polyglot conspiracy

I just came across the term “ludling” in a phonology text, and I’m sad to say I had never heard of it before. It seems to be a general term for a “language game,” and the stuff I can find about it online is basically other people debating its etymology (it’s not in the OED, or M-W). It appears to be a Latin portmanteau, according to this site:

Ludling= Latin ludus (game) + lingua (language)

Anyone vouch for this account?

Wherever it comes from, I love this word. It’s been awhile since I’ve found a new (to me) word that I thought might be so useful in both my daily and professional life, plus it’s got a fun factor upped by the easy-to-confuse-with-diminutive -ing. Also, the other day a friend introduced me to the formal term for Hink Pinks, which I believe counts as a kind of ludling, no? Riddle gone nerdily meta: What’s the simplest hink pink for a linguist?

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot (er, sometimes) about the trend in pop songs where words are omitted in favor of phatic expressions instead. At first this struck me as simply lazy, like the lyricist couldn’t be bothered to think of a word that would fit the scenario in question. Then I thought maybe it was just a clever production trick, because it does have the effect of making a chorus catchier and more-easily-shouted-in-the-club-in-unison. And the words (utterances) in a way become part of the music, rather than a layer of meaning on top of the music.

Here are some examples of what I mean:

1. Usher, “Yeah!” (this is obvious, though ‘yeah’ does admittedly carry some meaning)

Conversation got heavy, she had me feelin like she’s ready to blow!
(Watch Out!, Watch Out!)
She saying come get me, come get me,
So I got up and followed her to the floor, she said baby lets go,
When I told her I said

[Usher (Chorus):]
Yeah (yeah) Shorty got down to come and get me
Yeah (yeah) I got so caught up I forgot she told me
Yeah (yeah) Cause if my girl new it’d be best to hold me
Yeah (yeah) Next thing I knew she was all up on me screaming:

Yeah, Yeah yeah, Yeah yeah, Yeaah
Yeah, Yeah yeah, Yeah yeah, Yeaah

2. Nelly, “Hot in Herre”

(Nelly hang all out)
Mix a little bit a ah, ah
With a little bit a ah, ah
(Nelly just fall out)
Give a little bit a ah, ah
With a little bit a ah, ah
(Nelly hang all out)
With a little bit a ah, ah
And a sprinkle a that ah, ah
(Nelly just fall out)
I like it when ya ah, ah
Girl, Baby make it ah, ah

3. Justin Timberlake, “Damn Girl”

Something ’bout the way you do the things you do
When you do the things you do
It’s got me Ohh Ohh Ohh
Sing it for me.. go
Something ’bout the way you do the things you do
When you do the things you do
It’s got me Ohh Ohh Ohh

4. Mya, “My Love is Like…Wo”

My love is like…Whoa
My kiss is like…Whoa
My touch is like…Whoa
My sex is like…Whoa
My ass is like…Whoa
My body’s like…Whoa
And you’re kissin’ it
So what you think of it

[Note that these lyrics all come from the internets, so I don't take responsibility for their accuracy.]

Any other examples? I’m more interested in expressions that are plugged in to sentences (as in the JT, Mya, and Nelly examples), appearing to actually replace a word that allegedly can’t be thought of.

People ask me a shocking amount whether I study “stuff like SecondLife?” That is, when I say I’m studying language and or on the internet, they often assume it has to do with internet-internal environments or practices, like games, “virtual communities,” or immersive environments. While this is to some extent true (message boards are a really nice source of data, for instance, and social networking sites can count as “virtual community” [then again, what can't? -ed.]), for the most part, I don’t care about these environments, at least not in any especially academic way.

In fact, part of the reason I came to internet and CMC studies was because I was dissatisfied at how the internet was consistently characterized in the academic literature in studies on language: usually, people were interested in language as used in inherently anonymous, or novel, or online-focused settings, with an implication that these were the places where the most interesting “internet effects” were happening. Rather, my interest was in how people were using text-based modes of interpersonal communication, conveniently facilitated by the internet (e.g. IM, email), as integrated components of their daily linguistic practices: usually not anonymous, not so alternate-reality-feeling, and not with strangers.

Oh, where was I going with this? Oh yeah! SecondLife. So now that SecondLife has gotten all this media attention the past several months, people have started increasingly asking me about it. And I know almost nothing about it. People on the Association for Internet Researchers listserv are always talking about it, and occasionally I’ll run across a news article, and I pulled up the site once or twice and looked at a world map - but for the most part I know nothing, and I don’t feel compelled to know a particularly large amount more. Not because it’s not important or interesting for some people to study, just not me.

Anyway, now that I’ve explained that whole rant about why I can’t be expected to care about SecondLife, let me give the link I started out writing this in order to give. Thanks to Masters of Media for bringing my attention to Get a FirstLife. I’m going to start telling people to visit this site when they ask me about SecondLife. It will seem rude, and I will love it.

Because getting tagged to do memes makes me feel totally flattered and special, I’m going to respond to EFL Geek’s tag and rise to the occasion with: 5 Things My Readers Don’t Know About Me. This might be kind of difficult, since many of my readers are people who know me as an actual person, so I’ll try to dig up some obscure facts.

1. I spent most of my youth (ages 9-17) dancing in a dance company that occasionally danced in professional shows in Branson, MO. Among them was Dino’s Christmas Spectacular, in which I wore, among other things, an enormous sweltering teddy bear costume and pointe shoes. Here is me when I was, like, 10 or 11 or something:

Amazing. I know.

