Recently in Sociolinguistics Category

With the passing of George Carlin, the discussion of his famous "7 Words You Can Never Say on Television" came up. It is interesting to see which words have made it on the air (at least on HBO) and which ones are still rarely used in the U.S. market.

And of course, You Tube has several recorded routines from Geoge Carlin on this topic. I like this version from 1978 because he first has a discussion of roots vs. derived words and then follows with notes on alternate vocabulary for the banned terminology.

This is a monologue which most clearly demonstrates the futility of assuming that grammar follows rational logic (a lot is random convention). In any case, I will miss his analytic skills.

I've been lax in my blogging, so I thought I would add some reviews of books which are written for non-specialists but focus on some aspect of linguistics. I will start with the anthology Language in the USA

Book Product Details (from Amazon.com)

Paperback: 520 pages
Publisher: Cambridge University Press (June 28, 2004)
ISBN-10: 052177747X
ISBN-13: 978-0521777476

Summary

This is a collection of articles covering different aspects of linguistic culture in the United States. The first part covers regional American English including origins, distinctiveness of the general accent, regional varietes, "social varieties" and a chapter on African American English and one on American Sign Language. The second part covers non-English with a focus on Spanish as well as creoles, Native American languages and multilingualism. The third section is an overview of different "sociolinguistic" issues including education, teen slang, gender/sexuality and cyberspace language.

My review

As you can see from the list above the goal of this book is to educate readers about the linguistic facts behind various "hot" policy and cultural topics. As such, the articles are written by discipline experts and include an overview of the field, specific data, a detailed bibliography and recommendations for further research.

Generally speaking, I would say the articles are successful because while they are not technical, they provide important details that clarify the underlying issues. For instance most people are familiar with American Sign Language (ASL) but may not realize it it has a grammar distinct from English, comes in regional varieties and has shown linguistic change over time. Hence ASL does have a unique linguistic heritage which is different from English.

The tone is generally non-preachy, which is good idea when the goal is to explain that commonly held views of language may be ... uh-hmm... dead wrong. More importantly, the academic tone of the articles lends crucial credibility to research fields like the study of hip-hop which might otherwise be considered "frivolous" by the general public. Another valuable factor is that many articles discuss research methods of past history of the discipline. Understanding where the data comes from is crucial for being able to track future debates where language and policy/culture collide.

As with any anthology, the articles vary in quality, but two particularly strong articles are "Spanish in the Northeast" and "Spanish in the Southwest". Although Spanish is the second largest language in the United States, these two articles show that not all Spanish speakers in the U.S. are alike.

For instance, "Spanish in the Northeast" article explains most speakers in the northeast have historically emigrated from the Caribbean and explains some of the history of immigrants from different countries. An example from the article is that in the middle of the 20th century, Anglos tended to regard the Cuban and Dominican communities more sympathetically then the Puerto Rican community because Cubans/Dominican immigrants were considered political refugees while Puerto Ricans were merely considered to be poor citizens from a U.S. colony. The recent situation in the northeast is now more complicated because of immigrants from other parts of Latin America including Mexican immigrants which previously had emigrated primarily to the Southwest

The "Spanish in the Southwest" article includes a discussion of the long contact between Spanish and English speakers in the region - enough so that there are Spanish vocabulary words unique to the region. It also mentions an important point that a significant number of speakers may be of Hispanic or Mexican heritage but are actually monolingual English speakers. Timing of immigration is an important factor.

Although most of the articles are well-written, there are a few glitches. One gap is that there is no key for the special phonetic symbols used in different articles. On the one hand, I don't think you can have a rational discussion of pronunciation for long without understanding how a transcription system works, but then again so few Americans learn it that a key is essential. Some articles do explain the underlying pronunciation mechanisms, but it's a fine line to walk.

Ironically, another weak area is coverage of regional American English. While it does cover the basics, it doesn't really touch on the details that many "mainstream" English speakers are interested in. Then again regional English could cover an entire book and they are available. Some of my favorites in that vein are the The Story of English and Do You Speak American?

One of the ongoing challenges facing the field of linguistics is how to translate important research insights into a format that non-specialists can understand. I think Language in the USA does an admirable job of trying to bridge the gap between researcher and citizen, hopefully without losing too much data in the process.

My Rating

I'll give a 4.5 out of 5

The SIL group is using a new term I think should become more common - the macrolanguage A macrolanguage is basically a set of related languages that share a common "identity" even though speakers can't normally understand each other.

The most famous macrolanguage is probably Chinese. It is fairly well-known that a speaker from Beijing speaking Mandarin Chinese will often have difficulty understanding a Cantonese Chinese speaker from Hong Kong...unless someone has taken a formal class in the other form. Normally, these are called Chinese dialects but the differences are so great that linguists do classify them as separate languages. Interestingly, each of these languages can also have regional variations (many regional variations of Mandarin Chinese are found in Northern China).

