tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19292845789303725622024-03-13T04:41:14.770+00:00Linguistics Research DigestBlogging on language issuesSuehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05100573030401547729noreply@blogger.comBlogger219125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1929284578930372562.post-88785441729040984012021-06-24T14:08:00.001+01:002021-06-24T14:12:31.188+01:00<h2 style="text-align: left;">In the name of the law, stop the disrespect!</h2><div><div>The killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis USA in May 2020 raised questions about the impartiality of police officers when dealing with the public and particularly those from black and ethnic minorities. Six years earlier, in 2014, a team of researchers from Stanford University investigated exactly this issue by using footage from police body-worn cameras to analyse the language they used during routine traffic stops in the multiethnic city of Oakland in California. </div><div><br /></div><div>The researchers transcribed footage from 981 traffic stops of both black and white drivers, which were conducted by 245 different officers during a period of one month. Participants in the study were given transcripts of these interactions without knowing the race, age or sex of the drivers. They were then asked to rate the respect shown by the officers through placing their language on a gradient, showing how respectful, polite, friendly and formal they were. The research team used a model based on linguistic theories of respect where respectful language includes apologising, being grateful, expressing concern for the other person and softening commands to reduce confrontation. </div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-wPDSrStAfIg/YNSDor9F3gI/AAAAAAAADXI/G96p3nA0uUs2WW79f_kdqdAifK_RKXIZwCLcBGAsYHQ/ct-drivers-ed-police-stops-illinois-law-met-20160906-1024x693-1024x693.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="693" data-original-width="1024" height="217" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-wPDSrStAfIg/YNSDor9F3gI/AAAAAAAADXI/G96p3nA0uUs2WW79f_kdqdAifK_RKXIZwCLcBGAsYHQ/ct-drivers-ed-police-stops-illinois-law-met-20160906-1024x693-1024x693.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /></div><div>The results demonstrate that, although officers used the same levels of formality for both black and white drivers, they were rated as significantly less respectful, polite or friendly to black drivers than they were to whites. Even after controlling for the severity of the traffic offence, the length and outcome of the stop and the race of the officers themselves, interactions with white drivers were consistently more respectful. In fact, 57% of white drivers were more likely to hear an officer say one of the most respectful phrases (e.g. “sir”, “thank you”) in the transcripts whereas black drivers were 61% more likely to hear one of the least respectful (e.g. “hands on the wheel”, or use of first name). </div><div><br /></div><div>The researchers conclude that the racial disparities in their study are clear, however the causes of them are not. They write that these disparities could have far-reaching effects as personal interactions with the police build a community’s opinion about them and ultimately lead to a relationship of trust or distrust. They suggest that future research could expand body camera footage beyond just text to audio features such as intonation and video features such as facial expression, to try and investigate how interactions progress and sometimes break down. This could be invaluable in informing police officer training and to establish better relationships with the communities they serve. </div></div><div><br /></div><div>------------------------</div><div><div>Voigt, Rob, Nicholas Camp, Vinodkumar Prabhakaran, William Hamilton, Rebecca Hetey, Camilla Griffiths, David Jurgens, Dan Jurafsky, and Jennifer Eberhardt. 2017. Language from police body camera footage shows racial disparities in officer respect. PNAS 114 (25): 6521-6526.</div><div><br /></div><div>https://www.pnas.org/content/114/25/6521</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>This summary was written by Gemma Stoyle</div></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><p> </p><p></p>Devyani Sharmahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01569251556209536299noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1929284578930372562.post-31886963677268984202021-05-27T23:08:00.014+01:002021-05-27T23:13:43.506+01:00#Covid-19<p><span style="font-family: inherit;">The past year has affected all of us in one way or another but have you ever thought about what effect it may have had on our language? Philipp Wicke and Mariana Bolognesi did just that in their study of thousands of tweets posted during March and April 2020.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;">Due to social distancing measures, people were quick to use social media platforms like Twitter to connect with others and express their feelings, sending around 16,000 tweets an hour with hashtags like #coronavirus, #Covid-19 and #Covid. The researchers wanted to explore this online discourse and were particularly interested in how the pandemic was discussed using the metaphor of war. Discourse about disease has often been found to use this metaphor and cancer patients frequently complain that they are described as being in a 'battle' with the illness, which they find negative and unhelpful. With this in mind, Wicke and Bolognesi decided to also explore other figurative ways in which Covid was being described.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-p7y5aiV-9Lk/YLAXKOQRhpI/AAAAAAAADUM/Ew6OddgoxcUVoAWWpIwHfY0vLgyCKtU8gCLcBGAsYHQ/covid-twitter.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="627" data-original-width="940" height="239" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-p7y5aiV-9Lk/YLAXKOQRhpI/AAAAAAAADUM/Ew6OddgoxcUVoAWWpIwHfY0vLgyCKtU8gCLcBGAsYHQ/w359-h239/covid-twitter.jpeg" width="359" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><p>They collected 25,000 tweets a day that contained at least one of eight covid-related hashtags. Retweets were not included nor were more than one tweet per user in order to gain a balanced view of language use. 5.32% of the collected tweets mentioned war, the most common words being 'fight' (29.76% of these mentions) and 'war' (10.08%), whilst 'combat', 'threat' and 'battle' were also prevalent. The researchers noted that this could reflect this early stage of the pandemic: it was a global emergency and urgent action was needed to confront the situation. Most of these examples referred specifically to the treatment of the virus and the 'frontline' workers dealing with its effects in hospital.</p></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;">When they concentrated on other figurative ways in which Covid was being described they found it referred to in terms of a storm, a monster and a tsunami. For example, the idea of the virus as a storm arose in 1.49% of the tweets and contained words like 'thunderstorm', 'rain' and 'lightning'; 1.13% of the tweets referred to a tsunami, using words like 'earthquake', 'disaster' and 'tide' and references to a monster occurred in 0.68% of the tweets with 'freak', 'demon' and 'devil' being prime examples. These negative images mainly referred to the onset and spread of the virus. It is clear, however, that the war metaphor was used significantly more than these others.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;">Wicke and Bolognesi conclude that their results confirm previous findings that the war metaphor is common in public discourse of disease; however, they found that it was used very particularly during the first weeks of the pandemic to refer to the initial medical response to it. They also suggest that all of these metaphors are negative and unhelpful and propose the construction of a 'Metaphor Menu', previously suggested with regards to cancer, to give the public more positive and desirable ways to talk about Covid 19 as the pandemic evolves and changes.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;">------------------------------------</span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #202020;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Wicke P., M. M. Bolognesi (2020) Framing COVID-19: How we conceptualize and discuss the pandemic on Twitter. PLoS ONE 15(9): e0240010. </span></span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #202020;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0240010</span></span></p><p><br /></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;">This summary was written by Gemma Stoyle</span></p>Devyani Sharmahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01569251556209536299noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1929284578930372562.post-29536712651526355252020-08-10T09:30:00.001+01:002020-08-10T09:30:01.166+01:00The shifting tipping point - one metaphor, many uses<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN">To understand what a metaphor is, let’s start
by considering a real world example. For <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">tipping
point</i>, we might imagine an object that should be kept upright, such as a
vase of flowers, at risk of falling when it loses its centre of gravity. As the
tipping point is not the vase’s natural state, we assume something has caused
the unbalance e.g. a curious cat, or an earthquake. We also realise that there
will be consequences when this tipping point is reached, and we expect these
will be negative. The glass is likely to smash, causing danger to bare feet,
and destroying the vase. The contents will also spill onto the floor, possibly
spreading water and causing further damage, or possibly partly retrievable if
some of the flowers can be rescued. But we recognise that reaching the tipping
point is very unlikely to have many positive outcomes, as it takes us from our
pretty vase of flowers, to an undesirable mess on the floor.</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://christiandfahey.files.wordpress.com/2017/08/encouragement-as-a-tipping-point.jpg?w=768&h=475" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="768" height="304" src="https://christiandfahey.files.wordpress.com/2017/08/encouragement-as-a-tipping-point.jpg?w=768&h=475" width="491" /></a></div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN">The job of a metaphor is to map the knowledge
we have from these real-world examples, onto something else. But whereas the
source domain of a metaphor relates to concrete entities (such as the unlucky
vase), the target domain will be a more abstract and complex phenomenon.
Therefore, how the metaphor is used - the linguistic and discursive context -
will help to shape how we conceptualise this target.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN">From the 1960s onwards, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">tipping point</i> was regularly mapped onto moments of social change,
most popularly in the early 2000s to describe the sudden spread of a new trend
or idea in society. Conventionally, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">tipping
point</i> came to be used as an everyday expression meaning a time of
important, often uncontrollable, things happening that lead to change. It was
most often applied to an individual, reaching a personal <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">tipping point</i> and joining a wider group or process in society.
Notably, the more negative interpretations were largely removed, and the
metaphor was seen as more exciting than threatening. Over time, the
metaphorical mapping had therefore become somewhat ‘bleached’ of its source
domain.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN">But from 2004 scientists began to use this
metaphor in relation to the world’s climate, and it is now common to hear and
read about ecological <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">tipping points</i>
in the media. Van der Hel, Hellsten & Steen (2018) examined 326 articles
from major world newspapers, and 301 scientific articles, to see how this
metaphor developed and was used from 2005-2014. They looked for both the
discursive context of the metaphor (Who is using the phrase? What is it being
used to refer to?) and the linguistic characteristics of its use (How is the
phrase combined with different parts of speech and punctuation? Is the use of
the phrase deliberately metaphorical?) From this study they tracked the
changing use and meanings of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">tipping
point</i> in both the media and science.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN">The metaphor was first used by scientists as
an attempt to explain to the media their complex research into abrupt changes
in the climate system. Use of the phrase at this time drew attention to its
metaphorical meaning, rather than the conventional one, by also expressing
related ideas of falling, danger and irreversibility. By making explicit
references to the source domain in this way, the metaphorical meaning is more
‘deliberate’, and actively encourages us to reflect more on the concrete
meaning of the expression. Therefore the metaphor highlighted the serious and
threatening nature of a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">tipping point</i>
and, by extension, the catastrophic issue of climate change.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN">Until this time <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">tipping point</i> in climate change news articles had mainly been used
in the conventional sense, to refer to changes in individual social attitudes
towards the environment. But from 2005-2007 the phrase began to appear more
frequently in inverted commas, to note its increasing, and unfamiliar, use by
scientists. The phrase also began to be used in reference to humanity as a
whole, in contrast to the previous convention of usually referring to an
individual in society. This use of punctuation and the new collocations again
serve to focus attention on the metaphorical status of the phrase. In doing so,
a reader may be encouraged to draw deeper on their source domain knowledge, and
reconsider the metaphor’s meaning.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN">Within the scientific community, use of the
metaphor continued to increase from 2008. But whereas it may have begun as a
rhetorical device, it subsequently became a mainstream scientific concept, and
a theoretical tool. The imagery of a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">tipping
point</i> largely replaced some earlier metaphors (e.g. thresholds), and
studies explored what the causes and outcomes of different potential <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">tipping points</i> might mean in various
climate contexts. This suggests an inspirational role for the metaphor, through
capturing the imagination of scientists, and opening new directions for
studies.</span>In contrast, the media used the metaphor less
after 2007, but it re-emerged from 2011 in news reports from political speeches
at international climate conferences. In these reports, it was increasingly
tied to specific locations (e.g. the Amazon) and events, and was often still
expressed using inverted commas. However the phrase also began to be used for
other, non-climate related changes, such as sudden policy shifts. This suggests
that the <i>tipping point</i> metaphor in
the media had become more flexible, again incorporating the conventional
expression of a drastic change.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN">This study shows that in science and the
media, a metaphor can help explain complex ideas, and encourage new ways of
thinking about a phenomenon. It also demonstrates their versatility: tracing
how a metaphor that had become an everyday expression was mapped onto a new
target domain, leading to a restructured understanding. By examining the
linguistic and discursive contexts of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">tipping
point</i>, Van der Hel, Hellsten & Steen (2018) highlight the numerous and
changing roles that metaphors can play, and how they can help scientists and
journalists in public debates on important topics. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "trebuchet ms", trebuchet, verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px;">------------------------------------------------------------</span></span></p><div style="background-color: white; font-family: "trebuchet ms", trebuchet, verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;"><br /></div><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN"></span></p><div style="background-color: white; font-family: "trebuchet ms", trebuchet, verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;"><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span lang="EN" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">van der Hel, S., Hellsten, I. and Steen, G., 2018. Tipping
points and climate change: Metaphor between science and the media. <i>Environmental Communication</i>, <i>12</i>(5), pp.605-620.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">This summary was written by Sarah Kirk-Browne</p></div><br />Jenny Cheshirehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14751826588409253248noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1929284578930372562.post-33759202118302241622020-08-03T11:00:00.003+01:002020-08-03T11:00:09.340+01:00Why we use emoji: Written gestures in online writing<p class="MsoNormal">When we talk to each other, we don’t just rely on words. Emotion is embodied, and our expressions, our body language, our tone of
voice are all used to convey our feelings and affect how our words are
interpreted. But for online written communication, we can’t rely on these
details. As discussed in the <a href="http://linguistics-research-digest.blogspot.com/2020/07/ok-ok-and-ok-how-we-use-punctuation-to.html">previous post</a>, punctuation can be helpful to
represent tone of voice, but often there is still something missing. In the fifth
chapter of her pop linguistics book <i>Because Internet</i>, Gretchen McCulloch
explores how emoji became popular as a way of replicating gestures in online
communication. <o:p></o:p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_WOStlIEoxk/Xx6UBxMvxBI/AAAAAAAAAco/fEs5vUaY80UtRbAvHqBcpDno0ttm2R-awCNcBGAsYHQ/s1120/mobile.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="584" data-original-width="1120" height="261" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_WOStlIEoxk/Xx6UBxMvxBI/AAAAAAAAAco/fEs5vUaY80UtRbAvHqBcpDno0ttm2R-awCNcBGAsYHQ/w500-h261/mobile.png" width="500" /></a></div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Emoji cannot be considered a language: there is a limit to what
can be expressed, and most languages can handle meta-level vocabulary about
language, which emoji cannot. But they clearly do something. However, many popular
emoji use hand and facial gestures, which, McCulloch says, inspired her to begin treating
them as gesture. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">There are two types of gesture which emoji can represent: the
first are called emblems. These are nameable gestures, and have precise forms
and stable meanings, and are often culturally specific, such as winking, giving
a thumbs up, and obscene hand gestures. Many of these have directly equivalent emoji, for example, fingers crossed
</span><span style="background: white; color: #14171a; font-family: "Segoe UI Emoji",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI Emoji";">🤞</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">, rolling
eyes </span><span style="background: white; color: #14171a; font-family: "Segoe UI Emoji",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI Emoji";">🙄</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">, or a
peace sign </span><span style="background: white; color: #14171a; font-family: "Segoe UI Emoji",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI Emoji";">✌</span><span style="background: white; color: #14171a; font-family: "Segoe UI",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">️</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">. Some emoji
are more metaphorical, such as the eggplant emoji as a phallic symbol, but,
with knowledge of internet norms, they still have fixed meanings. Emoji are not
the only way to express emblems online: reaction gifs and images are also used
to express specific moods or actions, many of which we can refer to by name
(for example, most internet-literate people will know what I mean by Michael
Jackson Eating Popcorn.gif).<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">The second type of gesture with corresponding emoji are
illustrative or co-speech gestures. These gestures are dependent on surrounding
speech, and highlight or reinforce the topic. You often make these without
realising, and at times when they make little sense, such as waving your hands
around when on the phone and your conversational partner can’t see you. These
gestures don’t have specific names but can be described. Think of the way you
move you your hands when giving somebody directions or describing the size of
something. These gestures are also represented in emoji. The example McCulloch
uses is the range of emojis possible in a ‘Happy Birthday’ message, perhaps a
combination of the following </span><span style="background: white; color: #14171a; font-family: "Segoe UI Emoji",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI Emoji";">🎂🍰🎁🎊🎉🎈🥳</span><span style="background: white; color: #14171a; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"> In these contexts, the order doesn’t matter, these emoji aren’t
telling a story, they are adding to the current one. Illustrative emoji are
also more likely to be taken at face value, and don’t necessarily require
knowledge of internet culture that, for example the eggplant emoji might
require. If emblems are for the benefit of the listener, then illustrative
gesture are for the benefit of the speaker, used to help them get their message
across.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">McCulloch also examines common sequences of emoji, finding that,
unlike words, emoji are often repeated, both as a straightforward sequence of
the same emoji multiple times (the most common being </span><span style="background: white; color: #14171a; font-family: "Segoe UI Emoji",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI Emoji";">😂</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">), and
sequences of different emoji that are linked thematically, such as the series
of birthday related emoji above, or a series of love emoji such as</span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"> </span><span style="background: white; color: #14171a; font-family: "Segoe UI Emoji",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI Emoji";">💕💓😍💗🥰💖</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">. This is
another reason why emoji can be considered gesture: repetition does not
generally occur in our words, but does occur in hand gestures.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Repetitive gestures are known as beat gestures: they are
rhythmic, and if you stutter while you speak, your gestures also do the same.
