The first of the first of the last

Courtesy of the other Lauren, a clever way to squeeze out a first-of-the-year post: the first sentence from the first post of each month of last year. Let’s see how goofy/sardonic/boring/bizarre I managed to be…

January
This is the traditional first-of-year filler post to let you know that I’m still here despite seeming not to be here.

February
I have not been posting lately because…

March
One thing that has kept me from posting practically all semester has finally been settled: late Tuesday night my union settled our contract negotiations with UM and reached tentative agreement.

April
Just back from Sociolinguistics Symposium 17 in Amsterdam, jetlagged, just in time for finals!

May
A while ago - before the presidential primary races really heated up - I wrote something that intimated a feeling I was getting about media coverage (as one genre of public discussion) of the primary candidates.

June
I’m not sure if there’s discourse in the box or if the sign is a contemporary commentary on itself, kind of “This is not a pipe” style, but this box of discourse is sitting in our department…awesome.

July
Steven Levitt reports in Monday’s Freakonomics blog about an urban policy researcher, Jeffrey Grogger, at UChicago who did some analysis of the correlation between wages and speech, more particularly the quality of “sounding black”.

August
I’ve finally gotten around to reading Asif Agha’s (2007) Language and Social Relations, in which the author attempts to provide a holistically semiotic approach to language use and its valorization.

September
…I somehow managed to go more than a month again without posting.

October
It’s the grammar.

November
Readers will have picked up on the fact that I have a certain political preference; I hope this preference comes through not as loyalty to a party, but rather as loyalty to particular ideas, values, and goals (of course it’s “ideological,” but that sounds so negative…).

December
I’ve recently joined a Facebook group dedicated to my high school class, supposedly an organizing tool for our upcoming reunion (cf. “Lemon out” if you want to gage my feelings on this, though I’m slightly more amenable to the idea).
—
So I guess the theme of the year was me neglecting my blog and me being mentally and actively involved in political processes. I think that I will do better at posting again this year, because (ding ding ding) I’m a candidate now! Hoorah! So now that I just have to come up with a dissertation topic, surely I’ll have plenty of time for blogging…erm… Actually, teaching college writing last semester was extremely fun, interesting, and gratifying, and I’m teaching it again this semester, so I’ll probably have some stuff to write about that. And Obama will be in office, so that’s exciting. And the blog is now 4.5 years old, so just the fact that anyone still checks in at all is really satisfying. Thanks to you (and the magic of RSS feeds)!

Also, here is a beautiful rainbow from Maui for you which I saw on my winter vacation:

I’ve recently joined a Facebook group dedicated to my high school class, supposedly an organizing tool for our upcoming reunion (cf. “Lemon out” if you want to gage my feelings on this, though I’m slightly more amenable to the idea). I was looking at the page this morning and noticed the list of “related groups.” I’m sure this list pops up as motivated by some data-driven algorithm* similar to the one that makes ads like “27 and need to lose weight?” and “Oprah’s Acai Diet” (which is to say, a very stupid algorithm that assumes that because I’m a woman, I have mostly losing weight on my mind at all times, or am at least easily distractable when it comes to novel weight-loss techniques). I’m guessing that probably it harvests information about the aggregate group membership of all the members of this group (that is, it takes the members of the group and looks at what other groups they belong to), and then calculates the ones that are most represented. So while it may be more or less crude than what I’ve outlined here, I take the “related groups” to be some kind of indication of what kind of people are in the group, at least in terms of how they express their identities via Facebook group membership. (Though I could be wrong - anyone know technically how these are generated?)

Imagine my sadness, then, to see the 5th-most “related group” for my high school class:

(Note that it is probably not an unrelated fact that the 3rd group listed is a super duper Christians one. If you’ve been to Springfield, MO, this will be no surprise. Though it’s heartening that the number of worshipping Christians far outweighs the number of people trying to stop Barack Obama, at least.)

*Sigh* Squires out!

*Might not be the right word, technically.

I am waiting for my car to get fixed up, and I’m using the dealership’s wireless, and I’m trying to check Facebook*, and my browser does this:

I get that Facebook might not be a site that you want your employees wasting time on during the workday, but a) why limit your waiting, bored customers??; more importantly b) are “personals” sites different from “dating” sites? Time was when dating was something accomplished THROUGH personals, right? Does “personals” just mean “related to personal life” now? Is Facebook’s main purpose either “personals” or “dating”? (OK, so it’s almost certainly the former, but I’d argue against it being the latter.)

*I have been told by my students that saying “my Facebook” here would also be appropriate. Whereas I say “my Facebook page/profile.” They check each others’ Facebooks; I check my friends’ Facebook pages or I check my friends ON Facebook. These are interesting differences in the integration new socio-technological-related words into the grammar of English, yes?

