#Covid-19

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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Wicke P., M. M. Bolognesi (2020) Framing COVID-19: How we conceptualize and discuss the pandemic on Twitter. PLoS ONE 15(9): e0240010. 

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0240010

This summary was written by Gemma Stoyle

The shifting tipping point - one metaphor, many uses

To understand what a metaphor is, let’s start by considering a real world example. For tipping point, 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.

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.

From the 1960s onwards, tipping point 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, tipping point 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 tipping point 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.

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 tipping points 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 tipping point in both the media and science.

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 tipping point and, by extension, the catastrophic issue of climate change.

Until this time tipping point 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.

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 tipping point largely replaced some earlier metaphors (e.g. thresholds), and studies explored what the causes and outcomes of different potential tipping points 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.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 tipping point metaphor in the media had become more flexible, again incorporating the conventional expression of a drastic change.

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 tipping point, 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.

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van der Hel, S., Hellsten, I. and Steen, G., 2018. Tipping points and climate change: Metaphor between science and the media. Environmental Communication, 12(5), pp.605-620.

This summary was written by Sarah Kirk-Browne

Why we use emoji: Written gestures in online writing

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 previous post, 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 Because Internet, Gretchen McCulloch explores how emoji became popular as a way of replicating gestures in online communication.

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.

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 🤞, rolling eyes 🙄, or a peace sign ✌️. 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).

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 🎂🍰🎁🎊🎉🎈🥳. 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.

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 😂), 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 💕💓😍💗🥰💖. This is another reason why emoji can be considered gesture: repetition does not generally occur in our words, but does occur in hand gestures.

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 👍👍👍 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: 👏 WHAT 👏 ARE 👏 YOU 👏 DOING 👏

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, Episode 34 of her podcast Lingthusiasm with Lauren Gawne, discusses the content in this chapter, and provides several further links on the topic of emoji and gesture.

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McCulloch, Gretchen. 2019. Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language. New York: Riverhead Books.

This summary was written by Rhona Graham

#BlackLanguageMatters: Can linguistics change the course of justice?

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.

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’.

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’.

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.

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.

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.

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).

(a) wen mi ier di bap bap, mi drap a groun an den
when I heard the bap bap [the shots], I fell to the ground and then
mi staat ron.
I started to run.
(b) When I heard the shot (bap, bap), I drop the gun, and then I run.

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 done, and habitual be. 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.

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.

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Bloom, L. (2014). Suspicion nation: The inside story of the Trayvon Martin injustice and why we continue to repeat it. Berkeley, CA: Counterpoint.

Rickford, J. R., and King, S. (2016). Language and linguistics on trial: Hearing Rachel Jeantel (and other vernacular speakers) in the courtroom and beyond. Language 92/4, 948-988.

This summary was written by Rosemary Hall

Accent Bias: Responses to Accent Labels

Continuing our series of posts related to the 'Accent Bias in Britain' project, in this blog post we discuss some findings from our research which investigated current attitudes to accents in Britain.

In the first part of our study, we replicated Coupland & Bishop's study (2007, summarised in an earlier blog post) 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.

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.

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'. You can listen to some of these accents here. 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 prestige and pleasantness of the accent.

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.

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.

Want to replicate this study? 

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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.

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 visiting the project website. 

This summary was written by Christian Ilbury

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