Chinese is not alone by the way. Other macrolanguages include Arabic, Cree, Hmong, Quechua (as spoken in the Incan Empire), and Norweigian. I suspect that you could thrown in some other candidates like German and Italian.

As you can imagine, I definitely prefer the term macrolanguage over dialect for Chinese because it removes the confusion of regional dialects where everyone can understand each other (e.g. most English dialects) and those which are really separate languages (e.g. Chinese "dialects"). The term macrolanguage also acknowledges the strong cultural link between the speakers of the related languages.

I really hope this term takes hold...because I really think it will simplify other discussions about language (like language code). After all, it was just this year that a language technology guru claimed that English had no "true dialects." I think he meant to say that English hasn't reached macrolanguage status yet.

Recently, the insurance company Old Mutual has been running a "clever" ad campaign in which they use "old mutual" as a new slang term to mean something else (see video from Youtube). The ads end with the tag line "It may sound strange now...but it won't for long."

But see how I put "clever" in "square quotes"? Something is amiss. I get that the marketers are trying to put a hip spin on insurance, and the original idea IS clever. But something went awry in the execution because they ended up giving the new hip phrase "old mutual" too many meanings.

Believe it or not, my mother and I have both sat there and tried to figure out what the slang term "old mutual" would mean in the real world. But it can't be done. If you watch the various vignettes in just this ad, you will see that "old mutual" has the following meanings.

• Fashionable/Chic/Hot
• Important (especially to teenage girls)
• Nostalgic?? ("we should let it go and just be old mutual")
• Get Through Traffic
• Cool
• The Boss/Company VP

Sorry you can't easily connect the dots between a cabbie trying to bust through traffic and two middle managers commenting that the VP may not understand chai latte. Instead of thinking the marketers as being cutting edge, I'm thinking they're just a bunch of young innocents who really should have squeezed in a Steven Pinker book before trying this stunt. Or maybe it's really common sense, and the writers need to review the importance of precise word choice in their writing. D'uh!

FYI - my recommendation would have been to select just ONE meaning (e.g. "cool") and run with it. I'm pretty sure you would have been able to get the requisite number of vignettes.

Ebola Postscript

There is one skit that got it right. Back in the initial Ebola scare of the mid 90s, Mad TV did a hilarious sketch in which the secret street slang council met and decided to introduce "Ebola" as a new slang term into the population. Sample use - "Girl, those stiletto pumps are ebola!" or "so cool it's lethal." This sentence actually makes sense.

The skit ends with the group discussing an implementation plan to introduce the new street term "ebola" in the following week. "Cool" says member A. "No .... Ebola" corrects member B.

A question the linguistic community is asked is who "decides" on new words. For instance, the recently coined bootylicious has actually made it into the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) with the meaning "sexually attractive, sexy; shapley".

How exactly did this happen you might ask? Here's a short account

Creation

Clearly this is a compound of the slang booty (slang orig. and chiefly among African-Americans meaning sexual intercourse and/or buttocks) and combining form -licious (yummo!) which is also found in words like babelicious and glammalicious. Being a compound was advantageous because it meant that people hearing the word for the first time can quickly figure out the meaning, but it's not essential.

The word wiki (also in the OED) has no obvious English connection to any Web publishing device, but it's still entering the English language pretty quickly at this stage. For the record, wiki is adopted from Hawaiian wikiwiki which was originally borrowed from English quick (repaired to remove the non-native /kw/ cluster and to add a word-final vowel)

Mass Distribution

One might think bootylicious was invented for the 2001 Destiny's Child song "Bootylicious" (as in "my body is too bootylicious for you...baby"), but one would be wrong. The OED helpfully provides some quotes which predate 2001. The song was merely exploiting a trend.

But Beyoncé did play a very important role in terms of distribution. In terms of a major "official" dictionary, the word probably won't be included in the next volume UNLESS usage hits a critical level. There are several ways to hit critical mass. The key is often celebrity endorsement (as in bootylicious Rachael Ray's EEVO for "extra virgin olive oil).

Even jargon terms have to be coined and used by important authorities in your discipline. For instance, when identifying new diseases like Ebola and SARS, we rely on early reports of a newly encountered disease for which a new term is needed (interestingly diseases are often identified first as "syndromes" because the agent virus or bacteris is usually not known yet).

The other factor though is how a word is used beyond the original context. For instance, the image of Ebola as the ultimate plague spread like wildfire into not just popular science but into fiction and eventually parody (see Beach Blanket Ebola). If you lived in the U.S. through the 1990s, it's a pretty good bet you know what Ebola means.