Readers will have picked up on the fact that I have a certain political preference; I hope this preference comes through not as loyalty to a party, but rather as loyalty to particular ideas, values, and goals (of course it’s “ideological,” but that sounds so negative…).

Given this fact, it is needless to say that I am very, very happy right now. Like, *so* happy. Unbelievably happy. Excited, thrilled, proud proud PROUD, moved…speechless.

For anyone who voted the other way and feels now sad/disillusioned/angry, all I can say is: look at how many people are *so* happy right now. Look at who those people are. Look at how they’ve fought, and what they’ve fought for. If you can’t at least see the nobility in the fight of all the voters who just elected Obama, then I honestly don’t have anything to say to you. Also, at this point, it does not appear that this election was in any way stolen, which is a decidedly good thing. And that is all I will say.

Now, if they would just call Missouri…

Did you hear about the new robo-calls the RNC/McCain’s campaign unrolled on Wednesday after the debate? Forget that Obama responded with dignity to all the silly accusations and that by all accounts voters are ready to let the Obama Racism/Muslim/Unpatriotic/Scary Black Dude meme go - the McCain campaign isn’t letting him get away with domestic terrorist associations so easily. I was listening to a few of these calls, reported by voters in various states, because I had hoped to find something interesting about voice quality and what makes the voices convincingly scary. Instead, I found something interesting about intonation.

All three calls I’ve listened to start with the caller (who is actually not a robot, but rather a recorded human being) saying, “Hello. I’m calling on behalf of/for John McCain and the RNC because you need to know that…” then they continue saying how Obama works with terrorists, kills babies, or favors Hollywood stars over Joe Sixpack. The calls split up the first part - “Hello. I’m calling on behalf of John McCain and the RNC because…” differently, and they also use different intonational patterns - I’m wondering what rhetorical/emotional effect the differences might have.

The first one has clear breaks after “hello,” “McCain,” and “RNC” - and uses high-rising intonation at the second and third boundaries, like: “Hello. I’m calling for John McCain? and the RNC? Because…” Listen:

And check out the pitch track (I’ve marked only the boundary tones [and I’m only on my 5th week of knowing ToBI, so pardon my badness at it):

Seriously clear high rises. This sounds to me like how I would expect someone to introduce themselves on the phone to me if they weren’t sure I would know who they were or why they were calling. I do this all the time: “This is Lauren? Your tenant in apartment 1?” And usually I expect the hearer to give me some positive feedback indicating that they know who I am or discern the relevance of my call, such as “Uh-huh,” “yes,” or “oh hi.” But with robo-calls, there’s no feedback loop - is this just an attempt to make the call sound more like a real person talking to you in real-time? And does it work? Do people get fooled into responding?

The other two I’ve looked at the pitch tracks for bear little similarity to this one. One is a woman’s voice that doesn’t seem to have junctures at all internal to the opening phrase, and seems to end on a level tone after “RNC” (I think the pitch track at the top there at the end is a doubling error):

The third is another man’s voice that doesn’t even seem to show a juncture until after “because,” if then (the audio here keeps going; you can decide for yourself whether there’s a boundary). I’m not sure I have the pitch accents right here, but you can hear that there aren’t any internal boundary tones (right?):

I guess what’s interesting about this is that, first, they’re different, and, second, that the one with the high rises is male - this is a very stereotypically female thing. Was he instructed to say it that way, or did it just come out that way? Do they sound different in terms of how “real” the caller sounds, or how believable they are? Does it interact with the message at all?

Also, what does this sound like to you?

Has anyone else noticed that the title of Bill Maher’s new movie is supposedly pronounced with a voiced post-alveolar affricate instead of a voiced velar stop + palatal approximant? In other words, it’s “relijulous” - [ri'l?d?ul?s]. I’ve been walking around saying it [ri'l?gjul?s] (in my head) since that’s how it’s spelled (and on analogy with “ridiculous”); I heard the trailer yesterday and couldn’t believe my ears that it replicates the consonant in “religious,” then I heard it again and it was confirmed. This is strange - are there any other words that have syllables spelled either “gu” or “cu”/”ku” that are pronounced with [d?] or [t?]?

Also, Bill Maher’s face on a burnt grilled cheese sandwich is, while captivating, also a little gross.

