polyglot conspiracy

Lately I have noticed the young people doing something that seems strange to me. (By “young people” I mean people my age and younger.)  They use “guys” almost categorically when referring to males as a group.  This wouldn’t be so weird, except that there’s no parallel term (for me) that refers to females, and so when they refer to both males and females, the references seem unequal, because they’ll use terms for females that have equivalents for males but they won’t use the equivalent terms for males. They’ll talk about “the girls” and “the guys,” but also “the women” and “the guys,” and I think I even heard once “the ladies” and “the guys”. To me, “girls” and “women” are used in different contexts (something about age or maturity; let’s not even touch how “ladies” is used), and “guys” should only work as the counterpart to “girls” if anything at all. And they never say “boys,” which I realize is due to “girls” cutting a much wider swath of applicability than “boys” - you can refer to girls of many different ages, but boys seems only to be under 18 (but why??). So they talk about college-aged “girls” but college-aged “guys,” and also college-aged “women” but still college-aged “guys.”

This is especially interesting when you consider that definitions of “guys” are gender-neutral (MW):

3 a: man, fellow b: person —used in plural to refer to the members of a group regardless of sex

Is plural “guys” gaining gender? Did Guys and Dolls start this?

Just back from Sociolinguistics Symposium 17 in Amsterdam, jetlagged, just in time for finals! The conference was interesting and fun, and it was really good to see some of my linguafriends there. English is everywhere in Amsterdam, of course, and at the opening reception for the conference the Mayor of the city gave a welcome speech in which he referred to the “Nether-English” being created from the use of English in the Netherlands (it was his way of “connecting” to us, I suppose). He did not give specifics, but I had never heard this term before (though am not surprised that it’s a concept that’s out there, though perhaps “Netherlish” would be more like the names of other world Englishes?). There are a few hits on the web out there, but nothing like a Wikipedia entry or page devoted to information about Nether-English, that I can find. If you know anything about this let me know. [Also, doesn’t “Nether-English” also sound like it’s English that doesn’t really exist, or exists in a parallel dimension?]

So perhaps an example of Nether-English is to be found in the Visitors’ Attraction guide book we were given upon arrival, which gives some hints about the Red Light District. My favorite is:

If you choose to visit one of the women, we would like to remind you, they are not always women.

Though not perhaps the most Nether- of the English in that particular book, it does have a certain alter-stylistic property to it that sounds very odd to my American English ears. It also reminds me of a discussion had between me and some Brits, in which I was asked:

Brit: Do Americans call muffins muffins?
Me: Um…if you are referring to what I call muffins, then yes, we call them muffins. If you are referring to something other than what I call muffins, I do not know what you are referring to, and so I do not know what I call it!

Women aren’t always women and muffins aren’t always muffins…let’s call the whole thing off!

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. This came after nearly 5 months of bargaining and union members striking during a one-day walkout - which was really a two-day walkout with the 2nd day halted by the reaching of agreement. We won an incredible contract, and I am so proud to have been part of the collective action that made it happen. The solidarity demonstrated by this whole process has been overwhelming; I have learned so much in the past several months and despite the windburn (it was in the 30s on Tuesday while we picketed, and ridiculously windy - it ain’t spring in Michigan yet!) and the fact that I have a ton of stuff to do before going to Amsterdam next week for Sociolinguistics Symposium, I feel totally invigorated - I’ll get it all done.

If you are interested, you can check out some parts of the GEO website (which I’ve shifted much of my energy toward this semester, to PC’s detriment!): news coverage, pictures, pictures, and more pictures. Here’s the basic gist of the walkout:(rally; note the great support expressed from undergrads on the building!)(strike HQ)(THANK YOU to all the construction workers who respected our picket lines!)(the good-lookin’ Anthro picketers)

And this is what you would’ve heard if you were in the room with us when we found out we were on the verge of an agreeable agreement:

From a restaurant in Ypsilanti, Michigan, which apparently considers just water to be a compound count noun:Also, thanks to everyone for the positive greetings in response to my last post. Winter break is coming up and I feel a rejuvenation upon me…

I have not been posting lately because

a) I took too many classes for actual credit this semester. One involves scatterplot matrices and interaction plots that I am only borderline comfortable with looking at; one involves quizzes (I know, I know…yes apparently grad students do still have quizzes, sometimes) about specific details of the cochlea, auditory filters, frequency masking, etc.; one requires that I continue working on my qualifying paper research, meaning: producing tangible academic products from said research.

b) I’ve got a lot of papers to grade for the class I’m grading for, which is right up my alley, “Language in the Mass Media.” The class is awesome; Robin Queen is awesome; grading is awesome but tiring.

c) Due to [b] I am also required to take a fourth class, which is supposed to teach me the best way to teach students to write, but really teaches me how awful it sometimes is when a bunch of grad students who have to grade undergrad writing get together and bitch about it.