You Use, You Decide

So there you have it - words only become candidates for a dictionary only after it enters into communal usage. The media may make a few decisions for you, but YOU may have more influence than you realize. For instance, the term soccer Mom really sparked the public imagination, but the later counterpart NASCAR Dad wasn't nearly so popular - even though both refer to key U.S. political demographics.

I found a new tool in Facebook - the Friends Wheel and I was fascinated, not just because of the pretty colors, but because it replicates a sociological concept I was teaching about in a linguistics class.

The one time I did a language and society class the concept of "social networks" came up and we distinguished "superdense" from other networks. In superdense network, not only do all members know each other, but each person interacts independently with all members of the group. I compare it to the Friends TV show where Ross and Monica are friends, but Monica is married to Ross's old college roommate and Ross dates Monica's roommate.

But that's nothing in comparison with my very own Facebook friends wheel with Penn State staff. It's so dense it's string art.

Click Image to see larger version

This is a little artificial because I really only joined Facebook because other Penn Staters were in there. On the other hand, it is a good reflection of how Penn State operates - we all have to build mini-relations with each member in the group.

Superdense networks can also be closed if people don't talk to outsiders. Fortunately, I still have a non-Facebook life that's a little more open....I think.

A post from Heidi Harley on Language Log mentioned a study in which French teenage native speakers showed a lot of variation in "assigning" genders of French nouns. That is for any given word, some teens would think it was masculine gender and others would think it was feminine gender - even if a French dictionary only assigned it to one gender.

To be honest, I'm not terribly surprised at this. Because of the ways French word-final sounds have evolved, the phonological distinction between genders is very weak in Modern French. Compare this to Spanish where most words ending with -o are masculine and most words ending with -a are feminine. The major cues for determining gender of a word in French might be processes like definite article agreement (le vs la) or pronoun replacement (il vs. elle)...and they may not be salient enough for speakers to make consistent judgments.

To me this is evidence that grammatical gender assignment is often based on phonology. A common historical change in gender assignment is for a noun to be reassigned to another gender because it's ending is more typical of a different gender. A notable example is the Latin word laurus 'laurel tree' which was grammatically feminine in Classical Latin but has changed to masculine gender in Italian il lauro (Italian is a descendant of Latin). The French data here is consistent with this idea that phonology is a factor in determining consistent gender. If there is no regular "rule" or phonological cure, you would expect lots of variation.

On an interesting side note, the research also found that adult speakers were much more consistent in their gender assignments than the teens were. Something has happened between generations. This is very speculative, but I wonder if attitudes towards standard grammar or standard grammar education are changing.

I'm thinking irregular English past tense. Almost all native speakers acquire a set of irregular past tense, but there's actually a lot of variation. For instance in the U.S. the "correct" past tense of bring is brought, but variations like brang (similar to ring/rang) and brung (as in You Got To Dance with Them What Brung You by Molly Ivins). FYI - Neil Diamond used brang in the song Play Me ("Song she sang to me/Song she brang to me.")

I definitely recall several 3rd grade grammar lessons which required us to memorize "correct" irregular past tense forms (whereas we never had to memorize Question Formation). I suspect 3rd grade French children get to memorize genders of nouns. In fact, I just found a French Guess the Gender game for children, so it's probably a "tricky grammar point." So..if the method of grammar instruction changes, you could have the natural variation surfacing again in a population.

I honestly don't know what grammar instruction is like in modern France, but it would be worthwhile for a researcher to check (without thinking the apocalypse is coming of course).

If nothing else, it would seem like a fascinating historical linguistic phenomenon is in progress.

P.S. On the difficulty of assigning genders by phonology, a French grammar site notes that "If you study these 40 word endings, it is possible to determine the gender of 75% of French nouns with almost 95% precision." Hmmm!

Since I was giving the British TV food chefs a bit of a hard time for a slight mispronunciation of Spanish, I thought I should point out the Jamie Oliver did use a Spanish ingredient – chorizo sausage – and pronounced it correctly as [čoriθo] with a "th" or /θ/ for the Spanish z.

But wait (I hear from the U.S. students of Spanish I) - shouldn't chorizo be [čoriso] with z pronounced as [s]? Yes if it comes from a Latin American country like Mexico. In Latin America the letters c and z are pronounced as [s], while back in Spain, they are pronounced as [θ]. Both appear to come from original Old Spanish [t^s] c,ç or [d^z] z.

Normally, this would be just linguistic trivia, but here the pronunciation difference reflects an actual culinary difference. According to Norman Van Aken (Starchefs.com) the chorizo of Spain is somewhat like pepperoni with a little paprika kick (I can attest to that) while Mexican chorizo is softer like an Italian sausage and goes well with scrambled eggs. Some equate Mexican cite lang="es">chorizo with Spain's chorizo fresco (or "fresh chorizo").

