Interlingual Ineffables

Filed under:Media, Words & Phrases — posted by squires on 2/28/2005 @ 10:26 pm

Alert! Fun Talk of the Nation story today, on Other Cultures, ‘In Other Words’. The guest is Christopher J. Moore, author of In Other Words: A Language Lover’s Guide to the Most Intriguing Words Around the World. He and Neil and some callers talk about the “untranslatable” words unique to some languages; the German Schadenfreude is a notable (ahem) example, as is the American English term redneck. Ah, yes, there we go again with our almost-too-brilliant contributions to the world’s linguistic stock.

Word Thanksgiving: How Useful Soever Is Instantiation

Filed under:Words & Phrases — posted by squires on 2/26/2005 @ 6:57 pm

I love the word instantiate. It’s useful in discussions pertaining to philosophy, logic, discourse analysis, computer programming, anthropology, and really any theoretical topic soever. From M-W:

to represent (an abstraction) by a concrete instance.

I also love the word soever (see above), a slightly less common one that I’m coming across a lot in my reading just now (my obviously half-assed reading just now, what with blogging and all) of Locke’s ECHU. M-W:

1 : to any possible or known extent — used after an adjective preceded by how or a superlative preceded by the 2 : of any or every kind that may be specified — used after a noun modified especially by any, no, or what

Thanks, soever and instantiate.

Confessions & hugs, from screen to page

Filed under:CMC, Media — posted by squires on @ 2:33 pm

One of my favorite online curiosities, GroupHug, has apparently gotten so big that there’s now a book (actually, there has been a book since November; I just now heard of it) of those anonymous online confessions: Stoned, Naked, and Looking in My Neighbor’s Window: The Best Confessions from GroupHug.us. Here’s a quote from an article in Venus:

The thrill of confession and the security of anonymity have proven an irresistible combination, and grouphug.us is the fastest-growing confession site on the Web.

Emphasis is all mine there: is “confession site” a whole genre of website? Googling “confession site” brings up GroupHug first, then a couple of Christian sites, then indirect linkage to the secular sites Not Proud (Canadian - and also with a compilation book - and also which cutely/conveniently divides confessions into the 7 Deadlies) and Daily Confession (hot-damn! ALSO with a compilation book!). Apparently having a confession site is a fast-track to getting a book deal, though the appeal of such a book is not entirely clear to me: it’s not like taking quotes or instances from a TV series, which you don’t otherwise have record of, or a movie, whose quotes you might want in a format that’s not ephemeral - or that you might simply want clarified. At any rate, it’s an interesting instance of the internet being treated as an entertainment medium just like others - something we need to document outside of itself, something that deems meta-examination. Which makes sense, I guess, since internet is the new TV. Except that these particular sites are already literally text-based - the text is the entertaining modality, so I’m wondering what this double-textuation thing means. (Yes, I made up textuation, and here’s why: I don’t mean texture, texturation, texting, or textuality exactly, and textness has too many inconvenient consonants. Help?)

MangledWordMonger caricatures lawyer incorrectly

Filed under:Words & Phrases — posted by squires on 2/25/2005 @ 8:06 pm

On today’s The Connection, a guest said:

To assume that we’re all just out trying to put people in jail is just not a correct caricature of a prosecutor.

MWM assumes (= hopes) that the guest meant to say characterization. MWM’s beef with the phrase “correct caricature” is that it simply doesn’t seem possible to have an incorrect caricature.

M-W defines caricature as:

1 : exaggeration by means of often ludicrous distortion of parts or characteristics
2 : a representation especially in literature or art that has the qualities of caricature
3 : a distortion so gross as to seem like caricature

OED says:

1. In Art. Grotesque or ludicrous representation of persons or things by exaggeration of their most characteristic and striking features.
2. A portrait or other artistic representation, in which the characteristic features of the original are exaggerated with ludicrous effect.
3. An exaggerated or debased likeness, imitation, or copy, naturally or unintentionally ludicrous.

Since a caricature is an interpretation, an exaggerated representation, is there a sense in which it can be “correct” or “incorrect”? I want to say that maybe a caricature can be incorrect, only if it doesn’t caricature the most ludicrous part(s) of something, as per the OED’s definition. But in that case, why would you WANT a correct caricature?

IM and IL at AAAS

Filed under:CMC — posted by squires on 2/24/2005 @ 2:49 pm

Naomi Baron, my advisor/collaborator at American University, presented a symposium at last week’s American Academy for the Advancement of Science meeting, titled “Language on the Internet: Usage Patterns, Global Issues, Future Trends.” I’m quite sad I couldn’t attend, as the lineup was stellar: Baron, plus David Crystal, Brenda Danet, Susan Herring, and Simeon Yates. The talk garnered a nifty article on Wired News, here, which discusses Crystal’s and Baron’s presentations.

According to the session abstracts available here, Crystal’s presentation (via DVD) was on “The Scope of Internet Linguistics,” prospects for which I find terribly exciting.

[T]he arrival of the Internet has had such an impact on language that I believe the time is right to recognise and explore the scope of a putative ‘Internet linguistics’.