Emoji also do this: we type <span style="background: white; color: #14171a; font-family: "Segoe UI Emoji",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI Emoji";">👍👍👍</span><span style="background: white; color: #14171a; font-family: "Segoe UI Emoji",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI Emoji";"> </span>to represent a sustained or repeated
thumbs up gesture in real life. We can even repeat emoji which don’t have a
literal gesture attached, because, as a whole, emoji can be repeated. The ‘clap
back’ is a common beat gesture among African American women, and this is often
represented through emoji as a form of emphasis: <span style="background: white; color: #14171a; font-family: "Segoe UI Emoji",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI Emoji";">👏</span> WHAT <span style="background: white; color: #14171a; font-family: "Segoe UI Emoji",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI Emoji";">👏</span>
ARE<span style="background: white; color: #14171a; font-family: "Segoe UI Emoji",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI Emoji";"> </span><span style="background: white; color: #14171a; font-family: "Segoe UI Emoji",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI Emoji";">👏</span>
YOU <span style="background: white; color: #14171a; font-family: "Segoe UI Emoji",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI Emoji";">👏</span>
DOING <span style="background: white; color: #14171a; font-family: "Segoe UI Emoji",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI Emoji";">👏</span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Emoji serve an important purpose in informal written
communication, filling in for expression and gesture which otherwise are hard
to convey. For more from McCulloch on the topic of emoji and gesture, <a href="https://tmblr.co/Z7NAag2jbVCh4">Episode 34</a> of her podcast <i>Lingthusiasm</i>
with Lauren Gawne, discusses the content in this chapter, and provides several
further links on the topic of emoji and gesture. <o:p></o:p></p><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "trebuchet ms", trebuchet, verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px;">------------------------------------------------------------</span><div style="background-color: white; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;"><br /></div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;"><p class="MsoNormal">McCulloch, Gretchen. 2019. <i>Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language. </i>New York: Riverhead Books.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">This summary was written by Rhona Graham</p></div>Jenny Cheshirehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14751826588409253248noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1929284578930372562.post-48882248051506580002020-07-27T09:37:00.000+01:002020-07-27T09:37:24.964+01:00“ok” “ok.” and “ok!” How we use punctuation to convey tone online.<p class="MsoNormal">As a result of technology, many of our casual, everyday
conversations now take place online, in written form. This has in turn changed
how we write informally, which is the topic of Gretchen McCulloch’s 2019 book <i>Because
Internet</i>. This book focuses on how the internet is changing language and is
written for a general audience. Chapter 4 discusses how we convey our emotions
through written language, and the history of these conventions. Conversational
writing has caused us to find innovative ways of replicating our speech in our
writing, both our words, and our tone, which McCulloch calls typographical tone
of voice.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Why is it so much scarier to receive a text saying “ok.”
than “ok”? In online messaging, we tend to use line or message breaks, rather
than full stops, to convey the end of an utterance. Full stops are associated
with falling intonation (in the same way that a question mark indicates rising
intonation), which doesn’t often occur in actual speech, and many of our
messages are designed to replicate speech. In some contexts (like “ok.”),
implied falling intonation can be interpreted as passive-aggressive or angry,
which has been noticed in the media since 2013. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Some conventions, particularly those for strong emotion,
have been around a lot longer than the internet. For example, YOU ARE PROBABLY
SHOUTING THIS SENTENCE IN YOUR HEAD, because for at least a century, capital
letters have been a way of expressing strong emotion. Another is repeating
letters, particularly in emotive words, such as “yayyy” or “nooo”. This also
predates the internet, with the earliest example coming from 1848, and gaining
popularity throughout the 20<sup>th</sup> century in sounds such as “ahhh” or
“hmmm”. In a 2011 study of Twitter, sentiment words were the most common to be
lengthened in this way: examples being “ugh” “lmao” “damn” and “nice”.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">McCulloch also discusses the ways in which we soften a
message, to come across as friendly or approachable. The exclamation point has
progressed from signifying ‘excitement’ to being associated with ‘warmth’ and ‘sincerity’,
which is why most younger people would prefer to receive a text saying “ok!”
than “ok”. ‘lol’, rather than meaning that you are actually laughing out loud,
has taken on the function of polite laughter, and smiley faces (i.e., emoticons/
emojis) have the same impact, tempering the tone of a message, making it appear
friendlier.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">One area of interest is how we indicate that we are being
sarcastic without outright saying #sarcasm (which, after all, would defeat the
point of being sarcastic). In speech, sarcasm is conveyed through tone of voice
and facial expressions: in written text, we need a way to signify these
additional meanings, without explicitly stating that we’re making a joke. While
many options have been officially suggested, these don’t tend to stick. One
that has is the sarcasm tilde (~), which McCulloch argues derives from the mid-2000s
days of MySpace ‘sparkle punctuation’, where users used punctuation marks for
aesthetic purposes. Now, using ~ in a message indicates that it isn’t serious,
which we then, based on context, can interpret as irony or sarcasm: McCulloch
calls this ‘sparkle sarcasm’. The sarcasm tilde also can also be seen as a
literal representation of the way in which your tone rises and falls when being
sarcastic. <o:p></o:p></p>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ufF-Bs_DjhA/Xx6Pn3DvhuI/AAAAAAAAAcU/Rdhr8_xAhQM8wkN_8hqGK8g06Q0FcnmXACNcBGAsYHQ/s567/tumblr.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="233" data-original-width="567" height="205" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ufF-Bs_DjhA/Xx6Pn3DvhuI/AAAAAAAAAcU/Rdhr8_xAhQM8wkN_8hqGK8g06Q0FcnmXACNcBGAsYHQ/w500-h205/tumblr.png" width="500" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A Tumblr post from 2016<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><p class="MsoNormal">Ironic emphasis is also an interesting area to examine. The
Tumblr post above, a screenshot from 2016, shows just some of the ways in which
emphasis was conveyed. Unexpected capital letters, spacing out letters, using
hashtags or <sup>TM</sup> are all used by the author to add emphasis.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">However, it is interesting to note that the rest of this
sentence is devoid of punctuation: there is no full stop, ‘tumblr’ is
uncapitalized, and neither is ‘i’ at the beginning of the sentence. McCulloch
calls this lack of punctuation ‘minimalist typography’ and discusses how this
is used to convey tone of voice, particularly in the current era of
smartphones. With predictive text, writing a sentence without capitalising the
first word, or even writing ‘i’ requires extra effort: even while writing this
post, my word processor automatically capitalises a single i, and I have to go
back to retype it. This extra effort conveys meaning to the reader through
absence: the capital letters in an otherwise uncapitalized sentence indicates
that the author has used these typographic forms for some specific reason.
McCulloch describes minimalist punctuation as “an open canvas, inviting you to
fill in the gaps”.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">These are just some of the ways in which we reflect our tone
in typed speech, from caps lock, to passive aggressive punctuation. Given the
developments that have occurred in the last twenty years alone, it is highly
likely that these conventions will continue to change, and generations to come
will develop their own conventions for irony, passive aggression, and humour. <i>Because
Internet</i> is a fascinating snapshot of how language is being used on the
internet currently, and I do recommend it as an enjoyable and interesting read.
<o:p></o:p></p><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "trebuchet ms", trebuchet, verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px;">------------------------------------------------------------</span><div><br /></div><div>
<p class="MsoNormal">McCulloch, Gretchen. 2019. <i>Because Internet:
Understanding the New Rules of Language. </i>New York: Riverhead Books.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">This summary was written by Rhona Graham</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div></div>Jenny Cheshirehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14751826588409253248noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1929284578930372562.post-84383987215352113502020-03-16T13:45:00.002+00:002020-03-16T14:11:43.435+00:00#BlackLanguageMatters: Can linguistics change the course of justice?<br />
The 2013 trial of George Zimmerman for the murder of unarmed Black teenager Trayvon Martin is well-known as the court case that sparked the #BlackLivesMatter movement in the USA. 17-year-old Martin was shot dead by Zimmerman, who claimed he was acting in self-defence and was eventually acquitted of all charges. The outcome of the trial caused outrage among the Black community over racial profiling, police brutality and inequality in the criminal justice system, and prompted the founders of #BlackLivesMatter to use the hashtag for the very first time.<br />
<br />
It’s less well-known that the case also served as a ‘call to action’ among linguists. John Rickford and Sharese King of Stanford University studied the court proceedings closely, focusing on the testimony of one particular witness, Rachel Jeantel. A close friend of Martin, Jeantel was on the phone to him just moments before his death. As such, she represented an important ‘ear-witness’ and testified for over 6 hours in court, but her testimony was completely disregarded by the jury, who found her to be unintelligible and ‘not credible’.<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "ê≠“\\ˇ"; font-size: 15.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-TYDMVo7kYPI/Xm-C4V4MCaI/AAAAAAAAAas/ZCWdROJDBZEdL7DLNXfW0UnGfytOS-aBwCNcBGAsYHQ/s1600/BLM1.jpg.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="726" data-original-width="1440" height="322" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-TYDMVo7kYPI/Xm-C4V4MCaI/AAAAAAAAAas/ZCWdROJDBZEdL7DLNXfW0UnGfytOS-aBwCNcBGAsYHQ/s640/BLM1.jpg.png" width="640" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "ê≠“\\ˇ"; font-size: 15.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
What does this have to do with linguistics? Jeantel is a speaker of African American Vernacular English (AAVE), also known as African American Language (AAL): a variety of English spoken by many Black Americans. AAVE has been studied extensively by linguists, who have shown that it is a systematic and rule-governed dialect of English like any other. Nevertheless, like most ‘non-standard’ vernaculars, AAVE is often stereotyped by non-linguists as uneducated and broken. Jeantel’s speech is no exception: Rickford and King note that she was ridiculed on social media throughout the trial, labelled as ‘inarticulate’ and ‘the perfect example of urban ignorance’.<br />
<br />
As well as being lampooned online, Jeantel’s testimony was overlooked by the jury in their decision-making. Commenting after the case, one juror said that Jeantel was ‘hard to understand’, and another reported that ‘no one mentioned Jeantel in [16+ hour] jury deliberations. Her testimony played no role whatsoever in their decision’ (Juror Maddy, as reported in Bloom 2014) despite the fact that she was on the phone to the defendant moments before the shooting took place.<br />
<br />
In their paper, Rickford and King set out to investigate linguistic reasons for why this happened. They start by closely analysing over 15 hours of Jeantel’s recorded speech, to see how it compares to that of other AAVE speakers. They found her speech to be ‘a systematic exemplification of the grammar of AAVE’. In other words, it displays patterning in lexicon, grammar and phonology that is typical of AAVE, and also reflects the possible influence of Jeantel’s Haitian mother and Anglophone Caribbean Creole-speakers living in Miami. Given these findings, the possibility that Jeantel was not understood because her speech was incoherent – or, as one commentator described it, ‘the blather of an idiot’ – is clearly ruled out. Why, then, did the jury neither understand Jeantel nor consider her testimony to be important in their deliberations? Rickford and King look at two possibilities in their paper: the influence of social bias and the issue of dialect unfamiliarity.<br />
<br />
It is likely that social bias had an effect on jurors’ ability to understand Jeantel as well as their assessment of her credibility. Rickford and King cite several studies that show that ‘speech perception is influenced by listeners’ stereotypes of speaker characteristics’ – in other words, if White listeners believe that a speaker is Black, their comprehension actually decreases. Importantly, the Zimmerman trial jury was primarily White, middle-aged and suburban, with no African American members.<br />
<br />
Considering dialect unfamiliarity as a factor, Rickford and King list a number of other court cases in which vernacular language has been misheard or mistranscribed. Part of the problem, they explain, is that courtrooms do not provide interpreters for dialects, but only for ‘foreign languages’. In other words, an interpreter would be provided for a Spanish or Vietnamese-speaking defendant, for example, but not offered to a speaker of Bajan Creole or AAVE. Depending on the dialect in question, this can lead to dangerous misunderstandings: Rickford and King give the example of a police interview in which a Jamaican Creole speaker’s words, given verbatim in (a), were first transcribed as in (b).<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
(a) wen mi ier di bap bap, mi <b>drap a groun an den</b><br />
<i>when I heard the bap bap [the shots], I fell to the ground and then</i><br />
mi staat ron.<br />
<i>I started to run.</i><br />
(b) When I heard the shot (bap, bap), <b>I drop the gun</b>, and then I run.</blockquote>
<br />
As this example shows, the distinction between ‘languages’ and ‘dialects of a language’ is not always clear-cut, and listeners are likely to have difficulties with comprehension if they are not familiar with the variety being spoken. In the Zimmerman case, Rickford and King show that Jeantel used several preverbal tense-aspect markers in her speech, such as stressed BIN, completive <i>done</i>, and habitual <i>be</i>. The authors point out that these features of AAVE have been mis-transcribed by non-AAVE speakers in other cases, meaning that it is very likely they were misunderstood in this case too.<br />
<br />
Rickford and King conclude that AAVE was, in a way, ‘found guilty’ in the Zimmerman trial, since responses to Jeantel’s dialect unfairly prevented her testimony from being heard or properly understood, and undoubtedly affected the outcome of the case. In light of this, they argue that courtrooms are in serious need of expert linguistic input and dialect interpretation, and strongly urge linguists to help make courtrooms fairer places. More broadly, Rickford and King point out that language prejudice affects outcomes not only in the criminal justice system, but also in education, employment and healthcare, and call on linguists to dispel myths about speech and language in all domains of life.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , "trebuchet" , "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px;">------------------------------------------------------------</span></div>
<div style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: solid windowtext .75pt; mso-element: para-border-div; padding: 0cm 0cm 1.0pt 0cm;">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: solid windowtext .75pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-padding-alt: 0cm 0cm 1.0pt 0cm; mso-pagination: none; padding: 0cm; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
Bloom, L. (2014). Suspicion nation: The inside story of
the Trayvon Martin injustice and why we continue to repeat it. Berkeley, CA:
Counterpoint.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Rickford, J. R., and King, S. (2016). Language and
linguistics on trial: Hearing Rachel Jeantel (and other vernacular speakers) in
the courtroom and beyond. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Language </i>92/4,
948-988.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This summary was written by <a href="https://www.qmul.ac.uk/sllf/linguistics/people/visitors/profiles/rosemary-hall.html" target="_blank">Rosemary Hall</a><o:p></o:p></div>
<br />Jenny Cheshirehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14751826588409253248noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1929284578930372562.post-20383910856843724732020-02-17T11:10:00.000+00:002020-02-17T11:10:01.837+00:00"Thanks, no problem, pleasure, don't mention it, thanks"<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">I once heard
that how someone treats a waiter can say a lot about their character. What
about the way a waiter responds? Researcher Larssyn Rüegg thinks that there may
be differences in how waiters respond to their customers’ thanks, based on the
kind of restaurant they are in. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kCfRotQzTEk/XhRnAZ1pBPI/AAAAAAAAAaQ/hV-FkT_pTC4MIa4jnaIBnw_qFcuRiuQBgCNcBGAsYHQ/s1600/job-description-captain-waiter.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="788" data-original-width="1400" height="360" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kCfRotQzTEk/XhRnAZ1pBPI/AAAAAAAAAaQ/hV-FkT_pTC4MIa4jnaIBnw_qFcuRiuQBgCNcBGAsYHQ/s640/job-description-captain-waiter.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">While previous
research has looked into how various languages may differ in this pragmatic
function of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">thanks response</i>, none
so far has looked into how thanks response might vary within a single language.