So...If you are from the U.S. (especially the West coast), chorizo is probably the Mexican variety and should be [čoriso]. But if you've got the harder Spanish variety instead (which may be more likely in Britain), then it really would be [čoriθo].

Truth be told, I doubt any Spanish native speaker makes a distinction because all dialects tend to pronounce c,z in just one way. But since English can make the /s/ vs. /t/ distinction, I have decided to have two lexical entries for the chorizo sausage family - [čoriso] for the fresh version and [čoriθo] for the cured version. It's a good thing that I noted that grammar isn't always logical.

FYI - Jamie Oliver was using the cured version...[čoriθo]

In my last post, I was applauding the students of Bowdoin for asking for classes in Arabic (and also Swahili). This of course got me to thinking about "strategic" languages and sociolinguistics...which is always worthy of another post.

One group who is very much interested in Arabic language instruction is of course the U.S. defense forces and diplomatic corps. Yes folks, they DO want to (legally) spy on Middle Eastern terrorists and figure out what they are up to. I confess that I don't have an ethical problem with this, but I do remember that in another forum, a colleague was objecting to the fact that the linguistic community would answer questions for someone in the military.

I think his concern was that the military is learning Arabic solely for the purpose of detecting and destroying terrorist cells and that they would miss learning about positive aspects of Arabic culture. Although I understand this point of view, I will be optimistic (rare for me) and say that when you learn another language, even if it's for "defense" you will be forced to face the values and literature of that culture.

Based on what I've seen, learning a language for the military isn't just about listening to terrorist activity. It's also about negotiating with local leaders and learning to work with people willing to cooperate with your side. You have to understand the other culture to be a more effective negotiater. For some people, learning another language is also about living there, eating the local food, seeing the local architecture and learning the local literature. Most people who go to another country are usually positively affected by the local culture, even if they had no idea of what they were getting into in the first place.

So even though some people may be learning Arabic solely to "protect their country", in the long run, these people may be the ones to help us bridge the gap for a truly peaceful co-existence. The worst thing the military could do is to force everyone to interact in English! Ironically, returning vets from another country have been the source cross-cultural pollination. The crusaders exposed Europe to a lot of Middle Eastern innovation and today's interest in Japanese culture is partly based on what vets experienced in post-war Japan. Go figure.

P.S. From a purely strategic point of view, any language which has a large number of speakers, a politically volatile past or proximity to scarce resources (oil, nukes, diamonds, etc) is worth investing in...because you never know where the next hot spot will be. Back when Yugoslavia was still a country, an ROTC classmate chose to focus on Serbo-Croatian because it was a "strategic" language, yet the country was relatively "stable". Of course, that all changed in the 90s, but it was a good thing the military did have some experts to call upon.

The Penn State Daily Collegian has a nice article on the new album by hip-hop artist Nas, titled, yes Nigger (now washing mouth with soap).

The use of the N-bomb in hip-hop is not news, but today I noticed am interesting trend in spelling. If you take a look at the album titles at the bottom, you'll notice that the earliest ones in the 90's are all spelled Nigga which is an approximation of the AAVE (African-American Vernacular English) pronunciation which drops final /r/. As we would say in the academic 'hood, AAVE is a "non-rhotic" form like British English, Yew Yorker English and Southern English.

Apparently this -ga spelling was chosen as "less-threatening", which I find amusing. Trust me, it's the same word with or without the final /r/. But it shows the power of conventional spelling has over the minds of the speakers. Somehow changing the spelling (to one a little more phonetically accurate at that) makes the word "less real" or at least "less official."

About the only true linguistic spin I can put on this is that the AAVE use of the term is not the same as the white usage. The former can be semi-affectionate while the white usage is pretty much 100% derogatory. But let me tell you...I think this one is stretch.

I'll note that by 2000, we were able to accept standard English "nigger" (spitting mouth out again). The real choice NAS had was whether to use AAVE -ga or standard -ger. But is this truly a victory for proper spelling?

Beyond the issue of whether we are trapped by the N-bomb, I can definitively say we are still trapped by the fallacy that AAVE is not a valid language. It is only when the standard (white) pronunciation is used that we achieve full social outrage. The use of the phonetically accurate, but non-standard -ga form is not seen as fully legitimate (hence the slightly less outrage). So I leave this issue with a truly multi-layered sigh (accompanied by a good chuckle).

Postscript

NAS and others have commented their usage of the word is an attempt to reclaim it and render it harmless by repeated exposure, and I can see their point. For instance, "Yankee" started out as an insult, but is now used with pride by modern Yankees. Although I had to point out to a foreigner that it was in fact a compliment these days, and not really all that derogatory anymore.

On the other hand, my earliest memories of the N-word are from rural Maryland where it was used by whites and was about as mean as you could make it (once there was a barking dog involved). I will always have this awful association, and I'm not even African American! You can't blame people for getting riled up by this.