YAY! Seriously, this is great. His abstract then lays out ten points of study for Internet Linguistics [note: I guess the field will have to agree whether or not to capitalize that i], including the internet as a new medium of communication, stylistic variation within internet communication, incorporation of internet usages into everyday speech and writing, educational implications, and fostering of multilingualism online (and offline). A quote from the Wired article:

[L]inguists should be “exulting,” he said, in the ability the internet gives us to “explore the power of the written language in a creative way.”

Baron’s presentation, “Instant Messaging by American College Students: A CMC Case Study,” reported findings from a study of 23 IM conversations between college students collected in 2003 (which I helped to collect and analyze - see proof here). Again from Wired:

The results did not fit typical stereotypes, she found. They used few abbreviations, acronyms and emoticons, the spelling was reasonably good and contractions were not ubiquitous. Overall, the study suggested that conversing through instant messenger resembled speaking more than writing.

There are also some specifics in there on average number of words per transmission, per conversation, etc.; utterance breaks; abbreviations and acronyms (many fewer than one might expect); error corrections; and some notable gender differences (which she has also written about here); and multitasking.

Anyway, I obviously recommend taking a peek at the article, and I also recommend that we take Crystal’s suggestion for Internet Linguistics seriously (which means, paraphrasing from one of Herring’s articles, doing more than labeling language used online “netspeak” - as I’ve written about plenty before). And not just because it might mean job security for me.

Are you in- or are you out- (migrating)?

Filed under:Words & Phrases — posted by squires on 2/23/2005 @ 10:42 am

Another in-migration sighting (see here for backstory):

“In situations of rapid social change, in- or out-migration, such ideas about place and its relation to language use can be crucial to the survival or decline of a language.”

From Joel C. Kuipers’ fascinating book Language, Identity, and Marginality in Indonesia: The Changing Nature of Ritual Speech on the Island of Sumba (p. 22). I reflected a bit more on the words, and I maintain that in-migrate is relatively useful, while out-migrate is totally useless.

We need more linguistic holidays. (Are there more linguistic holidays?!?!)

Filed under:So-so Social — posted by squires on 2/22/2005 @ 6:44 pm

It seems that yesterday was quite a special day: in addition to it being Presidents’ Day in the good ol’ USofA, it was also International Mother Language Day, a UNESCO-established holiday. To boot, UNESCO’s focus this year was on Braille and signed languages (something I find myself learning more about, thus being more and more interested in). The holiday has its roots in and coincides with the Bangladesh holiday Language Martyrs’ Day, which commemorates casualties of the Bengali Language Movement in the 1950s, which fought to make Bengali an official language (alongside Urdu) in then-Pakistan. Eventually, this spirit of revolution led to Bangladesh’s national independence in 1971. According to Banglapedia:

International Mother Language Day was introduced by the UNESCO in recognition of the sanctity and preservation of all vernacular languages in the world. The event began being observed from 21 February 2000 throughout the world to commemorate the martyrs who sacrificed their lives on this date in dhaka in 1952. The background to the proclamation of the International Mother Language Day was a proposal from Bangladesh at the UNESCO General Conference in Paris on 17 November 1999 to declare 21 February as an international day on the ground that on this day many had sacrificed their lives for their mother tongue. It was argued that, since the languages of the world are at the very heart of UNESCO’s objectives and since they are the most powerful instruments for preserving and developing the tangible and intangible heritage of nations and nationalities, the recognition of this day would serve not only to encourage linguistic diversity and multilingual education but also to develop a fuller awareness of linguistic and cultural traditions throughout the world and to inspire international solidarity based on understanding, tolerance and dialogue.

What a lovely holiday. (Too bad UVA didn’t give me school off for either that or Presidents’ Day.)

The intertextuality on the wall

Filed under:Words & Phrases — posted by squires on @ 2:13 pm

The other day in UVA’s Alderman Library I was using one of the PhD student-assigned carrels for a little quiet study time; usually I think it’s fun just to look at the books people have checked out and infer what their dissertation topics are. But this time, I was more entertained by the wall next to the carrel, which was covered in the stuff you usually find in bathroom stalls, albeit up a few intellectual levels.

At the GLS 2005 conference this weekend, the biggest buzzword in the panels I attended was intertextuality (perhaps a better explication is here). As I look back on these carrel dialogues, they strike me as simple examples of public intertextuality (with “text” broadly defined to include a snapshot of any semiotic system - including general cultural products, one’s interpretation of cultural products, etc. - you’ll see what I mean). Which is to say, they’re not as simple as they seem - we can look at them and figure out which prior texts people are drawing on, what knowledge they’re working from and constructing - sometimes unwittingly. It would make a great project to actually analyze such things, but I just want to throw them out for imaginative fodder (and I’m sure, in fact, there’s a paper somewhere on a semiotic analysis of bathroom stall writing - for starters, here’s this). Where I’m not so schooled in this sort of semiotic theory as of yet, consider this a layperson’s contribution to public displays of intertextuality.

Or, forget I said anything about intertextuality at all, and just enjoy with good humor.