d) I am on the organizing end of this. Thank god for Kevin. (The other day I learned from a friend that in the department of History here at UMich, grad students are not required to do departmental service. Meaning, they don’t sit on committees, they don’t have to organize department-wide events, they don’t have to plan recruitment activities for the department’s admissions cycle, they don’t have to go to meetings or generally worry about things getting done. Now, in general, don’t get me wrong, I *love* the structure of our department, and I think it’s absolutely critical that grad students are allowed and encouraged to get involved in professional-type activities at the departmental level. But sometimes, like, um, right now, not having to do anything seems really, REALLY appealing.)

e) I am one of many people doing my share to try to win our union a better contract, one that sets our pay at an amount that is actually sufficient for living in Ann Arbor, recognizes the needs of parents who are in graduate school, and doesn’t pay grad employees who work fewer hours less per hour than people who work more hours. Oh and also one that secures affordable healthcare for all grad students, including increased access to mental health care (which all grad students need) and physical therapy (which most grad students will, at some point, need, what with all the typing and all). So far the university hasn’t responded positively (or really responded at all) to any of our asks, which you can read about here. This sucks up a lot of my time, but it’s one of the most important things I can be spending my time doing right now, so I’m pretty ok with the tradeoff.

f) I am trying to maintain a social life that keeps me happy.

g) Michigan winters don’t motivate me to do very much.

So that’s all. I guess I wrote this because I’ve been really bothered this semester by how little I’ve posted, because writing here is actually something that I feel contributes a lot to my identity (believe it or not). I don’t like telling people I have a blog and then knowing that if they go to look at it it will look like I’m neglecting it. This semester just hit me like a freight train - I’ve felt mostly overwhelmed and sometimes in control, and my brain just isn’t feeling as clever lately. But I’m still reading all y’all in the LBS (new hip faux-initialism for linguablogosphere??).

One thing I do have to say pertains to “a recent piece by Nicholas D. Kristof as just one instantiation of the unbelievably essentialist media coverage/commentary of the Democratic campaign so far: Way to reify. Awesome. Just what we need.

[I was going to title this post “Excuses and complaints,” but it sounded weird. Is it always better to start with a word that starts with a stop/consonant rather than a vowel? Or is it the syllable structure?]

Some semesters, you just aren’t into it. Right?

Has anyone else seen There Will Be Blood yet? Daniel Day-Lewis’s dialect sounds more-than-vaguely like Darrell Hammond’s Sean Connery…discuss.

No seriously, has anyone thought about or read a decent account of what historical basis there is for DDL’s linguistic portrayal? (Immigration patterns, migration patterns, etc…) It’s got some interesting features, including retroflex fricatives, not much postvocalic /r/, and some vowels way further back than I’d expect. Also, William Bandy sounds like he’s from Michigan but then says “water” like he’s from Jersey (nowadays). What?

On a fairly related note, I’m reading Thomas Paul Bonfiglio’s Race and the Rise of the American Standard - *hightly* recommended.

OK, so somehow I completely missed the boat on this last year:

Such semiotic dissonance!

Not about linguistics, but today, a member of my university community who I will not name made the following comment:

Here at Michigan, it’s easy to get students to write summaries. They’re good at writing summaries, and it’s easy to get them to do it - this is not some community college where you’d have to give them pizza and rewards to get them to do it.

I was pretty upset by this. First of all, this was said in a context of pedagogical exploration, in which one of the ostensive goals is to teach us (graduate students) how to teach undergraduates in such a way as to improve their academic performance and experience, in particular their academic writing. I do not take it as one of our goals to uphold a false dichotomy of good v. lazy students that is based on superficial, institutionalized, economically-driven notions of “prestige.” I would furthermore like to think of this as something that prepares me to take on challenges of teaching in ANY academic setting, not just the golden halls of UMich.

Second, as a fellow grad student pointed out, in my experience there is not one out-of-classroom event at UMich that does not include some culinary enticement. On the above-undergraduate level, people don’t go to talks and expect no food. People don’t go to department meetings and expect no food. People don’t generally do service-related activities unless they are forced into it, or there is food (there are clear exceptions to this, but still). But oh, look at us, we’re so lucky to be at Michigan, where all the students do all their work all the time and we don’t have to do anything to prod them; thank goodness we’re not at Washtenaw where the students might have things other than college to worry about sometimes or just not feel like paying tens of thousands of dollars every year so that they can be judged by pretentious, condescending instructors. Sheesh.

I have lately started noticing that people often ask me if linguists study or teach about the “misuse of language.” I am never quite sure how to respond, so I usually just change the subject. The truth is I am not sure what this phrase even means, and I never feel like asking for clarification because I fear the worst (i.e., “You know, people who don’t speak proper English”), and even what I presume is the best possible meaning (i.e., “You know, using rhetoric to dupe people into voting for unjust wars”) does not make me particularly interested in responding. When you hear someone talk about the “misuse of language,” what do you interpret them to mean?