Rüegg's research is based in part on a previous work by Klaus Schneider who
typified different forms of thanks responses. An example is the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">welcome </i>type which include a spoken
phrase such as 'you're welcome', or even just 'welcome'. Other types include <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">okay, anytime, no problem, pleasure, don't
mention it, thanks, yeah, sure, </i>and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">don't
worry about it. </i>Rüegg extends this study by asking what influences these
types of response. She identifies two potential factors: socio-economic setting
and the type of favor.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">It is strongly
supported by research that service staff tend to select a style of speech
deemed appropriate to their clientele, so their speech would therefore reflect
social stratification. Based on this, Rüegg decided to use a corpus of
naturally occurring talk in restaurants of different price ranges to exemplify
different socio-economic settings. This corpus, the Los Angeles Restaurant
Corpus (LARC) contains three categories, LARC-up, LARC-mid, and LARC-low, each
reflecting their price range.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">The first
finding from this study is as we would expect: thanks responses in LARC-up and
LARC-mid were 50% more frequent than that of LARC-low. Yet, even the frequency
of thanks responses in LARC-up and LARC-mid are quite low, with expressions of
thanks being responded to less than 25% of the time.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">The form of
thanks responses also differs across the socio-economic categories. For
example, the most common response types in LARC-up and LARC-mid, such as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">welcome </i>and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">thank you</i>, are not found in LARC-low. Furthermore, customers in the
LARC-low restaurants use thanks responses that are not present in both LARC-up
and LARC-mid, such as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">yeah</i>, and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">absolutely.</i> Interestingly, LARC-mid display
the most variation in types of thanks responses.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">The type of act which
waiters are thanked for shows distinctive patterns as well. A non-verbal
service act elicits the most thanks responses in LARC-up and LARC-mid. Such acts
include clearing or setting the table, or perhaps bringing the bill.
Interestingly, such acts never elicit a thanks response in LARC-low. Enquiries
by the service staff about the guests' well-being do not elicit a thanks
response in LARC-low either. Serving food or drinks is correlated with
socio-economic setting, with customers in LARC-up giving the most thanks
responses, and those in LARC-low the least. On the other hand, verbal offers of
service such as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Do you need more wine?
Anything else? </i>more consistently generate thanks responses across all
categories.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">Through this
research, we can see that thanks responses in English are not very frequent on
the whole. This is in contrast to some other languages. In addition, the
sensitivity of thanks responses to socio-economic setting suggest that they are
a subtle form of cultural encoding, with common responses in LARC-up and
LARC-mid restaurants possibly signalling formality. Furthermore, thanks
responses do not appear to be very standardized, with a wide range of forms
being used, especially in LARC-mid and LARC-low. The fact that the type of
service performed elicits differing thanks responses across the different
socio-economic settings reinforces the sense that these small linguistic acts
are actually a rich form of interactional management and cultural signalling.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB"><o:p><br /></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB"><o:p><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "trebuchet ms", trebuchet, verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-align: start;">------------------------------------------------------------</span></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Rüegg, Larssyn. 2014. Thanks responses in
three socio-economiuc settings: A variational pragmatics approach. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Journal of Pragmatics</i> 71: 17-30<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">doi. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2014.07.005" target="_blank"><span style="color: #3353b7; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2014.07.005</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">This summary was written by Darren Hum
Chong Kai</span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 11.5pt;"> </span></span><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />Jenny Cheshirehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14751826588409253248noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1929284578930372562.post-3967462613245366672020-02-03T11:00:00.000+00:002020-02-03T11:00:02.644+00:00The Power of Babble "Ma-ma, ba-ba, da-da" - you probably associate sounds such as these with babies, in particular the babbling that babies make when they're first acquiring language. But what do these sounds do? And why do babies babble? This is a question that some recent research has addressed.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Y6vpJR96fHo/XhRllaxiLJI/AAAAAAAAAaE/EVY--oCm4REZ7Wf_AlMusAhzi_BNagXzwCNcBGAsYHQ/s1600/baby-talk.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="675" data-original-width="1200" height="360" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Y6vpJR96fHo/XhRllaxiLJI/AAAAAAAAAaE/EVY--oCm4REZ7Wf_AlMusAhzi_BNagXzwCNcBGAsYHQ/s640/baby-talk.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
In their recent research report, Elminger, Schwade and Goldstein examined the function of babbling in infants’ language development. They explored the idea that a caregiver’s response to their child’s vocalizations is key to the beginnings of communication and found that infants themselves may actually be in charge of this process. By 5 months old, babies will babble and expect their adult caregiver to reply and by 9 months, they will begin to produce more speech-like noise once the adult responds to them. Previous research has suggested that parents’ speech will match the child’s current age, changing as the child grows. A baby’s most varied ‘pre-speech’ repertoire of sounds is between 9-10 months and this is when a parent’s speech is most sensitive to their child’s vocalizations.<br />
<br />
The researchers focused on this age group and were interested in further investigating the relationship between the adults’ and infants’ vocalizations by closely examining adult speech in response to infant babble. They used three measures to assess the type of speech parents used to respond to babbling: Firstly, they counted the number of different types of words that were used; secondly, they counted the average number of words in the responses and thirdly, they calculated how many of these responses were just a single word. There were thirty mother-infant pairs who participated in the study and they were recorded in a naturalistic environment, as the child played, over two thirty minute sessions. The researchers split the adult responses into two different categories: ‘contingent’ which were immediate, direct responses to the child’s babble and ‘non-contingent’ which did not occur within two seconds of the babbling.<br />
<br />
Overall, the investigation showed that the mothers produced less contingent than non-contingent speech and that the contingent speech consisted of significantly shorter utterances with simpler words. They also found that there were more single-word contingent utterances than non-contingent. So, in general, it seems that parents may simplify the whole structure of their speech in response to their child’s babble, suggesting that infant babbling really does influence the adult response. It may be that this immature, pre-speech babble is actually engineered by the child to create language learning opportunities through eliciting simplified, easy-to-learn responses from their caregiver. In fact, it seems that infant babbling in general is indicative that learning is happening: It has previously been found that infants more accurately remember the features of objects at which they have babbled than those that have been looked at and handled but not babbled at. So, when an adult responds vocally to babbling, the already alert child will quickly learn the patterns of their speech. <br />
<br />
Overall, these results show that children learn to recognise language much more quickly when the information they need to do so is presented immediately on babbling. During the first year of their life, infants associate their babbling with a response from their caregiver which will guide their learning and speech development. So, unlike the Tower of Babel, fabled to have been built to divide people linguistically, in this study the power of babble is shown to rely on infant and caregiver closely working together.<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">------------------------------------------------------------</span></div>
<br />
Elmlinger S.L.; J.A. Schwade & M.H. Goldstein. 2019. The Ecology of prelinguistic vocal learning: parents simplify the structure of their speech in response to babbling. <i>Journal of Child Language. </i>16:1-14.<br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "trebuchet ms", trebuchet, verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-align: justify;">This summary was written by Gemma Stoyle</span><br />
<br />
doi: 10.1017/S0305000919000291<br />
<br />
<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
Jenny Cheshirehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14751826588409253248noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1929284578930372562.post-51540533757427204642020-01-20T10:00:00.000+00:002020-01-20T10:00:00.353+00:00Accent Bias: Voices at Work <span style="background-color: white; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , "trebuchet" , "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;">Continuing our series of posts related to the '</span><a href="https://accentbiasbritain.org/" style="background-color: white; color: #888888; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px; text-decoration-line: none;">Accent Bias in Britain</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , "trebuchet" , "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;">' project, in this blog post we discuss some findings from our research which investigated current attitudes to accents in Britain.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , "trebuchet" , "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;"><br /></span>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://s3.amazonaws.com/tjn-blog-images/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/08190007/3-old-school-interview-rules-that-are-still-relevant.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="375" data-original-width="800" height="299" src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/tjn-blog-images/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/08190007/3-old-school-interview-rules-that-are-still-relevant.png" width="640" /></a></div>
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , "trebuchet" , "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , "trebuchet" , "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;"><span id="goog_1739300813"></span><span id="goog_1739300814"></span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;">In our last blog post, we explored some of the findings of the second part of our study which </span><a href="https://linguistics-research-digest.blogspot.com/2020/01/accent-bias-responses-to-voices.html" target="_blank">investigated how the UK public evaluated 5 different accents in mock interviews</a>.<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;"> The third part of our study, detailed here, investigated whether people in positions of power such as recruiters would exhibit the same type of accent biases. </span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , "trebuchet" , "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 15.4px;">Our study focuses on a profession that has been previously described as lacking diversity, Law. We were interested in examining </span></span></span><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 15.4px;">whether accent bias interferes with judgements of professional skill. In other words, would a candidate with, say a Multicultural London English accent, be perceived as less professional or competent as their Received Pronunciation speaking peers? </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 15.4px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 15.4px;">To investigate this question, we played the same mock interviews as described in our last blog post to 61 legal professionals.We prepared 10 short mock interview answers, varying between ‘good’ and ‘poor’ quality. Before we conducted the experiment, these answers </span></span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;">were independently judged as 'good' or 'poor' by a group of 25 legal professionals otherwise unrelated to the project.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;">To create the mock interviews, we had 10 speakers (2 of each accent) record 10 good and 10 poor interview responses. This resulted in 100 recordings. The accents we tested were: Multicultural London English (MLE), Estuary English (EE), Received Pronunciation (RP), General Northern English (GNE), and Urban West Yorkshire English (UWYE). </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;">From the 100 recordings, our 61 legal professionals heard a random selection of 10 interview answers. They were then asked to evaluate whether they thought the answer was a 'good' answer or a 'poor' answer. They were asked to indicate this on a 10-point scale, responding to the following questions:</span><br />
<br />
<ol>
<li><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 15.4px;">“How would you rate the overall quality of the candidate’s answer?”</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 15.4px;">“Does the candidate’s answer show relevant expertise and knowledge?”</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 15.4px;">“In your opinion, how likely is it that the candidate will succeed as a lawyer?”</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 15.4px;">“Is the candidate somebody that you personally would like to work with?”</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 15.4px;">“How likely would you be to recommend hiring this candidate?”</span></span></li>
</ol>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 15.4px;">When we analysed our data, we identified a surprising effect. Whilst the general public displayed a great deal of <a href="https://linguistics-research-digest.blogspot.com/2020/01/accent-bias-responses-to-voices.html" target="_blank">accent bias in judging the competency of a job candidate</a>, the lawyers did not follow this pattern. In fact, the professions did not show significant preferences for Received Pronunciation (RP) or General Northern English (GNE), nor did they show a consistent dispreference for working class or non-white accents. Instead, they showed a consistent ability to judge the quality of an answer as 'good' or 'poor' regardless of the accent the answer was presented to them in. Their answers very closely matched the answers given by the group of professionals who rated the quality of the written answers. </span></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 15.4px;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-wmdteVYN7GY/XhRYbjtKQ0I/AAAAAAAAAZk/B_1jriYB7WA1rDSCo1npNSw-3RjtLi5mACNcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Graphs-candle2%2B%25281%2529.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="382" data-original-width="446" height="342" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-wmdteVYN7GY/XhRYbjtKQ0I/AAAAAAAAAZk/B_1jriYB7WA1rDSCo1npNSw-3RjtLi5mACNcBGAsYHQ/s400/Graphs-candle2%2B%25281%2529.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 15.4px;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 15.4px;">The graph above shows this effect. The high quality answers are in yellow and the lower quality answers are in green. As you should be able to see, across the five different accents (see the x-axis on the bottom), the ratings remain relatively the same. At the same time, however, it is worth noting that EE & MLE receive the lowest ratings of all the accents. </span></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 15.4px;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 15.4px;">Note, however, that RP is also lower rated than some of the other accents. This is surprising given that RP was evaluated as the most prestigious accent in the <a href="https://linguistics-research-digest.blogspot.com/2019/11/accent-bias-responses-to-accent-labels.html" target="_blank">label study.</a> It's possible that this ranking might be related to the association of RP with a higher level of education, so there is a greater expectation of these individuals. </span></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 15.4px;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 15.4px;">It is also interesting to note that some of the <a href="https://linguistics-research-digest.blogspot.com/2020/01/accent-bias-responses-to-voices.html" target="_blank">social factors seen to effect the general public's responses</a> do not seem to influence the professional's judgements. </span></span><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 15.4px;">The age and regional origin of legal professionals did not affect how they responded to job candidates, unlike what we found among the general public. Their </span></span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;">Motivation to Control a Prejudiced Response (MCPR) - a psychological factor that had a strong effect on how listeners behaved in our public survey - also did not effect their ratings. </span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 15.4px;">Our findings therefore suggest that when legal professionals are asked to judge the suitability of a candidate, they are able to</span></span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;"> switch off biases and attend very well to the quality of an answer, judging the competency of the individual independently of their accent. </span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 15.4px;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 15.4px;">Of course, however, the current study simulates just one small part of hiring candidates. It doesn't look at accent bias in other aspects of professional life, like informal interaction during the interview or everyday experiences on the job. So, it's possible that accent bias might influence the candidate's progression later on down the line. </span></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 15.4px;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 15.4px;">At least in terms of hiring though, it looks like it's relatively good news for speakers of regional and 'non-standard' accents! </span></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 15.4px;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EAp9OPNS_oE/XhM7GMOpRII/AAAAAAAAAZc/m4XMZLemBoMqiFSQVqqfe4ynQr6wIfMsACPcBGAYYCw/s1600/xYW8e0N8.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="113" data-original-width="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EAp9OPNS_oE/XhM7GMOpRII/AAAAAAAAAZc/m4XMZLemBoMqiFSQVqqfe4ynQr6wIfMsACPcBGAYYCw/s1600/xYW8e0N8.png" /></a></div>