2. I was a cheerleader in 8th grade.

3. I hardly ever read Language Log anymore, partly due to my frustration with how rarely the posts are written by women (Heidi Harley recently joined the ranks, thankfully, but it’s still waaaaay heavily male). It makes me feel like linguistics is a boys’ club, and I don’t like that feeling one bit. I realize it’s a bit irrational to feel this way, that it’s not at all intentional on the part of Language Log Plaza, and that the burden is on some women to step up and write as frequently as Liberman, Pullum, Zwicky, etc. Still: secret anguish.

4. I am obsessed with the color orange. Within my sight are: orange spray water bottle (for shooing the cat away from my desk), orange toolbox, orange dishtowel, orange potholder, orange handbag, orange bandanna, orange winter coat, orange vintage coat, orange tennis shoes, orange scarf, orange hat (the latter two of which I knitted, back when I used to knit).

5. I was obsessed with panda bears until about 5 years ago. Collected them all the time: stuffed animals, posters, pencils, anything decorated with them. Evidence.

Well, wasn’t that fun? And now I’m going to tag…Full-Fledged Pidgin (obligatorily), No-Sword, Noncompositional, A Roguish Chrestomathy, and Emerging Communications. Fess up!

Well, everybody’s favorite non-female potential presidential candidate is officially a presidential candidate, sort of. While some people are watching the video over and over again that announces his formation of an exploratory committee, and others are tracking the media’s “confusion” of Obama with Osama, at least one astute journalist is asking the really important questions: Does Barack Obama smoke? And is that why his voice is so appealing to voters? And how will that paradox suit him come election season?

Sen. Barack Obama has the sort of voice that political consultants dream of: It’s authoritative but comforting, rich and resonant and wise…

There are plenty of reasons for Obama’s magic voice: where he grew up, how his parents talked, how he breathes. But perhaps most important is one Obama doesn’t want to talk about: cigarettes. Obama is an occasional smoker.

Smoking over time transforms a person’s voice by thickening and drying out the vocal chords. The vocal chords vibrate as your breath passes through them, so their texture and shape helps determine what your voice sounds like. David Witsell, who directs Duke University’s Voice Care Center, notes that the nodules on Johnny Cash’s vocal cords that stemmed in part from his smoking habit helped create his unique sound. “Many famous voices in history have pathologies that are part of their vocal signatures,” Witsell says.

The article goes on to discuss how such a habit (even if only done “occasionally,” apparently) could be damning in the political sphere, because smoking is terribly taboo nowadays. Then again, maybe Obama is so cool that he will singlehandedly bring sexy back to cigarettes. Then again, if he quits, maybe his voice will change so much that voters won’t like him anymore.

Here’s the problem: If he quits, Obama may lose that wonderful maple-syrup sound just as he begins running in earnest. Since smoking amounts to an irritant, stopping smoking altogether can help restore vocal chords to health. But it’s unclear how long that takes, and whether a person’s voice returns to its pristine state. “You can reverse the changes over time,” said Vanderbilt University Voice Center Director Robert Ossoff, who treated Johnny Cash as well as a host of other country and western singers. “Whether you can get back to the 100 percent original voice, I don’t know.”

There are a lot of assumptions here, and I’m not qualified to assess the ones that are related to actual physical properties of vocal chords or cigarette smoke. (Does anyone have a quick idea of what the effect of smoking is on a speaker’s fundamental frequency? My impression has always been that smokers = lower voices, which this article isn’t really saying at all.) What I find most interesting is that while we’ve been talking about how candidates talk presumably since we could hear them (i.e. radio), we’re usually talking about issues other than vocal quality: dialect or accent, mainly, and then things like elocution and intonation. Things that make you “sound” like you’re from one place or another, or like you are one kind of person or another. It’s not usually a question of a candidate’s voice, full stop (counterexamples welcome, here).

I also wonder how Obama’s “dreamy” voice interacts with his racial identity in voters’/listeners’ interpretation of his persona. In other words, he’s an African-American who doesn’t generally exhibit features of African-American English: he’s a black guy who sounds like a white guy from Chicago (am I inviting a whole bunch of criticism by saying this? Do people disagree? Let’s open this up.). Will this affect people’s “readiness” for an African-American president? And what about the Democrats’ other unconventional candidate, Hillary Rodham Clinton? Does she sound wo/manly? Is her fundamental frequency lower than most women’s?

Also, I think Obama has some Canadian Raising tendencies. Stay tuned for how this plays out.

Can anyone explain why this is at all interesting or notable? No offense, but…

Author: In this day and age, there are some things it’s OK to talk about in public and some things it’s not.
Me: …

Dear World,

Please excuse my prolonged absence the past month. I went on vacation and made a point of low-level etoxing, and now that I am back home my desire to blog has been absent. I expect this to change in the next few weeks as I get “back into the swing of things,” as they say, and as I continue recovering from some nasty illness I’ve fallen victim to, which has involved coughing for approximately 20 seconds every 2 minutes for the past 3 weeks.

In the meantime, note that I did not attend the LSA Meeting, and thus have nothing in the way of reportage on it, but if you are interested in such reportage, I refer you to The Tensor and Semantic Compositions, who seems to be finally (finally!) back.

Also, remember how I came back from holiday vacation in 2005 with a comment on the McDonald’s in Marshall, MO and its advertising for the McRib sandwich? Which said “Try the McRib / It is back”? Well, apparently the McRib is back AGAIN, and there really IS some kind of Natural McRib Cycle at work.

Happy holidays (a little late), happy 2nd semester (or trimester or quarter, if that’s your thing), and happy postings ahead!

PC