The Linguistic Society of America (LSA) annual meeting has been happening, so loads of linguists I know are in New Orleans and I've got FOMO. Some of them are tweeting a lot and those people are heroes.
There seems to be a really strong theme this year focussing on race. At least, that's what I'm seeing on twitter - I don't know if it feels like a strong theme if you're sitting in the sessions on syntax or whatever. And that's actually part of the issue (as noted by Kirby Conrod here): talks on race and linguistics (and other 'social' stuff) are likely programmed as a special session, so you're either in 'proper' linguistics or you're in the talks on race, which is not going to bring those talks to the attention of people who aren't already interested in them, if you know what I mean.
Anyway, lots of really important and interesting stuff has been said at this conference, which I have been able to hear about because of the wonders of twitter and the free labour of the live tweeters (thank you again). For instance, Kendra Calhoun talked about how to encourage Black students to take up linguistics by having a Black-centred intro linguistics class. This is in the US, where linguistics is often a 'discovery major', and where there are Historically Black Colleges, as opposed to the UK where there are no such things and where you pick your subject before you start, but the principles of the talk seem to be pretty universal: ground the subject in things the students will be interested in.
For us, at my university, we have around a quarter to a third of students who are BAME (Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic - this is the term standardly used in the UK, and yes it is not ideal but it's the classification we use). The majority of these (in linguistics, at least) are Black British students.
Now, I'm going to try to articulate something and hopefully not make a mess of it. In the UK, people do not like to hear that systems and structures are racist. Stormzy highlighted that one quite nicely recently (more on that another day, maybe, as there are things to say about intensifiers). But they also don't think about race as being an issue here. I don't know if that's just a UK thing, but the default is always to say 'but gender!' or 'but working class!' and highlight gender or class as the relevant issue to whatever has been mentioned. Now, this in itself is a product of a racist society: to position gender or class in opposition to race means that you're talking about white women or the white working class. Including all working class people would include a lot of Black people too. I don't know the statistics nationwide, but among our students, Black students are disproportionately the first in their family to attend university or from a lower socioeconomic background, i.e. the proxy for working class.
So this tweet from Juan Luna Díaz-Durán seemed kind of relevant. He says (possibly quoting a conference speaker?) that when departments say they 'don't do sociolinguistics', they mean they 'don't do Black people'. Most linguistics departments in the UK do do sociolinguistics, I think, but that doesn't necessarily mean they talk about race at all. Traditionally, sociolinguistics focussed on dialect by looking at what are called NORMs, Non-mobile Older Rural Men, who have the most preserved older dialect forms. They're white, of course. Nowadays, there are lots of people who are looking at race/ethnicity and language, but because it's newer as a field, it's slow to find its way into our modules. Many of the best scholars are still doing their PhDs or not yet in full-time teaching jobs. Compounding this problem is the lack of confidence that most people have in talking about race, because it is such a taboo subject - we've been trained 'not to see colour'. So sociolinguistics classes can talk about classic studies of language variation and class and gender all term, and never once mention the literal language that many of our students speak, Multicultural London English, a variety that is absolutely linked to class, region, age, gender and ethnicity (despite the name).
This would be an ideal 'way in' to linguistics for students - their own language is new and emerging and interesting. Our inbuilt racism tells us that this is a minority subject, so it's best to stick to something universal like class - forgetting that just as we all have a 'class' (that doesn't mean much any more) we all have a racialised identity. Not to include discussion of race is to erase that part of our identity and perpetuate the whiteness and racism that exists in the field.
Monday, 6 January 2020
Tuesday, 3 December 2019
Strike strike strike
I'm on strike this week. My union, UCU, has called eight days of strike action over pensions (at many universities, not mine as we didn't reach the ridiculously high 50% turnout threshold), pay, workload, equality, and casualisation. Around 50% of staff are on precarious contracts, there's a 30% ethnicity promotion gap, we're working an average of 2 free days per week (much more for part time staff), and pay has fallen in real terms by 15% in the last ten years. The corporatisation of Higher Education has meant universities chase more and more students but the resources aren't there to teach them. My class sizes are two-thirds bigger than when I started teaching, and I'm not even that old.
Some people think we don't care about students, if we strike. Colleagues who don't strike may say they couldn't, because they care about students too much. Managers may say that we shouldn't, if we care about students. I know colleagues whose main role is to deal with students in need; I too would think twice about striking if that were the case for me, because the consequences for those students might be too harmful. But to say that we don't care about our students couldn't be further from the truth. We hate doing this. Everyone feels horrible about the effect it could have, and that it should not be the students who should suffer. But the fact is that we can't do anything else, and the students themselves understand that and have clearly shown their support (not least the amazing student union members who brought us tea and coffee!). And remember that we don't get paid. We're not being selfish; we're losing a lot more money than many of think we are realistically likely to gain. But if there is a chance we can change things, we have to try, and we have to show that we do care, to send a clear message that we cannot go on like this.