I really wasn’t kidding when I said the Log beats me to all my ideas. I had all geared up to write a post on the debate’s “that one” incident, after hearing Rachel Maddow (who, btw, I looove) bring it up last night and seeing the reaction over at Shakesville. Then what do I do? I pull up my RSS feed, and I see that Liberman has, quite expectedly, already written about it. *sigh*

He mentions the OED definition of “that one” as being used disparagingly to refer to women, and that McCain using it to refer to Obama is a “counterexample.” Taken literally, sure, but there are a few other ways to interpret this that don’t make it such a clear counterexample, and in fact could just bolster the OED’s meaning.

1. Opponents have been trying to paint Obama as mousy, childish (but not boyish, importantly), soft, skinny, weak, inexperienced, and so on and so forth since the primary season. In a word, effeminate. Doing something that for an instant conjures a dominant man in McCain and a subordinate woman in Obama connects back to that general project.

2. Speaking of subordination - women aren’t, you may have noticed, the only group of people historically dominated by white dudes (like McCain). If “that one” has connotations of applying to women, it can be deployed in the service of disparagingly referring to other disparaged types of people. You get where I’m going here. Axes of oppression are linked.

3. Aside from gender, let’s get down to why the phrase seems like it could be employed disparagingly in the first place? How about that as a deictic, “that one” doesn’t contain anything requiring you to fill it in with a [+human] referent? This phrase conjures a number of shopping-and-choosing excursions for me. Parent: “Which rabbit do you want, little Tommy?” Tommy: “That one!” Friend: “Which dress should I wear to the party?” Other friend: “That one!” Colleague: “Which font looks better for my CV?” Colleague: “That one!” And so on. “That one” does not have gender in it, which is precisely (part of) why it’s ripe for using to disparage someone - because you can dehumanize them. Now, this is an interesting argument to get into, because we do use one to refer to humans in cases of generic pronoun use: “If one wants to get into college, one must study hard.” But the case McCain used was the opposite of generic in being demonstrative! It’s not anyone; it’s that one. That one who cannot be called by a humanizing term. Gets us back to (2).

4. “That one” could be filled in with soooo many things. It leaves too much to suggestion, too much leeway for audience interpretation - which is probably what McCain intended with using it (I do think it was an intentional, deliberate, meaningful rhetorical choice). Let the audience decide what the appropriate category term for “one” is: senator, congressman, man, bastard… given McCain’s tone at the time, something like “that asshole” actually wouldn’t have sounded so surprising.

Also, remember the unkind presupposition McCain acted on when answering an audience member’s question about the financial crisis?

Clark: Well, Senators, through this economic crisis, most of the people that I know have had a difficult time. And through this bailout package, I was wondering what it is that’s going to actually help those people out.

McCain: Well, thank you, Oliver, and that’s an excellent question, because as you just described it, bailout, when I believe that it’s rescue, because — because of the greed and excess in Washington and Wall Street, Main Street was paying a very heavy price, and we know that.

I left my campaign and suspended it to go back to Washington to make sure that there were additional protections for the taxpayer in the form of good oversight, in the form of taxpayers being the first to be paid back when our economy recovers — and it will recover — and a number of other measures.

But you know, one of the real catalysts, really the match that lit this fire was Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. I’ll bet you, you may never even have heard of them before this crisis.

But you know, they’re the ones that, with the encouragement of Sen. Obama and his cronies and his friends in Washington, that went out and made all these risky loans, gave them to people that could never afford to pay back.

I don’t know, both of these incidents just show McCain as a condescending candidate, despite all of his calling to “his friends” (note). If the person asked a question about something, don’t assume they know nothing about it! Sheesh. Everyone said this was the format that McCain was supposed to excel in, but it seems like he made a few soundbite blunders that are going to haunt him.

If I weren’t an honorary Michigander, I’d probably think this was the American, alcoholic counterpart to Japan’s Sweat:

I see this wine everywhere I go these days (or at least, everywhere that sells booze), and even though I know what the deal is, I still wanna go “ewwww.” (Also because I have no sporty allegiance and so I kind of don’t love pictures of what to me seem like random men on the cover of my wine bottles. I prefer artistic renderings of cute kangaroos or monkeys, or silhouettes of curvy ladies, or paintings of old-fashoined trucks.)

It’s the grammar. I’m talkin’ ’bout Palin, of course, who’s certainly gotten her fair share of comment from the media on both her accent and her grammar, though most pundits seem to focus on the phonological features of her dialect (see posts elsewhere on Politico, Slate, and numerous linguablogs that I’m sure you’ve already read if you’re reading here, this, today). The other day, Language Log finally hit on something that I *actually* find interesting about Palin’s speech, which is her common use of also as some kind of discourse marker. But there are two other aspects of Palin’s grammar that astonish me even more, making me wonder what’s going on linguistically up there in Alaska.