I notate each different “speaker,” presuming to infer which comments were made by different people, and the presumed order in which comments were made, by using alphabetical labels. And I try to lay things out kind of like they were written on the wall, though it’s tough in this linear format. Notes are in ((double parentheses)).

Example 1.

A. God is Alive!!
B. but Andy Warhol isn’t
D. < - a good observation my friend ((arrow referring to C.))
C. Isn't God? - or isn't alive?

Example 2.

D. no, best, as in “stay at home and let me study”
C. no, basest as in you’re a dork
A. no - basest, as in most terrible, lowest, worst
B. basis
A. the basest of all things is to be afraid

Example 3.

A. fear is pain leaving the body
B. Pain is weakness leaving the body
-US Navy S.E.A.L.S
((illegible pencil/erasure marks where an acrostic had been made))

My contribution, were I to have made one (that is, were I an unruly grad student itchin’ to make some public declarations instead of just observe them), would have been this at the end of Example 3:

C. Fear is [[weakness leaving the body] leaving the body] ??

Then, of course I would’ve checked back in about a week, to see what new text had been added. In fact, maybe I’ll go see whether someone has beaten me to it…

Taxicab Expressions, Episode 6

Filed under:Words & Phrases — posted by squires on 2/18/2005 @ 4:01 pm

I’ll be at the Georgetown Linguistics Society 2005 student conference this weekend, so expect little-to-no blogging (I leave my laptop at home! And ah, it feels good.). [And no, I'm not presenting anything, just observing. And ah, it feels good!] I leave you with this thoughtfully clever Taxicab Expression, which I’ve been saving for just the right moment. As the conference is entitled “The Language and Identity Tapestry,” this seems appropriate.

All nonconformists are alike

I love it because it’s a tautology, yet not…

Bless those little Underminers’ hearts!

Filed under:So-so Social, Words & Phrases — posted by squires on 2/17/2005 @ 7:10 pm

Yesterday’s Talk of the Nation featured an interview (listen here) with Mike Albo and Virginia Heffernan, authors of the just-out novel The Underminer: The Best Friend Who Casually Destroys Your Life. Apparently quite a hit (with whole The Underminer website here), Albo performs selections of the novel on stage, too, but this was the first I’d heard of it. And how glad I am to have heard of it. The Underminer is that person we all know, a “poisonous” friend that we can’t seem to get rid of because we do love them, we do, but…they’re mean to us! Even if not on the surface.

You can explore the book yourself (here are some more links to other articles), but the concept and the interview on Talk of the Nation brought up the ever-interesting sociolinguistic point that in our culture, being passive aggressive is the only way to be honest to a friend without risking complete alienation or general friend freak-out.

ALBO:…[Y]ou know, we live in this very competitive world, but also a very polite society, as well. So it’s just a way for us to get out aggressions with each other. I think, like, maybe in some other age, we’d be slapping each other with white gloves or doing a snake dance or something. But these days, you know, you have to sort of couch it in the superpoliteness.

I’d say that’s about right–when I taught ESL last semester, my Asian students - actually now that I think about it, moreso my Eastern European students - were so confused about how artificially uber-polite Americans are; always saying “You might not want to do that…” or “Here’s another way to look at it…” or “I understand what you’re doing, BUT…” instead of just “You’re wrong!” and getting on with it.

But my favorite favorite favorite part of the interview was when a caller brought up undermining as an institutional phenomenon in the South, executed with one little phrase:

MIKE (Caller): Yeah. Hi. This undermining person, it made me think of not just one person, but the South as an entire region.
(Soundbite of laughter)
MIKE: You can say whatever you want to however cruel and heartless it may be to another person, but as long as you back it up with `Bless his little heart’ or `Bless her little heart,’ it’s perfectly acceptable and no one will bat an eye at what you just said.
ALBO: Ooh.
HEFFERNAN: Mike and I met at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. So maybe there was a little bit of, like, Southern manners informing our thinking about it.
STASIO (host): Well, now as you say that, I can hear that kind of sweet, genteel voice. And it does strike me that this has been in the works and in the culture for a long time.

And this is not just the South. One of the favorite characteristics of my grandmother’s speech (which is Midwestern) is her follow-up of any potentially insulting comment with “Bless her heart!” It is so normal for her to say this, in fact, that you know when she’s really insulting someone and when she’s just talking for the sake of it, because the omission of “bless her heart” signals the former. Witness this interaction between my sister, me, and our cousin from just a few weeks ago:

Cousin: So how’s it staying at Grandma’s?
Sister: Oh it’s fine; she thinks we’re crazy I think.
Me: Yeah, we heard her talking on the phone to a friend, and she said, “Well, the girls are here…yep…ooh, they’re characters!”
Cousin: (laughs) Did she say “Bless their hearts!” afterward?
Sister: Uh…
Me: Don’t think so.
Cousin: Oh. Huh.

But it’s true - if she had said “bless their hearts” afterward, it would have been “all good” (another underminer catch-phrase, according to Heffernan).

Finally, a fun neologistic portmanteau arose from another caller in the interview: the complisult, which has (who knew?) been in UrbanDictionary for nearly a year already.


next page