And I do love my job. I miss it. I'm looking forward to going back on Thursday. It's a genuine effort to not do work on strike days. I'm lucky in that respect, and I do appreciate it. I'm glad to have the job, and know that I'm in a fortunate position. But lots of my colleagues do the same job as me for a fraction of the pay. My students deserve more people like me - on a relatively secure contract, able to put in the time their education deserves because I don't have to constantly apply for another position or work another job to make ends meet. They deserve to see a world where they can succeed if they aren't a middle class white man. They deserve a good education, not to buy a degree that meets the requirements.
Some people think we don't care about students, if we strike. Colleagues who don't strike may say they couldn't, because they care about students too much. Managers may say that we shouldn't, if we care about students. I know colleagues whose main role is to deal with students in need; I too would think twice about striking if that were the case for me, because the consequences for those students might be too harmful. But to say that we don't care about our students couldn't be further from the truth. We hate doing this. Everyone feels horrible about the effect it could have, and that it should not be the students who should suffer. But the fact is that we can't do anything else, and the students themselves understand that and have clearly shown their support (not least the amazing student union members who brought us tea and coffee!). And remember that we don't get paid. We're not being selfish; we're losing a lot more money than many of think we are realistically likely to gain. But if there is a chance we can change things, we have to try, and we have to show that we do care, to send a clear message that we cannot go on like this.
And I do love my job. I miss it. I'm looking forward to going back on Thursday. It's a genuine effort to not do work on strike days. I'm lucky in that respect, and I do appreciate it. I'm glad to have the job, and know that I'm in a fortunate position. But lots of my colleagues do the same job as me for a fraction of the pay. My students deserve more people like me - on a relatively secure contract, able to put in the time their education deserves because I don't have to constantly apply for another position or work another job to make ends meet. They deserve to see a world where they can succeed if they aren't a middle class white man. They deserve a good education, not to buy a degree that meets the requirements.
Tuesday, 19 November 2019
The universal taxi
I was listening to the radio this morning and they were talking about linguistics. I feel very conflicted about this because I love hearing real, proper linguistics on the radio! It's so rare! but the linguist in question has expressed anti-trans attitudes in the recent past and so I can't call myself a fan. But there we go; they at least weren't discussing such issues so they didn't express them in the course of this conversation.
They were talking about demonstratives, this and that. It was a nice discussion, lots of information, and fun facts about proximal and distal demonstratives (this here vs that there) and how these change in context, and also how many languages have a three-way system with a medium-distance and a far-distance one.
And finally they talked about how pronouns are universal: all languages have them. This is indeed super cool, and basically indicates that they are a Very Important and Useful language feature. Any language that didn't have them for some reason would likely innovate them pretty sharpish, and home signs include them, for instance.
Then someone wrote in to say that 'Interestingly, one word that is universal is 'taxi''. This is interesting, but it's not the same thing. Taxi is 'universal' because it's been borrowed into lots of languages. I'd actually be surprised if it's truly universal in the sense that every single language has this word. There are presumably a few where the concept hasn't been needed and lots more where in fact there's a different word meaning 'private car and driver hired for single journeys', or whatever it is that taxi means. A quick google looks like in quite a lot of languages familiar to English speakers, the word for 'taxi' is something like taxi, which does give an impression of universality from this vantage point. And the 'universal' part is the specific form of the word ('taxi'), with a certain meaning.
Pronouns are universal in a different way. The words are not the same in every language (me, your, we, etc). They haven't been borrowed. There is a lot of historical relatedness, to be sure; it's no coincidence that we looks like German wir. But the very fact that there are pronouns is what's universal. This is fundamentally more interesting than that a particular word has been borrowed a lot. (By the way, here is a study that says that the most universal word is 'huh'.)
They were talking about demonstratives, this and that. It was a nice discussion, lots of information, and fun facts about proximal and distal demonstratives (this here vs that there) and how these change in context, and also how many languages have a three-way system with a medium-distance and a far-distance one.
And finally they talked about how pronouns are universal: all languages have them. This is indeed super cool, and basically indicates that they are a Very Important and Useful language feature. Any language that didn't have them for some reason would likely innovate them pretty sharpish, and home signs include them, for instance.