<div>
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "trebuchet ms", trebuchet, verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-align: justify;">This summary was written by </span><a href="http://webspace.qmul.ac.uk/clilbury/" style="background-color: white; color: #888888; font-family: "trebuchet ms", trebuchet, verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-align: justify; text-decoration-line: none;">Christian Ilbury</a></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 15.4px;"><br /></span></span></div>
<br />
Jenny Cheshirehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14751826588409253248noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1929284578930372562.post-2901078522648457592020-01-06T13:54:00.001+00:002020-01-07T10:36:45.364+00:00Accent Bias: Responses to Voices Continuing our series of posts related to the '<a href="https://accentbiasbritain.org/">Accent Bias in Britain</a>' project, in this blog post we discuss some findings from our research which investigated current attitudes to accents in Britain.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YY23uy6nUj4/XhRfNCmwFaI/AAAAAAAAAZ0/E-W-33lmR1Ui5q3TTXHXawlr2U8OqkX-gCNcBGAsYHQ/s1600/aid42249-v4-900px-Speak-in-a-British-Accent-Step-11%2B%25282%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="643" data-original-width="896" height="285" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YY23uy6nUj4/XhRfNCmwFaI/AAAAAAAAAZ0/E-W-33lmR1Ui5q3TTXHXawlr2U8OqkX-gCNcBGAsYHQ/s400/aid42249-v4-900px-Speak-in-a-British-Accent-Step-11%2B%25282%2529.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
In the most recent blog post, we explored the findings of the first part of our study which <a href="https://linguistics-research-digest.blogspot.com/2019/11/accent-bias-responses-to-accent-labels.html">investigated attitudes to accent labels.</a> The second part of our study, detailed here, investigated how people responded to recordings of speakers with different accents to see if the same accent bias exists in speech. </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
To examine these questions, we recorded 10 speakers of 5 different accents (2 speakers each). These accents were Multicultural London English (MLE), Estuary English (EE), Received Pronunciation (RP), General Northern English (GNE), and Urban West Yorkshire English (UWYE). Speakers of these accents were recorded reading scripted mock interview answers. </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
These recordings were then played to over 1,100 participants aged between 18-79 from across the country. The sample of participants was balanced for both ethnicity and gender. </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
For each of the 10 mock interview answers the participants heard, they were asked to evaluate the candidate's performance, knowledge, suitability, and hireability for a job. Participants were asked to rate the candidate on a 10-point scale - where 10 is the highest. They were asked to respond to questions such as:</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
</div>
<ol>
<li>“How would you rate the overall quality of the candidate's answer?”</li>
<li>“Does the candidate's answer show expert knowledge?”</li>
<li>“How likely is it that the candidate will succeed as a lawyer?”</li>
<li>“Is the candidate somebody that you personally would like to work with?”</li>
<li>“How would you rate the candidate overall?”</li>
</ol>
<div>
The participants also provided information on their age, social background, and education. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
When we analysed the results, we found a significant effect of the listener's age. Older listeners generally rated the two southern accents (MLE and EE) lower than all of the other accents. Younger participants, however, did not show this pattern. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
You can see this effect in the graph below. On the right are the older participants and on the left, the younger participants. The higher the line, the more positive the evaluation. As one can see, the ratings drop when you move from the younger respondents to their older peers. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-uRC3Izm_nF4/XhM1TOxxfUI/AAAAAAAAAY4/1HDPHVCvq-4ujx4udEOiVbEWDhAw6SG7gCNcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Graphs-age-degrading2-1%2B%25281%2529.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="371" data-original-width="430" height="343" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-uRC3Izm_nF4/XhM1TOxxfUI/AAAAAAAAAY4/1HDPHVCvq-4ujx4udEOiVbEWDhAw6SG7gCNcBGAsYHQ/s400/Graphs-age-degrading2-1%2B%25281%2529.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Is accent bias decreasing or is this just 'age-grading'?</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
This could mean one of two things. It could be that general attitudes to accents are changing, such that younger listeners will continue to exhibit the same accent preferences later on in life. On the other hand, it's possible that this could be evidence of <b>age-grading</b>. This is where young people might be more tolerant of accent diversity in their early years but become more critical as they get older.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
A second finding of this study was that people's evaluations of accents in the responses to the interview questions depends on the type of question being answered. In questions that require a degree of technical or specialist knowledge, like those questions which asked specific details about law, all accents were rated more favourably. In more general questions, such as those which asked personal details or the work experience of the candidate, the accents were downrated much more.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EVlDzXt292g/XhM15yQxRoI/AAAAAAAAAZA/RQiRnALQo-gemYVqKV-MRu63Y-TFN_WxwCNcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Graphs-for-expert-non%2B%25281%2529.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="224" data-original-width="424" height="211" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EVlDzXt292g/XhM15yQxRoI/AAAAAAAAAZA/RQiRnALQo-gemYVqKV-MRu63Y-TFN_WxwCNcBGAsYHQ/s400/Graphs-for-expert-non%2B%25281%2529.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Degree of expertise and accent rating</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
The effect of the 'expertise' required is shown in the graph above. The yellow line indicates 'expert' answers and the green line indicates 'non-expert' answers. As you should be able to see, all accents are rated much lower when the answer is a 'non-expert' answer than for an 'expert' answer. </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
We also asked participants a series of questions aimed to test how prejudiced they were. We proposed that the more prejudiced people were, the lower their ratings of the different accents would be. In fact, this is exactly what we find. See the graph below. </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-XObOV3GOmw8/XhM5rjsAgLI/AAAAAAAAAZM/b85bv0QLzIYb21_usNC4uWy8xakuu3K8ACNcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Graphs-mcpr%2B%25281%2529.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="234" data-original-width="432" height="216" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-XObOV3GOmw8/XhM5rjsAgLI/AAAAAAAAAZM/b85bv0QLzIYb21_usNC4uWy8xakuu3K8ACNcBGAsYHQ/s400/Graphs-mcpr%2B%25281%2529.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">More prejudiced listeners were more likely to downrate all of the accents </td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
Those who reported they were more likely to be prejudiced towards different accents showed much lower ratings than those who were more likely to control their prejudice. The graph above shows ratings depending on MCPR (Motivation to Control a Prejudice Response). The blue line is those who reported that they are not prejudiced towards different accents, whereas the green line is those who report exhibiting more prejudice. </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
What these results suggest is that there is a a systematic bias against certain accents in England (particularly Southern working-class varieties), whereas RP is evaluated much more positively and is perceived to be the most suitable for professional employment.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
However, these results are reported for the general public. Would we see the same types of evaluations amongst those who are responsible for hiring candidates? In the next blog post, we explore this question. In the meantime, you can find our more about the project by visiting the <a href="http://accentbiasbritain.org/" target="_blank">project website</a>. </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EAp9OPNS_oE/XhM7GMOpRII/AAAAAAAAAZY/SQ_U-Oa3l5knrrPPJ7aqtTc6v4P3KThwgCNcBGAsYHQ/s1600/xYW8e0N8.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="113" data-original-width="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EAp9OPNS_oE/XhM7GMOpRII/AAAAAAAAAZY/SQ_U-Oa3l5knrrPPJ7aqtTc6v4P3KThwgCNcBGAsYHQ/s1600/xYW8e0N8.png" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , "trebuchet" , "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-align: justify;">This summary was written by </span><a href="http://webspace.qmul.ac.uk/clilbury/" style="background-color: white; font-family: "trebuchet ms", trebuchet, verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-align: justify;">Christian Ilbury</a></div>
Jenny Cheshirehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14751826588409253248noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1929284578930372562.post-17284055909729581582019-11-28T10:29:00.002+00:002019-11-28T10:32:57.320+00:00Accent Bias: Responses to Accent LabelsContinuing our series of posts related to the '<a href="https://accentbiasbritain.org/">Accent Bias in Britain</a>' project, in this blog post we discuss some findings from our research which investigated current attitudes to accents in Britain.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-o-Jqz6ONPww/Xd-gUjeRFUI/AAAAAAAAAYQ/wh28t_2ywa8fyGFvyNdhgwUPg5Wp5k3gACNcBGAsYHQ/s1600/16523626-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="593" data-original-width="900" height="262" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-o-Jqz6ONPww/Xd-gUjeRFUI/AAAAAAAAAYQ/wh28t_2ywa8fyGFvyNdhgwUPg5Wp5k3gACNcBGAsYHQ/s400/16523626-1.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
In the first part of our study, we replicated Coupland & Bishop's study (2007, <a href="https://linguistics-research-digest.blogspot.com/2019/11/there-aint-nothin-wrong-with-accents.html">summarised in an earlier blog post</a>) to see whether the accent attitudes that people held 12 years ago still persist today. A similar study was conducted by Giles in 1970, giving us a further time point to compare our results.<br />
<br />
We recruited a sample of over 800 participants aged between 18 and 79 via a market research firm. The group of participants was intended to be a representative sample of the UK population, so was balanced for gender and region (England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland) and included all major ethnicity groups.<br />
<br />
Once participants had been recruited, they were asked to respond to 38 British accent 'labels', such as 'Estuary English', 'Received Pronunciation', 'Multicultural British English', and 'Birmingham English'. <a href="https://accentbiasbritain.org/accents-in-britain/">You can listen to some of these accents here.</a> The participants were asked to rate each accent label on a scale of 1-7 - where 1 is the lowest and 7 is the highest - for the <i>prestige </i>and <i>pleasantness </i>of the accent.<br />
<br />
After they had completed the survey, we collected social information about the participant, including their gender, ethnicity, age, region of origin, highest level of education, occupation, English accent, languages spoken. We also asked them to complete a short questionnaire about their exposure to different UK accents, the diversity of their own social networks, their beliefs about bias in Britain, and respond to a series of questions designed to measure how much they were concerned about being perceived as prejudiced.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-47VEL21exXg/Xd-c9r7dH6I/AAAAAAAAAXw/0qs9eVdf2PUI4CBdl105Ew_l9jGrfUgEQCNcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Graphs-for-label-historical2.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="286" data-original-width="474" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-47VEL21exXg/Xd-c9r7dH6I/AAAAAAAAAXw/0qs9eVdf2PUI4CBdl105Ew_l9jGrfUgEQCNcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Graphs-for-label-historical2.png" /></a></div>
<br />
As the image above shows, when compared with Giles' results in 1969, Coupland and Bishop's results in 2004, our findings (2019) demonstrate that whilst there are some minor differences, overall, attitudes to accents in the UK remain fairly stable. Standard accents, such as Received Pronunciation (RP) remain very highly rated, whereas ethnic and urban accents, such as Birmingham English, are rated much less favourably. These findings appear to be stable across the three time points.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b><span style="font-size: large;">Want to replicate this study?</span></b> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>We've developed a series of Language Investigations and Teaching Units that helps students and teachers develop a research project of their own! Head over to <a href="http://www.teachrealenglish.org/language-investigations/">Teach Real English!</a> to access these resources. </b></blockquote>
<br />
However, all is not lost it seems. Although we see similar patterns across the three studies, we do see a gradual improvement in the ratings of the accents that are rated the lowest (Afro-Caribbean, Liverpool, Indian, Birmingham). In fact, our 2019 study reports quite the improvement in overall ratings of these accents. It's therefore possible that people view these accents much more positively than they did 50 years ago.<br />
<br />
However, this study examines only responses to 'accent labels'. What would we find if we played actual audio recordings of these accents to participants? Would we see the same results? In the next blog post, we introduce the findings from the second part of our study. In the meantime, you can find our more about the project by <a href="https://accentbiasbritain.org/attitudes-to-labels/">visiting the project website. </a><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-NWd-aQsApKM/Xd-edzgStXI/AAAAAAAAAX8/FxX0eiWt8L46J7Lf6_qOkY_NzBndTSL1ACNcBGAsYHQ/s1600/xYW8e0N8.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="210" data-original-width="593" height="113" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-NWd-aQsApKM/Xd-edzgStXI/AAAAAAAAAX8/FxX0eiWt8L46J7Lf6_qOkY_NzBndTSL1ACNcBGAsYHQ/s320/xYW8e0N8.png" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;">This summary was written by </span><a href="https://www.qmul.ac.uk/sllf/linguistics/people/research-students/profiles/christian.html" style="color: #888888; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px; text-decoration-line: none;">Christian Ilbury</a><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: white; font-family: "open sans" , sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">n </span></div>
Jenny Cheshirehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14751826588409253248noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1929284578930372562.post-29326896245320681432019-11-15T10:50:00.000+00:002019-11-15T10:51:14.162+00:00Teach Real English! <div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 19px;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "verdana"; font-size: 11pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 19px;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "verdana"; font-size: 11pt;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-134J4irCE2U/Xc6CpgbdGSI/AAAAAAAAAXg/cxcDyxdGyHcEAbt9vQIRCJMMIRi5-fQ2QCK4BGAYYCw/s1600/Logo1.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="70" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-134J4irCE2U/Xc6CpgbdGSI/AAAAAAAAAXg/cxcDyxdGyHcEAbt9vQIRCJMMIRi5-fQ2QCK4BGAYYCw/s640/Logo1.jpg" width="640" /></a></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 19px;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "verdana"; font-size: 11pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "verdana"; font-size: 11pt;">Did you know that as well as the 'Research Digest', we also maintain the <a href="http://www.teachrealenglish.org/">'Teach Real English!'</a> site?</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "verdana"; font-size: 11pt;"><br /></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "verdana"; font-size: 11pt;">Our site is an archive of spoken English Language Teaching resources that have been developed by Linguists at Queen Mary University of London. Our website includes: </span></div>
<div style="background-color: white;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana";"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px;"><br /></span></span></div>
<ul>
<li>A <b>database of spoken English</b> (containing sound clips and transcripts)</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><b>Language Investigations</b> for exploring the English language in every day situations</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>A range of <b>Teaching Units</b> designed to offer secondary school teachers of English language up-to-date examples of English language use</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><b>Glossaries </b>and <b>descriptions </b>of spoken English features</li>
</ul>
<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #262626; font-family: "verdana"; font-size: 11pt;">The materials have been designed for teachers of GCSE and GCE </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #262626; font-family: "verdana"; font-size: 15px;">A-Level English Language, but they may be useful for anyone involved in teaching spoken English language.</span><br />
<div style="background-color: white;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #262626; font-family: "verdana"; font-size: 15px;"><br /></span><span style="color: #262626; font-family: "verdana";"><span style="font-size: 15px;">If you have already used our resource, we'd love to hear your feedback! </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px;"><span style="color: #262626; font-family: "verdana";">We are regularly asked to report on usage of the materials we create, so would greatly appreciate you filling in <a href="https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSd6bnqVUKBwoAni6P5Z-lhCyC_SZ9kIALf2Dlr4fdqWBSIFCA/viewform?usp=sf_link">our survey. </a></span></span></div>
Jenny Cheshirehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14751826588409253248noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1929284578930372562.post-2856381812768829602019-11-11T10:44:00.001+00:002019-11-28T10:30:32.957+00:00There ain’t nowt wrong with accents<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">What do you think of when
you hear someone speak with a Brummie accent? How about when somebody speaks
with a West Country accent? Do you think that some accents are more attractive
