed by war strikes me as somewhat outdated.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 and children are not necessarily non-combatant. The phrase might risk a mis-recognition of the nature of political violence and its victims.
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 or explicit) constitutes a sort of “everyday language of Orientalism” parallel to Jane Hill’s everyday language of racism.
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 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