Then someone wrote in to say that 'Interestingly, one word that is universal is 'taxi''. This is interesting, but it's not the same thing. Taxi is 'universal' because it's been borrowed into lots of languages. I'd actually be surprised if it's truly universal in the sense that every single language has this word. There are presumably a few where the concept hasn't been needed and lots more where in fact there's a different word meaning 'private car and driver hired for single journeys', or whatever it is that taxi means. A quick google looks like in quite a lot of languages familiar to English speakers, the word for 'taxi' is something like taxi, which does give an impression of universality from this vantage point. And the 'universal' part is the specific form of the word ('taxi'), with a certain meaning.
Pronouns are universal in a different way. The words are not the same in every language (me, your, we, etc). They haven't been borrowed. There is a lot of historical relatedness, to be sure; it's no coincidence that we looks like German wir. But the very fact that there are pronouns is what's universal. This is fundamentally more interesting than that a particular word has been borrowed a lot. (By the way, here is a study that says that the most universal word is 'huh'.)
Monday, 30 September 2019
He said she said
Normally when I read a China Miéville novel, I blog or tweet the whole way through because the language he uses is so exciting and lovely. True to form, I read The Scar recently and I have Thoughts.
The leaders of the city Armada are The Lovers, a couple (one male, one female) whose names we never learn. They're both simply referred to as The Lovers when they're talked about as a couple, or The Lover when they're referred to alone. The image below, of p.731 from my copy, is typical of the way they are described.
Each of the two Lovers speaks in turn, the man first, and then the woman. Here's the relevant bit from the first part, where he speaks (you can tell because the male pronoun 'he' is used):
These expressions include as part of their meaning the notion of uniqueness. Using the implies that there is only one of the thing you're referring to, or at least only one in the relevant context. So if there's more than one, like with the girls example, you have to add in something that makes each the only one (like the first girl), so that the two referring expressions refer to different things. In the Lovers example, there is just one referring expression and so it should refer to just one unique thing. But it doesn't; it refers to either of the two Lovers. Without making any concession by saying, for instance, the male Lover, Miéville flouts this expectation of uniqueness, creating a very unsettling effect.
The leaders of the city Armada are The Lovers, a couple (one male, one female) whose names we never learn. They're both simply referred to as The Lovers when they're talked about as a couple, or The Lover when they're referred to alone. The image below, of p.731 from my copy, is typical of the way they are described.
 |
| Image of p.731 of The Scar, with dialogue of each Lover speaking in turn. |
'Many of those who are dead,' the Lover began... and in that way... he continued.And then the female Lover speaks, which you can tell because of the female pronoun 'her':
'We are very close,' the Lover said, and an edge of excitement crept into her voice.The interesting thing about it is the way that Miéville doesn't make any distinction between the two Lovers' names beyond using the relevant pronouns where appropriate. The Lover is what we call an R-expression, or referring expression. It's a definite noun phrase and it works basically just like a name. Imagine that you had two people called Billie speaking in a dialogue. You'd differentiate between them by using maybe the initial of their surname, like 'Billie J began... Billie C responded...'. Or if you were talking about two girls chatting, you'd say 'The first girl said... the other girl replied...'.
These expressions include as part of their meaning the notion of uniqueness. Using the implies that there is only one of the thing you're referring to, or at least only one in the relevant context. So if there's more than one, like with the girls example, you have to add in something that makes each the only one (like the first girl), so that the two referring expressions refer to different things. In the Lovers example, there is just one referring expression and so it should refer to just one unique thing. But it doesn't; it refers to either of the two Lovers. Without making any concession by saying, for instance, the male Lover, Miéville flouts this expectation of uniqueness, creating a very unsettling effect.
Thursday, 26 September 2019
Pope Francis says no adjectives; I'm going to hell
If you like to take your grammar advice from authority, you'll enjoy the fact that Pope Francis has decreed that we shouldn't use adjectives. Specifically, he has said that his communications team shouldn't use adjectives. He twote thus:
Let us learn to call people by their name, as the Lord does with us, and to give up using adjectives.And in a speech, he said:
The communicator must make people understand the weight of the reality of nouns that reflect the reality of people. And this is a mission of communication: to communicate with reality, without sweetening with adjectives or adverbs.He didn't use adjectives to say this, either, impressively. I'm trying not to use adjectives in this blog post and I think I've succeeded so far, with difficulty. So much difficulty, in fact, that I'm stopping now, with the observation that you shouldn't take the Pope's advice on this or probably anything else.