or prestigious than others? If so, it’s possible that your judgements of these
accents are influenced by <i>accent bias.</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">As part of the <a href="https://accentbiasbritain.org/">Accent Bias project</a> led by academics
at Queen Mary University of London and the University of York, over the next
few weeks we’ll be uploading a series of Digest posts that discuss the effects
of accent bias. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">In the first post of
the series, we focus on a 2007 study by Nikolas Coupland and Hywel Bishop that
investigated how people perceive different types of British accents, looking
specifically at whether some accents were evaluated more positively than
others. <span style="font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5O_f5vHhQTA/Xck1_Ur8XyI/AAAAAAAAAXQ/kR4bbauWu8EyImERMzEKKf_L_vNWfRHkACNcBGAsYHQ/s1600/digest.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="580" data-original-width="1068" height="346" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5O_f5vHhQTA/Xck1_Ur8XyI/AAAAAAAAAXQ/kR4bbauWu8EyImERMzEKKf_L_vNWfRHkACNcBGAsYHQ/s640/digest.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Credit: <a href="https://www.voices.com/blog/quiz-british-slang-uk-colloquilisms/" style="background-color: white; font-size: 12.8px;">https://www.voices.com/blog/quiz-british-slang-uk-colloquilisms/</a><br />
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt -36pt;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">In their 2007 study, they
report on a BBC survey that collected 5010 respondents’ evaluations of 34
different accents. To assess these evaluations, they created an online survey
where participants where asked a series of questions about the <i>prestige</i> and
<i>pleasantness</i> of the 34 accents. This included asking participants direct
questions such as “How much prestige do you think is associated with this
accent?”, and “How pleasant do you think this accent sounds?”. The participants
rated their judgements electronically via a digital survey by clicking a seven-point rating scale,
where 1 is low rating whilst 7 is high rating. This is what is referred to as a 'label study' in that participants were not asked to listen to a recording of the accent, but were simply asked to respond to different accent 'labels', such as '<i>Asian English' </i>or <i>'Southern Irish</i>'.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: -36.0pt; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Participants also were
asked to indicate where in the UK they were from, how old they were, and their
gender. The researchers also asked a series of questions about whether the respondent liked hearing different accents to test </span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">whether their attitudes towards accents and dialects influenced their ratings of the different accent labels. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Coupland and Bishop find that, for
social attractiveness, accents such as <i>Standard English</i>, <i>Southern
Irish</i>, and <i>Scottish</i> are generally positively evaluated, whilst
accents such as <i>Birmingham</i>, <i>South African</i>, and <i>Glasgow</i> were
typically down-rated – that is, they score much lower. For prestige, however,
they observe a slightly different pattern. <i>Received Pronunciation</i> (or
the <i>‘Queen’s English’</i>) scores much higher in terms of prestige than it
does for social attractiveness. Whilst accents such as <i>Birmingham</i> and <i>Asian
English</i> score poorly across the two different scales. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Interestingly, accents
such as <i>Southern Irish English</i>, <i>Newcastle English</i> and <i>Afro-Caribbean
English</i> are rated far higher for attractiveness than for prestige, whereas <i>London
English</i>, <i>North American-accented English</i>, <i>South African-accented
English</i> and <i>German-accented English</i> are all ranked higher for
prestige than for attractiveness.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Whilst these ratings
reveal more general trends of the social evaluation of different UK accents, Coupland and
Bishop suggest that these evaluations may be influenced by the respondents' social characteristics, such
as whether they are male or female. Focusing just on ‘prestige’, on the whole,
Coupland and Bishop find that women are more likely to evaluate a given accent
as prestigious than men. They also find that where the respondent is based in the UK appears to play a role in their evaluation of a given accent, with participants more
likely to evaluate in-group accents as more favourable than others. In other
words, Scottish speaking participants were more likely to evaluate Scottish accents more positively than respondents from other parts of the
country. Similarly, they also observe that the respondents’ age is likely to
influence their evaluation, with the oldest age group tending to show a preference for their own accents than all other groups. Lastly, they observe that
the more liberally-minded respondents who indicate that they appreciate accent
variation were more likely to rate non-standard
accents as more prestigious than their peers. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">So, what does this all
mean? Well, Coupland and Bishop note several implications of this study. The
first is that language use is influenced by ideology – that is a widespread
system of ideas and values that governs a particular concept or social issue. For instance, they observe that there is a general tendency
to rate ethnically linked accents (Asian and Afro-Caribbean) and some of the
urban vernaculars (Birmingham, Liverpool, Glasgow) as lower in prestige and
attractiveness than non-ethnically linked and rural accents. They argue that this is because there is a widespread belief
that people should ‘speak properly’ and so accents that are further away from
more ‘standard’ varieties are typically perceived to be less attractive and
less prestigious than ones that are closer to the standard. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Whilst these findings may not at first seem very encouraging for speakers of non-standard varieties, Coupland and Bishop suggest it seems that there is seems to be a shift towards embracing more liberal attitudes towards accent variation, with younger respondents and those claiming that they like hearing different accents more likely to evaluate non-standard varieties as more prestigious and more socially attractive. So, it seems that although some people might think of certain accents as more attractive or prestigious than others, perceptions are gradually changing. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Given the fourteen or
so years since Coupland and Bishop conducted their study, it’s worth considering whether this liberal outlook has continued. Over the next couple of weeks, we’ll be
focusing on the Accent Bias in Britain project which, among other questions,
sought to investigate this issue. In the meantime, or more information on the
project, you can visit the </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; mso-color-alt: windowtext;"><a href="https://accentbiasbritain.org/"><span style="background: white; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Accent
Bias in Britain</span></a></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"> homepage.
You can also find further educational resources, including a </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; mso-color-alt: windowtext;"><a href="http://www.teachrealenglish.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Language-Investigation-Accent-Bias-FINAL.pdf"><span style="background: white; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Language
Investigation</span></a></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"> and a </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; mso-color-alt: windowtext;"><a href="http://www.teachrealenglish.org/teaching-units/accent-bias-tu24/"><span style="background: white; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Teaching
Unit</span></a></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"> on our Teach Real
English! website. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-NWd-aQsApKM/Xd-edzgStXI/AAAAAAAAAYA/blQp5-hKuQk96BUkWW4hzBavzhWqY5-3ACEwYBhgL/s1600/xYW8e0N8.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="210" data-original-width="593" height="113" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-NWd-aQsApKM/Xd-edzgStXI/AAAAAAAAAYA/blQp5-hKuQk96BUkWW4hzBavzhWqY5-3ACEwYBhgL/s320/xYW8e0N8.png" width="320" /></a></div>
</div>
<br />
------------------------------------------------------------
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: -36.0pt;">
<br /></div>
<br />
Coupland, Nikolas & Hywel Bishop (2007) Ideologised values for British accents. <i>Journal of Sociolinguistics</i>, 11 (1):74-93.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
This summary was written by <a href="https://www.qmul.ac.uk/sllf/linguistics/people/research-students/profiles/christian.html">Christian Ilbury</a><br />
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9841.2007.00311.xJenny Cheshirehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14751826588409253248noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1929284578930372562.post-54760643225318436072019-10-31T12:12:00.000+00:002019-10-31T12:23:33.939+00:00‘Oh gurl, you Sassy’ ‘Slay’, ‘yaas kween’, ‘squad’ – if you’re a keen social media, you might be familiar with some of these words. Originally from African American Vernacular English (AAVE) – a variety of English spoken by some Black Americans – these terms have quickly become part of the internet grammar. But, how and why have these terms entered our lexicon and what does the use of AAVE in internet communication mean? This and other questions are examined by Christian Ilbury in his recent paper.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://media.giphy.com/media/8hYytZFPorySb9AGdf/giphy.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="270" data-original-width="480" height="180" src="https://media.giphy.com/media/8hYytZFPorySb9AGdf/giphy.gif" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
Recent sociolinguistic work has often used social media data to examine patterns of written variation – such as whether you spell the word working as <working> or <workin> - in relation to the distribution of the spoken language feature. An example of this is Grieve’s recent paper which we discuss in detail in a previous post. In that paper he uses social media data to explore lexical (i.e., words) variation across different areas of the UK. This work demonstrates the enormous potential of using social media data to explore general patterns of accent variation. However, whilst these approaches appear promising, Ilbury suggests that these analyses often miss a fundamental quality of online interaction: That users often use elements of language that are not part of their own speech for certain purposes, such as to adopt a different identity or signal that the message is humorous.<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
To investigate this issue, Ilbury turns to tweets from gay men in the UK to examine the ways in which this community use elements of African American Vernacular English. He argues that the gay community in the UK are well suited to examining this phenomenon because aspects of AAVE feature prominently in mainstream gay culture and form much of contemporary gay slang. For instance, drag queens in the UK frequently use aspects of AAVE such as copula absence as in ‘she going’ for ‘she is going’ or the use of completive done as in ‘she done used all the good ones’ in their performance. Turning to Twitter, he extracted 15,804 tweets from the timelines of 10 self-identifying gay men who reside in the UK and trawled through their tweets to identify features that are typically associated with AAVE.<br />
<br />
His analysis shows that several features characteristic of AAVE are widespread in the gay men’s tweets. This includes lexical features, including words such as ‘slay’, ‘yaas’, and ‘y’all’; the representation of sound features such as ‘dat’ for ‘that’, ‘ma’ for ‘my, as well as several grammatical features such as copula absence in ‘you nasty’ for ‘you are nasty’ and demonstrative them as in ‘working them boots’. <br />
<br />
He argues that the appearance of these features can’t be accounted for by the men trying to represent their own dialect since they are likely to speak a variety of British English that is very different to AAVE. This is in contrast to Grieve’s analysis where the users appear to be representing aspects of their own dialect. This suggests that the men in Ilbury’s study are not attempting to represent their own voices but are rather using elements of AAVE to adopt or perform an altogether different identity. <br />
<br />
To investigate what this identity may be, Ilbury looks to popular memes to see how African Americans and AAVE are represented in digital contexts. This includes exploring two memes that reference aspects of AAVE. The first refers to Kimberly ‘Sweet Brown’ Wilkins and the second is entitled the ‘strong independent Black woman who don't need no man’.<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_nW54iBt9Ws/XbrMAIff8oI/AAAAAAAAAXE/dW4FI28Oo2ow3v_nJIem2UsLNL9bvhoawCNcBGAsYHQ/s1600/josl12366-fig-0002-m.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="572" data-original-width="1600" height="227" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_nW54iBt9Ws/XbrMAIff8oI/AAAAAAAAAXE/dW4FI28Oo2ow3v_nJIem2UsLNL9bvhoawCNcBGAsYHQ/s640/josl12366-fig-0002-m.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">'I am a strong independent Black woman who don't need no man' meme (L) & <br />
Kimberly 'Sweet Brown' Wilkins 'Ain't nobody got time for that meme' (R)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">He argues that these memes feed into ideological and stereotypical representations of African American women as ‘sassy’. However, this imagery is not new. African American women have frequently been depicted as ‘fierce’ or ‘sassy’, even in very old media representations of this community. These representations are obviously very problematic since they are based on racialised and essentialised ideas about the personal qualities of African American women.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />Returning to the Twitter data, Ilbury argues that these representations are helpful in explaining why the men are using features of AAVE. He suggests that it is exactly that this ‘sassy’ meaning that the men are ‘activating’ by using components of AAVE. In other words, the men appropriate aspects of AAVE to perform an identity that is non-local and to evoke the essentialised associations of that style to present themselves as ‘sassy’ – a quality that has become appreciated in mainstream UK gay culture. He argues that they are not attempting to present themselves as ‘Black women’ but are rather using features of AAVE to appropriate the associations of that variety and perform a gay identity that he refers to as the ‘Sassy Queen’ – where ‘Queen’ is a gay slang term that refers to an effeminate gay man.<br /> <br />Such types of language play, Ilbury argues, are particularly useful in contexts where there is some threat that the user may be read as rude or direct, such as disagreements. In these contexts, the use of this style allows the user to avoid the negative outcomes of the disagreement because the receiver is aware that the user is performing a style that is inauthentic. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">So, whilst social media can tell us a lot about dialectal variation (e.g., Grieve – previous post), it is important to acknowledge that some users will appropriate aspects of other linguistic varieties to perform other identities and utilise the meanings associated with that variety. What users do with that style depends on how it is used in interactions and may differ from community to community.</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">------------------------------------------------------------<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: -36.0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 36.0pt; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm; text-indent: -36.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 11.5pt;">Ilbury, Christian (Online First/2019) “Sassy Queens”: Stylistic
orthographic variation in Twitter and the enregisterment of AAVE. <i>Journal
of Sociolinguistics</i>. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; line-height: 107%;">
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 11.5pt; line-height: 107%;"><br />
<br />
<span style="background: white;">This summary was written by </span></span><span lang="EN-GB"><a href="https://www.qmul.ac.uk/sllf/linguistics/people/visitors/profiles/christian.html"><span style="background: white; color: #888888; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 11.5pt; line-height: 107%;">Christian Ilbury</span></a></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 11.5pt; line-height: 107%;"><br />
<br />
<span style="background: white;">https://doi.org/10.1111/josl.12366</span></span><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: -36.0pt;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<br /></div>
Jenny Cheshirehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14751826588409253248noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1929284578930372562.post-36124573696334536102019-09-17T12:09:00.002+01:002019-09-17T12:09:24.028+01:00You are what you Tweet! <br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
In the time that it takes you to read this article, millions
of users will have sent a Snapchat, uploaded an Insta Story and updated their
Twitter profile. The age of digital culture is very much upon us. For
Linguists, the contemporary networked society offers a way to explore language
use beyond the traditional method of recording and interviewing speakers. This
includes those studies which examine the dialectal distribution of words and
features across different parts of the country. One such paper is Grieve and
colleagues’ recent Twitter-based analysis of lexical variation in British
English.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Traditionally, linguists interested in researching dialectal
variation (i.e., linguistic features specific to a particular geographic region
or group) have set about researching this topic by conducting surveys and
interviews with speakers of a particular variety. For instance, a linguist
might ask someone to name the “a narrow passageway between or behind buildings”.
If you’re from the south, you might say ‘alleyway’ but northern speakers might
call it a ‘snicket’ or a ‘ginnel’. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
With the advent of social media, however, linguists no
longer have to elicit these words directly. Rather, they can extract massive
datasets of social media data to examine where in the country these words are
used most. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In their 2019 paper, Grieve and colleagues used a corpus
(i.e., dataset) of 180 million Tweets to examine lexical variation in British
English. Helpfully, since tweets include what is known as ‘metadata’ that
relates to the location in which the tweet was sent, Grieve and colleagues were
able to plot these tweets on maps to identify where these words were most frequent.
They compared their analysis with the more traditional approach taken in the <a href="https://sounds.bl.uk/Accents-and-dialects/BBC-Voices">BBC Voices project</a>.