First is her use of what seem to me like unnecessary demonstratives where definite articles (or no article) would do, and I’m not really sure what they’re doing semantically or stylistically for her. I noticed this first, I think, after she gave reports of her meeting with Hamid Karzai, saying that she asked him, “Is that what you are seeking, also? That strategy that has been so successful in Iraq?” Why the that, there? “The strategy” would’ve worked just fine. In her interviews with Katie Couric she produced them the whole way through, and the VP debate showed no shortage either.

Second is her use of the conditional mood, using the modal would in instances where I wouldn’t (!) expect it. It seems to turn up most often in foreign policy-related phrases of the form X who would Y / [Noun] who would [Verb] and I’m not sure where this comes from. Today’s NYT article about her new attacks on Obama conveniently gives some quotes that demonstrate these features:

If we can be that beacon of light and hope for others who seek freedom and democracy and can live in a country that would allow intolerance in the equal rights that again our military men and women fight for and die for all of us. [ed's note: anyone know what this *means*?]

Our opponent though, is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect that he’s palling around with terrorists who would target their own country.

Here are some examples from the VP Debate transcript of the demonstratives:

Two years ago, remember, it was John McCain who pushed so hard with the Fannie Mae (NYSE:FNM) and Freddie Mac (NYSE:FRE) reform measures. He sounded that warning bell.

I think that the alarm has been heard, though, and there will be that greater oversight…

Now, what I’ve done as a governor and as a mayor is (inaudible) I’ve had that track record of reform.

And that’s why, with all due respect, I do respect your years in the U.S. Senate, but I think Americans are craving something new and different and that new energy and that new commitment that’s going to come with reform.

I do take issue with some of the principle there with that redistribution of wealth principle that seems to be espoused by you.

Maliki and Talabani also in working with us are knowing again that we are getting closer and closer to that point, that victory that’s within sight.

What is the rhetorical effect of these?

Also, the conditionals:

A statement that he made like that is downright dangerous because leaders like Ahmadinejad who would seek to acquire nuclear weapons and wipe off the face of the earth an ally like we have in Israel should not be met with without preconditions and diplomatic efforts being undertaken first.

But again, with some of these dictators who hate America and hate what we stand for, with our freedoms, our democracy, our tolerance, our respect for women’s rights, those who would try to destroy what we stand for cannot be met with just sitting down on a presidential level as Barack Obama had said he would be willing to do.

We have got to assure them that we will never allow a second Holocaust, despite, again, warnings from Iran and any other country that would seek to destroy Israel, that that is what they would like to see.

You get the picture. In what hypothetical world are these things going to happen?

Anyway, DAMMIT! Language Log just stole my topic. Damn you Language Log. Just when I think I have something *else* to say, it turns out I don’t. Maybe this is why I don’t blog much anymore….

Also long-time readers might be interested to know that a few weeks ago was my four year blogiversary! Whoah! I’m like a geriatric blogger at this point.

On Hardball the other day they ran a story about how at a campaign speech in Iowa, Sarah Palin seemed to think that she’s on the top of the Republican ticket. It shows a clip of her talking about what needs to happen to benefit small business owners (hint: it’s not making them provide health care or raising taxes in order to provide health care!), and then she says, “…That’s exactly what we’re gonna do in a Palin and McCain administration.” The fill-in host for Chris Matthews says, “A Palin-McCain administration? She *might* be getting a little ahead of herself there, but…”

Now, I’m all for paying close attention to what the candidates are saying and trying to read between some lines, but this kind of accusation reeks of lipstick-quality fabrication. The story’s gotten into the AP, which provides more evidence that she’s a power-hungry golddigger:

Palin also referred to McCain as “my running mate” Friday in Green Bay, Wis., as she did twice in Iowa the day before. Vice presidential candidates are usually referred to as the running mates, no matter which one is speaking.

Is it really that big of a deal which name gets said first when discussing the ticket? Has anyone *forgotten* that it’s John McCain running for president and not Sarah Palin? Isn’t it natural for a speaker to say their own name first, just because they’re the current focus? I mean, she IS talking about herself.

Or is this not about claiming that Palin is a power-hungry golddigger, but rather about claiming that Palin is so inexperienced that she can’t even master the vocabulary of the campaign? Hey, Palin and McCain are changemakers; she’s just sticking to the plan! (I guess the allowable field of things subject to being desirably “shaken up” doesn’t include the order in which candidates are discussed/discuss themselves/each other.)

[Update: Some CNN reporter just said, after talking about Palin, "Let's turn now to talking about Palin's running mate, uh, John McCain, at the top of the ticket for the Republicans..." Whoopsie.]