Tuesday, 17 September 2019
Croiffle: The verdict
On my way home from the Linguistics Association of Great Britain annual meeting last week, this advert on the train (too late, I was already on my way to Kent at this point) offered me a free speciality coffee with purchase of their new 'croiffle'.
A croiffle?, you might ask. And what is a croiffle? Using my linguistic skills, honed over the course of the last fifteen years of intensive linguistic training, I intuited that it is a croissant of some kind (see image) with something unspeakable done to it. Obviously this is a blend, or portmanteau, of croissant and, I assume, waffle, as it's apparently been toasted in a waffle machine. Why you would do this, I do not know.
But how do you pronounce it? While I and a friend both went with the vowel of croissant (slightly different for each of us, with his being more similar to the French than mine (/ɒ/ vs /ʌ/)), another friend said it as she saw it and used the oi of, well, Oi!. And a portmanteau that no one knows how to pronounce is an unsuccessful new word, especially if it's also just a toasted croissant that's a bit bumpy.
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| Advert offering a free coffee if you buy a 'croiffle' |
But how do you pronounce it? While I and a friend both went with the vowel of croissant (slightly different for each of us, with his being more similar to the French than mine (/ɒ/ vs /ʌ/)), another friend said it as she saw it and used the oi of, well, Oi!. And a portmanteau that no one knows how to pronounce is an unsuccessful new word, especially if it's also just a toasted croissant that's a bit bumpy.
Tuesday, 3 September 2019
Spotting a fake
Fake news is big news these days. Mostly, it's in the context of Donald Trump complaining about it, or alternatively being supported by it. There are millions of fake twitter accounts all tweeting away in support of something or other, or to try and scam something. Last week, Marc Owen Jones described his lengthy relationship with someone who was probably not who he claimed to be:
This is something that you'd think linguists ought to be good at. It's something that linguists sometimes end up working in, at least: forensic linguistics is the analysis of texts to detect or solve crimes, and it's all about looking for (in)consistencies, patterns and giveaways in the text to tell you who did or didn't write it. Therefore, linguists have turned their hand to various genres of fake news, reviews and tweets to determine how we can spot them. (I should note, you do need a postgraduate qualification to work in these areas, and/or experience - you don't just magically learn how to do it by being a linguist in general.)
The best I've done is with these emails that have been arriving lately, the kind that look like they come from someone you know. In my case, it's nearly always either David Adger or my Head of School, because I think they pick on someone who sounds like they're senior to you, and then the email says something like 'Are you free? I need a favour urgently'. But they're on to a loser here, because at the very least, I can recognise the writing style of people I know. I also know that these highly educated people would not make the kinds of mistakes that these emails contain, even if they were typing in the midst of great angst and favour-needing. Their emails might be short, lacking capitalisation, or be sentence fragments, but they wouldn't have odd exclamation marks, strange spacing or ungrammatical wording.
I tried a quiz recently to see if I could tell which product reviews were real and which were fake; I did terribly, no better than chance. I had read that you might see too many technical details in fake ones, superlatives, or lack of personal detail, and still I couldn't pick the fake from the real. It's actually put me off online shopping a bit.[Thread] As promised, today I want to tell you of how I became friends with a Twitter troll called Angus Gallagher. Angus recently had a sex/ethnicity reassignment operation. He is now called Jasmine, but we'll come to that a bit later. First though, say hi to Angus #StopTheCoup pic.twitter.com/z9cjTZxkxo— Marc Owen Jones (@marcowenjones) August 31, 2019
This is something that you'd think linguists ought to be good at. It's something that linguists sometimes end up working in, at least: forensic linguistics is the analysis of texts to detect or solve crimes, and it's all about looking for (in)consistencies, patterns and giveaways in the text to tell you who did or didn't write it. Therefore, linguists have turned their hand to various genres of fake news, reviews and tweets to determine how we can spot them. (I should note, you do need a postgraduate qualification to work in these areas, and/or experience - you don't just magically learn how to do it by being a linguist in general.)
The best I've done is with these emails that have been arriving lately, the kind that look like they come from someone you know. In my case, it's nearly always either David Adger or my Head of School, because I think they pick on someone who sounds like they're senior to you, and then the email says something like 'Are you free? I need a favour urgently'. But they're on to a loser here, because at the very least, I can recognise the writing style of people I know. I also know that these highly educated people would not make the kinds of mistakes that these emails contain, even if they were typing in the midst of great angst and favour-needing. Their emails might be short, lacking capitalisation, or be sentence fragments, but they wouldn't have odd exclamation marks, strange spacing or ungrammatical wording.
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