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Their analysis very convincingly shows that the lexical
variation observed in the Twitter data mirrors that identified in more
traditional analyses! This finding is shown in the graphic below, where for all
of the 8 words, the Twitter maps look comparable to those created for the BBC
Voices project. For instance, consider the maps for the word ‘bairn’ – a word that means
‘child’ is typically heard in northern UK dialects (second row, right). The BBC Voices project map
and the Twitter map are virtually indistinguishable. Across both maps, this
word appears largely confined to the north/north-east of the UK – as expected. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-q3hzmziejk8/XUK8R_ysppI/AAAAAAAAAWI/YNdRR71cYNADtcLrQsyxU40I03sq4l6HACLcBGAs/s1600/Grieve.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1403" data-original-width="984" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-q3hzmziejk8/XUK8R_ysppI/AAAAAAAAAWI/YNdRR71cYNADtcLrQsyxU40I03sq4l6HACLcBGAs/s640/Grieve.jpg" width="448" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Whilst, for the most part, the traditional dialect maps and the Twitter dialect maps look very similar, Grieve and colleagues note some differences. For instance, in the Twitter dataset, ‘bairn’
is observed to account for a maximum of 7.2% instances of the word ‘child’, even in the areas where it is stereotypically associated with that dialect. This is in comparison to the BBC Voices dataset, which reports a
maximum of 100% of instances of ‘bairn’ for ‘child’ in some areas. Discussing the reasons for this difference, Grieve and colleagues explore several possibilities. First, they suggest that the differences may be related to a decline in usage of this word. It is possible that 'bairn' has simply become less popular over time. However, the decline in the use of this word also might have something to do with the type of data we get from Twitter and the way it's analysed in large-scale studies such as this. In particular, the authors note that it is impossible to examine the conversational context of the tweet. A such, it’s possible that’s there’s some
contexts where users would use ‘child’ for ‘bairn’ even if they use the
dialectal term ‘bairn’ in speech. For instance, if a user is reporting someone
else’s speech.<br />
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Nevertheless, with these issues aside, Grieve and
colleagues’ analysis suggests that the findings observed in large-scale
dialectal surveys are largely mirrored in the Twitter data. As such, we can
expect more and more sociolinguistic research to examine data from social media
sites, such as Twitter in the future! So, it seems, you really are what you tweet!<br />
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , "trebuchet" , "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px;">------------------------------------------------------------</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-indent: -36.0pt;">
Grieve, Jack;
Chris Montgomery; Andrea Nini; Akira Murakami & Diansheng Guo (2019) Mapping
Lexical Dialect Variation in British English Using Twitter. <i>Frontiers in
Artificial Intelligence</i>. </div>
<br />
<br />
This summary was written by <a href="https://www.qmul.ac.uk/sllf/linguistics/people/research-students/profiles/christian.html">Christian Ilbury</a><br />
<br />
<span style="text-indent: -48px;">https://doi.org/10.3389/frai.2019.00011.</span>Jenny Cheshirehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14751826588409253248noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1929284578930372562.post-61296379605518636542019-07-11T15:00:00.002+01:002019-11-28T10:41:28.496+00:00The Queen’s Speech<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
Picture this: it’s Christmas day, you’re overloaded with
turkey, surrounded by the remnants of wrapping paper and you’ve just settled
down to watch the Queen’s annual speech. It’s a tradition for many at
Christmas. But, what if I told you that the Queen’s speech isn’t the same as it
was in more recent decades than, say, in the 1950’s. Of course, here I’m not
talking about the content of her speech (of course that changes year by year!),
but rather her pronunciation of what is sometimes referred to as ‘the Queen’s
English’.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p><br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/mBRP-o6Q85s/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/mBRP-o6Q85s?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Jonathan Harrington along with colleagues set out to find
out how changes in society have influenced the ‘Queen’s English’ by examining
the Queen’s speech in her Annual Christmas broadcast over three time periods. This
synopsis focusses on just one of these papers, Harrington, Palethorpe &
Watson (2000). <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The ‘Queen’s English’ or Received Pronunciation (RP) as
linguists refer to it, is a variety of English spoken by some upper-class
individuals and is often associated with power, money and privilege. It also happens
to be the variety of English spoken by Queen Elizabeth II (hence the name!). Typically,
RP is characterised by pronunciations such as ‘gep’ for ‘gap’ and ‘bottle’
where both of the t’s are still pronounced as t’s, as opposed to ‘bo’le’. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But, as sociolinguists know, language changes over time. This
is particularly the case for RP, which has been influenced by the changing
social class boundaries between upper-, middle- and working-class communities.
These changes are likely to influence language use. As Harrington and
colleagues observe, these changes have already influenced RP, such that the
tendency to pronounce an ‘l’ in a word like <i>milk </i>as something like a ‘w’
– a feature that was once typical of working-class varieties, such as Cockney –
is now regularly heard in the speech of many RP speakers. So, then, how do
these changes relate to the ‘Queen’s English’? <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
By examining the Queen’s Christmas address across three
different time periods (1950’s, late 1960/ early 70’s, 1980’s), Harrington and
his colleagues examined how the changing social landscape related to the Queen’s
English. They did this by looking at what linguists refer to as ‘acoustic properties’
of the Queen’s vowels. Vowels, like other sound forms (e.g., music) can be
measured in Hz. These measurements are then plotted onto a graph and linguists
are able to track changes in the way a particular vowel was pronounced over time
or by speaker. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In Harrington and colleagues’ analysis, they measured the
acoustic properties of 11 vowels, including those in the words: h<b>ee</b>d, h<b>i</b>d,
and h<b>oar</b>d. They also compared the Queen’s pronunciation of these vowels
with data from Standard Southern British English speaking females to see how
the Queen’s speech related to more general patterns of speech. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What they find is that, over time, the Queen’s English
appears to have moved towards the pronunciation typical of the Standard British
English speaking females. Although she doesn’t mirror their speech, the English
spoken by the Queen in the 1980’s appears to be dramatically different than the
variety she spoke in the 50’s, sounding more like younger speakers who are
lower on the social class hierarchy - in other words, the Queen has become less
posh! <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
For instance, in the next two videos, compare how the Queen
says ‘Happy Christmas’ in 1950 (0.31, in the first video), where <i>happy </i>is pronounced more
like ‘heppy’ and in 1980, where it pronounced more like ‘happy’ (8.55, in the video below). <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Mv9ovSfW-A8/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Mv9ovSfW-A8?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So, it seems that, whilst the Queen may have become less ‘posh’,
it’s quite clear that she’s not part of the <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Royle_Family">Royle family</a></i> just yet. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , "trebuchet" , "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px;">------------------------------------------------------------</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p>Harrington, J., Palethorpe, S., and Watson, C. (2000). Monophthongal vowel changes
in Received Pronunciation: an acoustic analysis of the Queen’s Christmas
Broadcasts. <i>Journal of the International Phonetic Association</i>, 63-78.</o:p><br />
<o:p><br /></o:p>
<o:p></o:p><br />
<ul class="article-components" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-family: "noto sans", Helvetica, Roboto, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: 1.6; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<li class="source" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #595959; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px 0px 5px; min-height: 19px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">DOI: <a class="url doi" href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S0025100300006666" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; clear: both; color: rgb(0, 111, 202) !important; cursor: pointer; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px 0px 2px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-color: rgb(0, 111, 202); transition: all 0.3s ease 0s; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">https://doi.org/10.1017/S0025100300006666</a></li>
</ul>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p><br /></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , "trebuchet" , "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px;">------------------------------------------------------------</span></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p><br /></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p>See also: </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p>Harrington, J., Palethorpe, S., and Watson, C. (2000). Does the Queen speak the Queen's English? <i>Nature</i>, 408, 927-928</o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p>Harrington, J. (2006). An acoustic analysis of ‘happy-tensing’ in the Queen’s
Christmas broadcasts, Journal of Phonetics, 34 439–457. </o:p><br />
<o:p><br /></o:p>
<o:p><br /></o:p>
<o:p><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , "trebuchet" , "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-align: justify;">This summary was written by </span><a href="http://webspace.qmul.ac.uk/clilbury/" style="background-color: white; font-family: "trebuchet ms", trebuchet, verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-align: justify;">Christian Ilbury</a></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />Jenny Cheshirehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14751826588409253248noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1929284578930372562.post-80873695253517929192019-06-18T17:40:00.001+01:002019-06-18T17:41:26.808+01:00Pride Month Special: Language, Sexuality & Identity<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Content note: this article contains some references to homophobia.</i><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><br /></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
No one could argue that LGBT
rights in the UK have not made progress over the last decade or two. With the
introduction of the Gender Recognition Act in 2004 and the successful campaign
for same-sex marriage in 2013, today LGBT people have more and more protection
under UK law. However, there is still some way to go before those who identify
as LGBT experience the same levels of equality afforded to the rest of the population.
Given this struggle for total equality, it is perhaps unsurprising that many of
these themes emerge in the way LGBT people present themselves, including how
they use linguistic features to mark aspects of their identity. <span style="mso-no-proof: yes;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-eiQKT8jfjZs/XQkSxB5bz7I/AAAAAAAAAVo/PlsSejKKlqYasgYwixKGIoT-EMhNImehgCLcBGAs/s1600/180521-F-XX000-1001.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="433" data-original-width="650" height="266" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-eiQKT8jfjZs/XQkSxB5bz7I/AAAAAAAAAVo/PlsSejKKlqYasgYwixKGIoT-EMhNImehgCLcBGAs/s400/180521-F-XX000-1001.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-no-proof: yes;"><br />
<v:shapetype coordsize="21600,21600" filled="f" id="_x0000_t75" o:preferrelative="t" o:spt="75" path="m@4@5l@4@11@9@11@9@5xe" stroked="f">
<v:stroke joinstyle="miter">
<v:formulas>
<v:f eqn="if lineDrawn pixelLineWidth 0">
<v:f eqn="sum @0 1 0">
<v:f eqn="sum 0 0 @1">
<v:f eqn="prod @2 1 2">
<v:f eqn="prod @3 21600 pixelWidth">
<v:f eqn="prod @3 21600 pixelHeight">
<v:f eqn="sum @0 0 1">
<v:f eqn="prod @6 1 2">
<v:f eqn="prod @7 21600 pixelWidth">
<v:f eqn="sum @8 21600 0">
<v:f eqn="prod @7 21600 pixelHeight">
<v:f eqn="sum @10 21600 0">
</v:f></v:f></v:f></v:f></v:f></v:f></v:f></v:f></v:f></v:f></v:f></v:f></v:formulas>
<v:path gradientshapeok="t" o:connecttype="rect" o:extrusionok="f">
<o:lock aspectratio="t" v:ext="edit">
</o:lock></v:path></v:stroke></v:shapetype><v:shape id="Picture_x0020_2" o:spid="_x0000_i1025" style="height: 300.5pt; mso-wrap-style: square; visibility: visible; width: 451pt;" type="#_x0000_t75">
<v:imagedata o:title="180521-F-XX000-1001" src="file:///C:/Users/ilbur/AppData/Local/Temp/msohtmlclip1/01/clip_image001.jpg">
</v:imagedata></v:shape></span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/english/people/lucy.jones">Lucy Jones</a> of
the <a href="https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/english/index.aspx">University of
Nottingham </a>did a study on a group of LGBT youths, looking particularly at
the way that they used language to construct their own identity. Jones noted
that, with many of the above advancements, came a culture of what is known as
homonormativity – the belief that sexual and romantic attraction should be
between man and woman, as opposed to those of the same sex. This belief influences
the way LGBT people live their lives and members of the community feel that
they are under pressure to assimilate (i.e., become more similar to) mainstream
society and adopt heterosexual or cisgender social norms. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
In her study, Jones wanted to see
if this had an impact on the way that the youths discussed their identities.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Her research took place in a
youth group that specifically supported those who identified as LGBT or who questioned
their gender or sexual identity. Jones spent four months with the group, and
did several interviews with members. She ended up taking data from five
members, all of whom were white and cisgender, and identified either as
lesbians or gay men. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Jones identified three ways in
which these young people negotiated their identity. The first way was through
the rejection of stereotypes – one participant deliberately distanced himself
from the idea of a “stereotypical gay camp man”, rejecting the idea of
“flaunting around the place”. The participant also compared being gay to
horse-riding, saying that it would be silly to define people by their hobbies.
Jones argued that this creates a disconnect between being gay and performing a
gay identity, and hence deliberately distancing themselves from it. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
The second way was through the discussion
of “othering” by their heterosexual counterparts. When discussing the
importance of Gay Pride Marches, the teenagers aligned themselves with gay
people, and positioned themselves in opposition to heterosexuals by using the
pronouns “we” and “they”. When quoting heterosexual acquaintances, one teenager
repeatedly used the second person pronoun, but in the plural, such as “why do
you have Pride?”. By reporting their speech in this way,
the respondents show how they become ‘othered’ by heterosexual peers. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Finally, as might be expected
following the above, negotiating the homophobia that they experienced formed a
considerable part of how they constructed their identity. The teenagers reported
that they had experience multiple homophobic incidents. Jones interprets this
as a possible cause of why these individuals sought to distance themselves from
overtly gay stereotypes. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Ultimately, what Jones’ paper
shows is that, despite the advances that legislation has made, LGBT youth still
have very difficult experiences that lead them to construct their identity in
ways that adhere to mainstream norms and make themselves more like their
heterosexual peers. Through an analysis of language, we can see that we have a
long way to go to help LGBT peers feel accepted. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Glossary - <b>Cisgender</b>: Someone whose gender identity matches the sex they were assigned at birth</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , "trebuchet" , "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px;">------------------------------------------------------------</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Jones, L. (2018) ‘I’m not proud, I’m just gay’: Lesbian and gay youths’ discursive negotiation of otherness. <i>Journal of Sociolinguistics</i>, 22(1), 55-76.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: black; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: black; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">doi:<o:p></o:p></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1c1d1e; font-family: "open sans" , "icomoon" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: left;">10.1177/1363460719830343</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: black; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">This summary was written by </span><a href="https://marinamerryweather.com/"><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">Marina Merryweather</span></a></div>
<br />Jenny Cheshirehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14751826588409253248noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1929284578930372562.post-15277583131952888122019-06-05T16:41:00.001+01:002019-06-05T16:41:58.183+01:00Does Gaga ‘live for the applause’? Or, is it more of a ‘Poker Face’?<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
As one of the best-selling pop artists of our time, Lady
Gaga is a name few would fail to recognise. From ‘Poker Face’ to ‘Telephone’,
her artistry has earned her a level of notoriety comparable only to a few other
music legends. Along with her success, she’s built a loyal fanbase that she affectionately
refers to as the ‘Little Monsters’. At shows, she often <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czR2U1d4q1s">invites her ‘Little Monsters’
on stage</a><span class="MsoHyperlink">, </span><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span style="color: windowtext; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">whilst at
other times, she’s surprised her fans by <a href="https://www.glamour.com/story/lady-gaga-surprised-fans-a-star-is-born">appearing
at a movie premier</a>. Here, Lady Gaga appears to navigate between her
identity as an international superstar whilst simultaneously appealing to her
fans to recognise her as an ‘ordinary person’. </span></span>But, how does Gaga
manage these apparently conflicting identities and what linguistic devices does
she use to achieve this? In her 2018 paper, Mary-Caitlyn Valentinsson decided
to find out:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
To examine the ways in which Gaga navigates the ‘ordinary
person’ and ‘celebrity superstar’ identities, Valentinsson examines tweets sent
by Gaga aimed at her fans and transcripts taken from media interviews with Gaga.
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-eE2ICZ-nARw/XPfhgP5q9TI/AAAAAAAAAVc/FHrTwl6WbcECqE0vTdCPIOZ_A1DFh7SlgCLcBGAs/s1600/Lady-Gaga-Little-Japanese-Monsters-2012-05-091.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="1500" height="213" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-eE2ICZ-nARw/XPfhgP5q9TI/AAAAAAAAAVc/FHrTwl6WbcECqE0vTdCPIOZ_A1DFh7SlgCLcBGAs/s320/Lady-Gaga-Little-Japanese-Monsters-2012-05-091.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A group of Lady Gaga's superfans - her 'Little Monsters'</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Central to Valentinsson’s analysis are the concepts of <i>stance</i><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </b>and <i>stance-taking</i>. These two terms describe two aspects of communication.
The term ‘stance’ refers to the way that people align or position themselves in
relation to some object, person or idea. So when a speaker expresses their attitude
towards something, that speaker is taking a stance. The notion of stance-taking
refers to the actual process of making that alignment, which is usually achieved
through communication. For instance, if you said, ‘I don’t like cheese’, you'd be taking a stance that you ‘don’t like the dairy goodness of cheese’. The Stance-taking
bit would be you actually saying those words. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
To examine Lady Gaga’s stances in relation to her fans and
journalists, Valentinsson first turns to Gaga’s Twitter account where she observes
that Gaga often creates a stance of alignment with the ‘ordinary people’. She does
this through a number of linguistic strategies. For instance, in one tweet
aimed at her fans, Gaga uses terms usually associated with the family (‘mommy’,
‘kids’, ‘mother’) to take a stance of intimacy that allows her to align with her
fans. In another tweet, which references the two awards that Gaga won at the People’s
Choice Awards, she uses the third-person pronoun ‘we’ in the sentence: ‘we won
two people’s choice awards’ to include her fans as recipients of the awards. In
other contexts, Gaga uses the @ function of Twitter to ‘speak’ to her fans
directly, referencing an awareness of issues effecting her fans in real life. Together,
these ‘strategies’ allow Lady Gaga to create a stance of alignment with her
fans, rejecting her celebrity status, therefore presenting herself as an ‘ordinary
person’. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/2Y7E5AnN2Og/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/2Y7E5AnN2Og?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In interviews with journalists, however, Valentinsson
observes an altogether different set of strategies used by Gaga. In these
contexts, Gaga adopts a relatively confrontational stance. She does this by refusing
to answer questions she deems inappropriate or correcting journalists’ comments
about her stage performance. For instance, in one interview, asked whether the
sexual references in her songs would negatively influence her record sales, Gaga
responds by confronting the interviewer with her achievement of selling 4
million records. Valentinsson argues that, by taking these stances, Gaga explicitly
creates a stance of disalignment with the ‘media enterprise’ and reinforces her
earlier identity as an ‘ordinary person’. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Concluding, Valentinsson argues that Gaga maintains an ‘ordinary
persona’ by engaging in stance taking moves that emphasise her alignment with
her fans above all other audiences. So, it seems, at least Gaga is not a ‘Judas’
afterall and she’s certainly not as ‘Shallow’ as the media would like you to believe…
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , "trebuchet" , "verdana" , sans-serif; text-align: start;">------------------------------------------------------------</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-align: justify;">
Valentinsson, Mary-<span style="background-color: transparent;">Caitlyn</span> (2018). Stance and the construction of authentic celebrity persona. <span style="background-color: transparent;"><i>Language in Society </i>47, 715–740.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-align: justify;">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-align: justify;">
doi:10.1017/S0047404518001100<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-align: justify;">
This summary was written by <a href="http://webspace.qmul.ac.uk/clilbury/">Christian Ilbury</a></div>
<br />Jenny Cheshirehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14751826588409253248noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1929284578930372562.post-66784528884914199122019-05-30T13:29:00.000+01:002019-05-30T13:30:43.996+01:00Like, it's just like a joke, no? <br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
If you’ve spent even a day
casually browsing the Internet, you’re probably aware of the stereotypes of a 'typical white girl'. She goes to Starbucks, she wears Uggs, she dyes her hair
blonde and straightens it... it’s a similar concept across Anglophone spheres. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-3fFhIk9yqdU/XO_KojmkIEI/AAAAAAAAAVI/OuemAF6XDOwaXnH27n9P-3b0zjRro6XiQCLcBGAs/s1600/latte.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="960" height="213" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-3fFhIk9yqdU/XO_KojmkIEI/AAAAAAAAAVI/OuemAF6XDOwaXnH27n9P-3b0zjRro6XiQCLcBGAs/s320/latte.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 9pt; line-height: 12.84px;">Not pictured: the Pumpkin Spice Latte.</span></i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"><br /></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
There are, of course, language
features associated with the stereotypical white girl too. And in this paper, <a href="https://www.tyslobe.com/">Tyanna Slobe</a>, a linguistic anthropologist, wanted
to investigate how three different online performances utilised these resources
to create their mock white girl characters. This relies on a concept known as
indexicality – when certain groups use a particular feature more often, it can
become associated with that group. For example, the use of the word<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> like</i> is often indexed with young
people, as they have led the trend for it being used as a discourse marker.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Slobe also situated her work in
the context of two different ideological perspectives. One is that of how
mocking certain linguistic resources can perpetuate stigma against them: the
language associated with white girls is often used to dismiss them as vacuous
or unintelligent, and exploiting those resources can perpetuate that
stereotype. On the other hand, they can be knowingly exploited in order to
critique hegemonic identities in society. In the case of the stereotypical
white girl, the identity can be satirised in order to point out the glaring
omission of women of colour in cultural notions of femininity, and the
problematic opinions that white women often hold.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Slobe looked at three different
performances. One is a genre she describes as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Saviour</i>, a form of performance to encourage superficial notions of
gender equality. One comes from the popular <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylPUzxpIBe0"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sh*t white girls say</i></a> Youtube series, looking specifically at
two videos that discuss what white girls say to black and Latina girls. The
third is from the social media platform Vine’s series <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Teenage
girl problems</i>, where the white girl character is performed in a way that mocks
her stereotypical concerns.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Two of these performances
contribute to further stigmatisation of the character. One example that Slobe
gives of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Saviour </i>genre is an
interview with Lake Bell, who adopts creaky voice – where the vocal cords are
compressed so that less air passes through them and they vibrate less
frequently – to discuss what she calls a “sexy baby virus”. Through performing
this voice and indexing it in such a way, she means to imply that young white
girls performing these stereotypically feminine vocal traits are responsible
for the sexism they encounter in the work place, and the attitudes towards such
language. Similarly, in the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Teenage girl
problems</i> Vine, his performance of the white girl uses exaggerated gestures,
eye rolling, and creaky voice to contrast the slow and carefully articulated
male character, whilst performing trivial and irrational concerns. By indexing
the communicative cues with the concerns, the Vine star portrays an ideological
stance that ultimately stigmatises girlhood.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
On the other hand, the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sh*t white girls say</i> videos use the
persona in a critical way. Franchesca Ramsay, the creator of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sh*t white girls say to black girls</i>,
also uses creaky voice to highlight parts of the white girl’s dialogue, but
particularly to draw attention to the character’s racism, such as when she describes
hair texture that feels like a “Brillo pad”. Similarly, she uses the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">right?</i> tag question associated with
white girl speech to highlight the affirmation the character wants for a racist
statement. By specifically parodying the racist elements of the character, these
resources satirise the white girl’s behaviour as an embodiment of naïve racism.
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Ultimately, there are a number of
ideological stances that the white girl character can be used for. So next time
you see a meme featuring the character, you could think to yourself about what
stance is being adopted, and what ideologies are being perpetuated or
criticised as a result.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "trebuchet ms", trebuchet, verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-align: start;">------------------------------------------------------------</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: black; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">Slobe,
Tanyanna (2018). Style, stance, and social meaning in mock white girl. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Language in Society</i> 47(4): 541-567.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: black; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: black; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">doi:10.1017/S004740451800060X<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: black; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">This
summary was written by </span><a href="https://marinamerryweather.com/"><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">Marina Merryweather</span></a><o:p></o:p></div>
<br />Jenny Cheshirehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14751826588409253248noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1929284578930372562.post-43480894575162909662019-03-15T14:55:00.000+00:002019-03-22T14:22:50.966+00:00"I'm so Fancy"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
Remember Iggy Azalea? Well, if you were just about anywhere in 2014, you might recall her smash hit song 'Fancy' featuring Charli XCX. In fact, that song was so popular that it earnt Iggy Ig's a Billboard award for the 'biggest ever hit for a female rapper'. But whilst she might be one of the most recognisable Hip-Hop artists of the current period, you might also recall that she's faced quite a lot of criticism too with many referencing the difference between her ethnicity (as a White Australian) and her distinctive rapping-style which has been referred to as a '<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/gdpr-consent/?destination=%2fnews%2fwonk%2fwp%2f2016%2f01%2f04%2fhow-a-white-australian-rapper-mastered-her-blaccent%2f%3f&utm_term=.aa100dfbd824">Blaccent</a>' (literally a 'black accent'). </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/LxoGNkLpgZk/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/LxoGNkLpgZk?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe></div>
<br />
But, why does Iggy sound 'Black'? And why do people perceive Iggy to have a 'Blaccent'? These are two questions that <a href="https://www.uvm.edu/cas/rll/profiles/maeve_eberhardt">Maeve Eberhardt</a> & Kara Freeman decided to investigate in their 2015 paper.<br />
<br />
By transcribing Iggy's entire back catalogue of albums, EPs and mixtapes, Eberhardt & Freeman set about analysing her distinctive rapping style. With newspaper articles referring to Iggy's 'Blaccent', the authors examined her use of features typically found in African American English (AAE) in her rap music. As a speech variety, AAE is typically spoken by Black individuals (i.e., African American) speakers who live in parts of Northern America.<br />
<br />
One feature that the authors decided to explore is 'copula absence' which describes the tendency for speakers to pronounce the sentence "he's in here" as "he in here" - in other words, the verb 'be' (<i>is/are</i>) is absent from the sentence.<br />
<br />
Whilst this feature occurs in many varieties (including some varieties of British English), in AAE, researchers have found certain patterns that seem unique to the variety. In particular, they have found that speakers tend to use higher amounts of copula absence before certain types of words and that this feature is more likely when the verb occurs before <i>gonna </i>as in "she <i>gonna </i>go home" and least likely before noun-phrases "Marie<i>'s</i> in there".<br />
<br />
Remarkably, by analysing Iggy's rapping style, Eberhardt & Freeman found good evidence to suggest that she wasn't just using copula deletion randomly but, rather, her use of this feature mirrored the same patterns that native AAE speakers exhibit! However, when they analysed Iggy's interviews, they found that she rarely uses copula deletion.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/sbC9PARRzFw/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/sbC9PARRzFw?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Iggy in an interview - sounds Australian, huh? </span></div>
<br />
So, why does Iggy use a variety that's typically spoken by Black African Americans in her rap but not in interviews? One such explanation has to do with the music industry and genre that she's working in: Hip-Hop. As an art-form that originated in Black communities in the U.S., many of these artists come from this community and typically those who speak AAE - think of Jay Z or Lil Wayne. As such, the language associated with this genre of music - the 'Hip-Hop Nation Language' (HHNL; Alim, 2004) - is largely based in AAE and shares many features of this variety.<br />
<br />
In order to get by and sell records, it seems then that you need to use the 'code' that's typical of the genre and rap in HHNL. But, as a White Australian, Iggy doesn't really look or sound like a Hip-Hop artist... Hip-Hop in an Australian accent doesn't seem to work! Herein lies the explanation for her performance of AAE.<br />
<br />
Eberhardt & Freeman argue that she uses AAE to sound like a 'real' Hip-Hop artist in order to sell records. And she does this quite well- as we've seen she uses the same features in the right 'slots' as a native speaker. But, whilst she might be able to speak AAE like a native speaker, it seems that her performance is still pretty problematic. In fact, there are virtually hundreds of articles on Iggy's <a href="https://www.teenvogue.com/story/halsey-accuses-iggy-azalea-of-cultural-appropriation">'cultural appropriation'</a> of AAE, with many referencing her use of this variety and her lack of authenticity as a White Australian.<br />
<br />
So whilst Iggy may be claiming to be a "a white girl with a flow ain't been seen before" it seems that she's not the "realest" after all...<br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , "trebuchet" , "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px;">------------------------------------------------------------</span><br />
<br />
Eberhardt, Maeve & Kara Freeman (2015) ‘First things first, I'm the realest’: Linguistic appropriation, white privilege, and the hip‐hop persona of Iggy Azalea. <i>Journal of Sociolinguistics.</i> 19(3):303-327.<br />
<br />
This summary was written by <a href="https://www.qmul.ac.uk/sllf/linguistics/people/research-students/profiles/christian.html">Christian Ilbury</a><br />
<br />
<a class="epub-doi" href="https://doi.org/10.1111/josl.12128" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #005274; font-family: "Open Sans", icomoon, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-weight: 600; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none;">https://doi.org/10.1111/josl.12128</a><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="accordion-tabbed__tab-mobile accordion__closed" style="background-color: white; border-top: none; box-sizing: border-box; color: #8b8b8b; display: inline; font-family: "Open Sans", icomoon, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; position: relative;">
</div>
Jenny Cheshirehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14751826588409253248noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1929284578930372562.post-30471541150286342812019-03-01T13:53:00.001+00:002019-03-01T14:56:35.176+00:00Authenticity in the Hood<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Whether it’s in friends, designer
handbags, or website security, one quality people always want is authenticity.
Their fake counterparts are shoddy at best and damaging at worst, whether that
be for your emotional health, your belongings, or the contents of your bank
account.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Fgan8jA58CQ/XHk4lSGEgGI/AAAAAAAAAT0/Ui4uZF9G7XQ5jV4ZhFQBMBNGmalRMErOACLcBGAs/s1600/researchdig.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="650" data-original-width="434" height="320" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Fgan8jA58CQ/XHk4lSGEgGI/AAAAAAAAAT0/Ui4uZF9G7XQ5jV4ZhFQBMBNGmalRMErOACLcBGAs/s320/researchdig.jpg" width="213" /></a></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-no-proof: yes;"><v:shapetype coordsize="21600,21600" filled="f" id="_x0000_t75" o:preferrelative="t" o:spt="75" path="m@4@5l@4@11@9@11@9@5xe" stroked="f">
<v:stroke joinstyle="miter">
<v:formulas>
<v:f eqn="if lineDrawn pixelLineWidth 0">
<v:f eqn="sum @0 1 0">
<v:f eqn="sum 0 0 @1">
<v:f eqn="prod @2 1 2">
<v:f eqn="prod @3 21600 pixelWidth">
<v:f eqn="prod @3 21600 pixelHeight">
<v:f eqn="sum @0 0 1">
<v:f eqn="prod @6 1 2">
<v:f eqn="prod @7 21600 pixelWidth">
<v:f eqn="sum @8 21600 0">
<v:f eqn="prod @7 21600 pixelHeight">
<v:f eqn="sum @10 21600 0">
</v:f></v:f></v:f></v:f></v:f></v:f></v:f></v:f></v:f></v:f></v:f></v:f></v:formulas>
<v:path gradientshapeok="t" o:connecttype="rect" o:extrusionok="f">
<o:lock aspectratio="t" v:ext="edit">
</o:lock></v:path></v:stroke></v:shapetype><v:shape alt="https://images.pexels.com/photos/894156/pexels-photo-894156.jpeg?auto=compress&cs=tinysrgb&h=650&w=940" id="Picture_x0020_1" o:spid="_x0000_i1025" style="height: 338pt; mso-wrap-style: square; visibility: visible; width: 225pt;" type="#_x0000_t75">
<v:imagedata o:title="pexels-photo-894156" src="file:///C:/Users/ilbur/AppData/Local/Temp/msohtmlclip1/01/clip_image001.jpg">
</v:imagedata></v:shape></span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">The music is real, even if the wool on the collar is not.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="MsoHyperlink">In a recent paper, <a href="https://www.gold.ac.uk/ecl/staff/p-pichler/">Pia Pichler</a></span> and <span class="MsoHyperlink"><a href="https://uk.linkedin.com/in/nathanael-williams-65b601108">Nathanael
Williams</a></span> look specifically at the way identity is authenticated by
four young men from South London. Nathanael was one of these four men, and he
recorded over five hours of conversation between him and the three others. The
conversation covered a range of topics, including class, race, language,
fatherhood, and the US; however, the focus of this research specifically
covered their discussion of hip-hop.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
In order to investigate the links
between identity and authenticity, Pichler and Williams draw on Silverstein’s
“cultural concepts”, which describe people’s use of linguistic elements that do
not have a straightforward interpretation. In order to access the meaning of
those elements, you need to be part of a shared cultural sphere with the person
who is using them. One example they give is that of a wine connoisseur, who
uses certain terms to describe wine which might otherwise mean something
different. Using these terms to convey these cultural meanings is therefore a
way to indicate your affiliation with that sphere, and make it a part of your
identity. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
In the conversation that
Nathaniel analysed, the four men frequently positioned authentic aspects of
hip-hop culture against inauthentic intruders. One example is during a
discussion of World Star Hip Hop, a website which features regular content
about the genre, from both contributors and users. One of the men, Les, was
complaining about some girls fighting on the website, specifically referring to
them as “white girls from The Hills”. “The Hills” was a series that focused on
the lives of white, upper-middle class women in Los Angeles; by referencing
them, Les positions them against the working class and non-white culture of the
website. The men also reference cultural concepts within the UK to position
things. For example, Les also complains about white kids from Oxford or
Cambridge proffering extended opinions on hip-hop. Given the reputation of
Oxford and Cambridge as wealthy university towns, this indexes the white person
he is complaining about to a middle-class background that is at odds with his
supposed knowledge about a predominantly black and working-class genre. This
therefore renders the person and their opinions on the best hip-hop artists as
inauthentic.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Pichler and Williams also note
linguistic features used by the men that are just as important to the
construction of their identities. For example, when discussing his brother’s
membership in a South London gang, Les says <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">dey</i>
and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">dem</i> as opposed to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">they</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">them</i> – a feature known as DH-stopping. He also uses <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">yout</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">bruv</i>; while the use of such lexical items is not specific to the
Englishes typically spoken in hip-hop, they still index an authentic
background, as they are features of MLE, or <span class="MsoHyperlink"><a href="http://linguistics-research-digest.blogspot.com/2011/11/multicultural-london-english-part-1.html">Multicultural
London English</a></span>. As a dialect usually spoken by working class people,
often of colour, in inner-city London, it is not at odds with hip-hop culture,
which often draws on local dialects.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
These are just some of the ways
in which the participants authenticated themselves. Now consider the
conversations that you have – how do you position things against one another,
and what features do you use if and when you do so? You may be doing the exact
same thing.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , "trebuchet" , "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px;">------------------------------------------------------------</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: black; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">Pichler,
P., & Williams, N. (2016). Hipsters in the hood: Authenticating indexicalities
in young men's hip-hop talk. <i>Language in Society</i> <span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">45</span>(4): 557-581.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: black; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">This
summary was written by </span><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><a href="https://marinamerryweather.com/">Marina Merryweather</a></span></span><o:p></o:p></div>
<br />Jenny Cheshirehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14751826588409253248noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1929284578930372562.post-86725338520075520202019-01-28T09:57:00.002+00:002019-01-28T09:57:58.287+00:00Bringing Research into the Classroom: New Resources for Teaching A-Level English LanguageWe're really excited to announce that we will be holding a half-term event to introduce our new A-Level English Language Resources! If you're a keen reader and are interested in making the most of our resources, <a href="https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/bringing-research-into-the-classroom-new-resources-for-teaching-a-level-english-language-tickets-55399098194">click here to register. </a><br />
<br />
The workshop is designed to share the latest research as well as new teaching resources in the area of English Language (Sociolinguistics, Variation, and Language Change) with A-Level and other English Language teachers. The short talks will present recent research relevant to the national curriculum, helping teachers get a feel for where scholarship stands currently. The talks will also showcase a new free set of teaching resources -- English Language Teaching Resources -- with hands-on demonstrations. These resources package cutting-edge research into classroom-friendly content. This includes real audio clips, transcripts, background guidance for teaching, simple summaries of new research on hot topics, and guided student projects.<br />
<br />
Date: <b>Tuesday 19th February</b><br />
Time: 2-5:30pm<br />
Location: Queen Mary University of London (Mile End, East London)<br />
Room: Graduate Centre (GC) 101<br />
<br />
Provisional schedule and titles (subject to minor changes)<br />
<br />
<br />
2:00 pm — 'Current trends in sociolinguistics, and new materials for A-Level English Language teaching' (Prof Devyani Sharma)<br />
<br />
2:30 pm — 'Good or bad grammar? A practical approach to looking at changing attitudes' (Dr Carmen Ebner)<br />
<br />
3:00 pm — 'Language use in social media' (Christian Ilbury, PhD student)<br />
<br />
3:30pm — tea/coffee break<br />
<br />
4:00 pm — 'Why don't we all speak Standard English?' (Prof Jenny Cheshire)<br />
<br />
4:30 pm — Talk by Dan Clayton (AQA A-level senior examiner, co-author of the Nelson Thornes AQA A English Language AS textbook)<br />
<br />
5:00 pm — Discussion and wrap-up<br />
<br />
The discussion will reflect on the talks but also explore ways in which the new resources can support teachers, and identify areas of particular need. We hope to be able to follow up later with some of you on what has worked well or for any suggestions. Feedback via email or via the website is very welcome too!<br />
<br />
<br />Jenny Cheshirehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14751826588409253248noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1929284578930372562.post-89322645111419039372019-01-14T16:48:00.001+00:002019-03-01T14:56:53.566+00:00Don't thank us for this post, it's really "no problem"<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
It’s probably not something you
even think about. Someone asks you to pass salt or pepper at dinner, they say
“thanks!” Someone is raising money for charity, and when you give a larger than
expected donation, they say “thank you ever so much!” Or, maybe it’s Ariana
Grande getting over Pete Davidson, and she says “thank you, next”. But what
exactly would you say in response?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/tX_vx_s6Gr0/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/tX_vx_s6Gr0?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="MsoHyperlink"><a href="https://www.ling.upenn.edu/~dinkin/">Aaron Dinkin</a></span> of <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span class="MsoHyperlink"><a href="https://linguistics.sdsu.edu/">San Diego State University</a></span>
decided to investigate exactly that. Aware that there is a perceived difference
between older people using “you’re welcome” and younger people using “no
problem”, and that prescriptivists are wringing their hands at the prospect of
the latter replacing the former, he decided to take some results from an
undergraduate sociolinguistic survey to see if this was really the case. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
The methodology was quite simple.
Students had to ask directions from people in the street or in shops, in and
around Toronto. On receiving the directions they wanted, they had three levels
of gratitude to give: “thanks”, “thank you”, and “thank you very much”. They
were asked to note the response from a selection of categories, including a
lack of response, “you’re welcome”, “no problem”, and other possible replies.
They were also asked to note down demographic information about the person they
asked, such as their ethnicity, rough estimates of their age, whether they were
a native speaker, and whether they were someone in the street or a shop
employee.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
The results, not surprisingly,
did not exactly match the stereotypes of “you’re welcome” versus “no problem”.
While it was true that younger people were more likely to use “no problem” than
their older counterparts, regardless of how they were thanked, there were more
pertinent differences in the data. For one, 18% of the of the elicitations got
no response at all, and this was found to correlate with using shorter forms –
more people said nothing in response to “thank you”, and even more did not
respond at all to “thanks”. However, if people did reply to “thanks”, they were
more likely to use “no problem”. Meanwhile, when the students used “thank you”
or “thank you very much”, all participants were more likely to say “you’re
welcome” in response, irrespective of age. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
There was also the response “no
worries” – only younger participants used this, and they almost exclusively
used it in response to “thanks” on its own. Dinkin concluded that in younger
populations, “no problem” was beginning to lose its status as an informal response,
and evolve as a broader reply while “no worries” was beginning to fill the
informal gap left behind. However, “you’re welcome” still held its status as being
pragmatically more polite to use with more elaborate forms of thanking.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br />
He also wrote that more could be
done to analyse the changes in response to thanks – for example, comparing the
data here to responses in other communities, or even doing similar studies in
the US to see how it compares to Canada. However, even the results as they
stand leave a lot to consider. So how should we respond to “thank you, next”?<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , "trebuchet" , "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px;">------------------------------------------------------------</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">Dinkin, Aaron. J. (2018).
It's no problem to be polite: Apparent‐time change in responses to thanks. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Journal of Sociolinguistics</i> 22(2):
190-215. https://doi.org/10.1111/josl.12278 <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">This summary was written by <a href="https://marinamerryweather.com/">Marina Merryweather<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><o:p></o:p></span></a></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />Jenny Cheshirehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14751826588409253248noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1929284578930372562.post-61872825524637831332018-11-08T17:56:00.001+00:002019-01-18T15:53:08.625+00:00"The ting goes skrrra pap pap"If you had turned on the radio even for a couple of seconds in 2017, it's highly likely that you would be familiar with Big Shaq's ironic Grime song, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3M_5oYU-IsU" target="_blank">'Man's Not Hot'</a> and the now ubiquitous line 'the ting goes skrrra pap pap'. Big Shaq's pronunciation of <i>thing </i>as 'ting' in this line is an example of what linguists call TH-stopping - simply put, where the 'th' sound is pronounced as a 't' - and it's this variation that Rob Drummond decided to look at in the speech of adolescents in Manchester.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-H8Q3SNbbg9E/W-R4CVIDpPI/AAAAAAAAARk/l7gdgphFFpcRSHFJ_HCI8ghapwrtV80UwCLcBGAs/s1600/big-shaq-press-1100.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="420" data-original-width="796" height="168" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-H8Q3SNbbg9E/W-R4CVIDpPI/AAAAAAAAARk/l7gdgphFFpcRSHFJ_HCI8ghapwrtV80UwCLcBGAs/s320/big-shaq-press-1100.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Drummond studied a group of adolescents at a Pupil Referral Unit (PRU) and looked at the variable pronunciation of 'th' in their speech. You may have heard 'th' pronounced as 'f' as in 'fing' or 'fink'. This is an extremely common pronunciation, particularly among young people. Drummond finds that the majority of word initial 'th' words (e.g., <i>thing, think, thought</i>) are pronounced with an 'f'. This is often referred to as 'TH-fronting'. However, he also finds evidence of 'th' being pronounced as 't' - often referred to as 'TH-stopping' - a somewhat unexpected finding.<br />
<br /></div>
<div>
Although TH-stopping occurs in some varieties of British English (e.g., Irish), 't' for 'th' isn't generally heard in the speech of English speakers living in mainland England. So it seems that 't' for 'th' is newly emerging in the speech of adolescents. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
To explain why 'th' words may be pronounced as 't', Drummond looks at the types of activities that the adolescents participate in. He finds that those who often rap and have strong identifications with 'urban' culture, such as listening to Grime music, use 't' (e.g., <i>ting</i>) more than their peers. This finding is interesting as TH-stopping has typically been associated with the ethnicity of the speaker. In fact, Drummond does not find any evidence to link the pronunciation of 'th' to ethnicity. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Looking at the speech contexts where 'th' is pronounced as 't', Drummond shows that 't' is often deployed in contexts where the speaker is attempting to present themselves as 'tough' or to identify as part of a like-minded community who are interested in urban culture. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
So it seems that Roadman Shaq's 'Man's not Hot' was on to something or should that be someting?</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
------------------------------------------------------------</div>
<div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-indent: -36.0pt;">
Drummond, Rob. 2018. Maybe it’s a
grime [t]ing: TH-stopping among urban British youth. <i>Language in Society. </i>1-26.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-indent: -36.0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-indent: -36.0pt;">
<br /></div>
<ul class="details no-padding-bottom" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #595959; font-family: "noto sans", Helvetica, Roboto, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: 18px; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 20px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 870px;">
<li style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></li>
<ul class="article-components" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<li class="source" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #595959; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px 0px 5px; min-height: 19px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a class="url doi" href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047404517000999" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; clear: both; color: rgb(0, 113, 204) !important; cursor: pointer; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px 0px 2px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.3s ease 0s; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047404517000999</a></li>
<li class="source" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #595959; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px 0px 5px; min-height: 19px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></li>
<li class="source" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #595959; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px 0px 5px; min-height: 19px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">This summary was written by <a href="http://webspace.qmul.ac.uk/clilbury/" style="background-color: transparent;" target="_blank">Christian Ilbury</a></li>
</ul>
</ul>
</div>
<div>
<div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
Jenny Cheshirehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14751826588409253248noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1929284578930372562.post-91113676434175743382018-10-20T02:19:00.000+01:002018-11-08T16:19:53.217+00:00Let's 'chew the fat' in ELF!<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) is the English used by people who have different native languages and use English as a language of communication. It provides rich ground for research as its users are multilingual and are able to call on many different languages as they converse.</span><br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-i8eL0NJwRtk/W8qA4nOuHlI/AAAAAAAAARY/1F-dO54jF7gNfGD8lfwoVAJuNOAbn-v1wCLcBGAs/s1600/iStock-517493940.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-i8eL0NJwRtk/W8qA4nOuHlI/AAAAAAAAARY/1F-dO54jF7gNfGD8lfwoVAJuNOAbn-v1wCLcBGAs/s320/iStock-517493940.jpg" /></a></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /><a href="https://anglistik.univie.ac.at/staff/staff/detail-seite/user/pitzlm7/inum/1063/backpid/30750/">Marie-LuisePitzl</a> decided to focus on the use of idioms in ELF. These are metaphorical phrases (e.g., <i>too many cooks spoil the broth</i>) which can’t be directly translated into other languages and keep the same meaning. She found that there are two main ways that idioms manifest themselves. Sometimes they seeped into conversation, without speakers or listeners being aware of them. At other times, however, they were explicitly mentioned by speakers; for example, at times a foreign idiom was directly translated into English and at others, the speaker used the language of the idiom to say it.<br /><br />An example of the first type is <i>don’t praise the day yet</i>, said by a Polish speaker when in conversation with German speakers. It probably draws on the Polish expression <i>Nie chwal dnia przed zachodem słońca</i> ‘Don’t praise the day before the sunset’. As this saying is virtually identical in meaning to the German phrase: <i>Du sollst den Tag nicht vor dem Abend loben</i> ‘you should not praise the day before the evening’, it becomes part of a multilingual idiom ‘pool’ shared by German and Polish speakers via ELF. The participants in the conversation understand these ‘translated’ idioms even if they don’t have equivalents in English.<br /><br />An example of when the idiom is explicitly discussed is in the following conversation involving Maltese, Serbian and Norwegian speakers:<br /><br />Speaker (Serbian): “the point of the whole things about quotas it’s a very good idea but in the same time it’s … how to say it in English like knife with double blade?”<br /><br />The speaker draws attention to the idiom immediately by introducing it with how to say it in English…, the pronoun it suggesting that she’s thinking of an idiom in her own language. Indeed, both German, Serbian and English have similar idioms (in English a double-edged sword) to express something that has both advantages and disadvantages. The speakers don’t worry about the accuracy in English and show no insecurity about using this un-English version in their multilingual context.<br /><br />Sometimes Pitzl found idioms being used in their original language within ELF conversations. In the following example, Maltese and Serbian speakers discuss their different cultures, specifically smoking habits. The Serbian speaker says that Serbians smoke a lot and comments, ...we have a proverb like Italians...fuma come un turco (= smoke like a Turk). It is interesting that the language the speaker chooses for the idiom is not her own or her Maltese listeners’, but Italian. Through this choice, she communicates not only that she is multilingual but also that she’s aware that her listeners know Italian (Maltese contains about 50% vocabulary of Italian origin), signalling her closeness to her listeners and drawing on their multilingualism.<br /><br />So, ELF is incredibly creative and tolerant; there’s no need to mind one’s, how do you say it, “Qs and Ps”?<br /><br />--------------------------------------<br />Pitzl, Marie-Louise (2016). World Englishes and creative idioms in English as a lingua franca. World Englishes 35(2):293-309.<br /><br />doi. <a href="https://doi-org.ezproxy.library.qmul.ac.uk/10.1111/weng.12196">https://doi-org.ezproxy.library.qmul.ac.uk/10.1111/weng.12196</a><br /><br /><br /><br />This summary was written by Gemma Stoyle</span>Jenny Cheshirehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14751826588409253248noreply@blogger.com0