polyglot conspiracy

OK, some of you may have heard about the book Generation MySpace: Helping Your Teen Survive Online Adolescence by Candice Kelsey. [I haven't read it but] It’s about how parents can guide their children through the world of online social networking, safely. I heard an interview with her once, and she seemed like a smart and lovely and caring person, so even though I’m skeptical of what this book contains (I imagine it to be full of talk of predators, to misunderstand what lots of the social functions are of MySpace, to blame MySpace for things that more traditional media AND educational/social settings for teenagers play an equally big role in), I was intrigued enough to go to the website and learn more about it.

Aside from the regular website, Kelsey’s got a MySpace profile set up for herself/the book, which is designed to show curious and unknowing adults what MySpace is all about - a good tutorial for people who aren’t familiar with the site, for sure. But it’s very interesting what she’s done with the “exhibition”. She points out typical traits of a teen’s MySpace page (and I’m not entirely qualified to comment on her accuracy, because most of my friends aren’t teenagers; nonetheless, I am a fairly heavy user of the site), including language use:

The “About Me” and “Who I’d Like to Meet” sections are utilized by teen MySpacers to best represent their online persona. Here you’ll notice the tendency to exaggerate desires and personality traits; the flashier you sound, the more interesting your online self may seem to other members. The presence of mIsMatCHed letters is just part of the mystique, and parents just aren’t hip enough to gEt It. Also, the abbreviated language may cause u 2 “lol” or at least 2 wanna sign off bad enuf.

Ah, that mystical, magical world of MySpace, closed off to the lurking eyes of square parents. But here’s what really got me. This text appears under the text field heading titled “Who I’d like to meet:”

Other than being grammatically incorrect (the who should be “whom”), this section is a breeding ground for upping one’s coolness factor. Girls tend to list celebrities they deem hot while boys tend to list professional athletes or musicians (with the occasional porn star). In some ways, this box is the most important in setting the tone of one’s profile as it allows the MySpace teen to establish with what icons she identifies and why.

Oh shit. Who called the Grammar Police on MySpace’s ass??? Tom must have failed high school English. What I love MOST about this whole thing is, though, that right after the field it says, Buy this invaluable parenting book now! Go to amazon.com to pre-order. Now, I think this model MySpace profile for parents to see is actually a pretty cool idea, a useful tool. But it seems a little off to set up a MySpace page simply as a marketing tool for a book that’s antagonistic to MySpace. If part of what’s wrong about MySpace - as has been said by Kelsey and others - is the insidious presence of targeting advertisers, then this page does nothing but latch on to that supposedly negative aspect of it for its own positive gains. It’s kind of biting the hand that feeds you-ish.

The profile also takes some low blows at teen culture, which, if you ask me, someone claiming to try to understand and help not only parents but also their kids (and *ultimately* their kids), shouldn’t really be taking. From the “Music” field:

Here you may find an endless list of bands, most of whom you will never have heard of, and whose names, quite honestly, sound like rare sub-tropical diseases. Occasionally, a nod to a few from my generation appear; it’s somewhat comforting to know that SOME teens realize “Landslide” was originally sung by Stevie Nicks.

“Landslide” first released (ahem, by Fleetwood Mac not Nicks solo): 1975. Earliest possible year today’s teenagers could have been born: 1988. Earliest possible time someone born in 1988 would probably start recognizing the music played around them as “music” produced by named “artists”: 1995 (and that’s probably pushing it). Top five Billboard songs in 1995: Gangsta’s Paradise (Coolio/L.V.), Waterfalls (TLC), Creep (TLC), Kiss from a Rose (Seal), On Bended Knee (Boyz II Men). Etc.

From the “Television” field:

I guess it’s assumed that all teens watch television; in fact, I have yet to see a profile that said, “I am too engrossed in sports, theater, scholarly work, and my family to watch any television.” Frankly, I’m pretty surprised any teens still watch the tube considering how much time is spent here!

Teens may not be saying these things, but mid-20s people sure are: tons of my friends fill that field out with either some anti-TV comment, or with one TV show (usually Arrested Development) just to fill out the field. So if the people who are in their mid-20s who are on MySpace now are any indication of what the people who are teens on MySpace now will be like when they’re in their mid-20s on MySpace, maybe the kids are all right.

From the “Books” section:

Ah, here you may find the obligatory hateful invective toward books; as an English teacher it pierces me to the core. I like to imagine that most of these lit “haters” are simply posing and secretly have an annotated copy of Moby-Dick stashed under their keyboard.

Way to homogenize the teen attitude there. You’re taking away their individuality! Lots of them probably do like books! You’re not doing any good! Of course, part of the problem with these “Interests” fields is that MySpace makes up what the headings are. If MySpace asked people to complete things that were less dependent on categories based on shallow pop culture, I bet you’d see a different version of teens. Favorite…sports, artists, magazines, plays, foods, season, town/city, color, activity, websites…there are a lot of untapped possibilities here, and I think you’d see teens (and other age groups) respond positively if more options were given for these fields; in fact, you increasingly see people changing the page code so they can creat their own headings. OMG! Teens are dynamic and multi-faceted just like adults are!

Finally, from the “Heroes” field:

Many times you’ll find teens giving much deserved “props” to their parents in this section. I’m sure it is sincere, but sometimes it feels a bit disingenuous. A standard hero also seems to be the baby brother or sister — pretty cute! (If I may, I invite you to click on my “pics” to see some of my heroes… my students.)

I can just imagine my teenage cousin’s mom saying, “I saw that you said I’m your hero on MySpace…what the hell, you disingenuous little bastard? If you’re not going to be sincere, don’t mention me at all.” …um… “Sorry, Mom…I love you.” ??? Let’s not assume that teenagers don’t seriously appreciate their parents, friends, or whoever else they claim as their heroes. It’s not fair, and it ignores their status as thoughtful human beings who, lots of times, do actually know what’s going on, despite what the media - and apparently people like Kelsey - want to say about them in order to sell more clothes, CDs, or books.

Anyway, I didn’t go into this whole thing intending to be mad about it - the Grammar Police issue was the only thing that originally surprised or irked me - but I guess I just found Kelsey’s model profile page really annoying. Its descriptions suck all the creativity, life, and reality out of what teenagers/people do on MySpace. It washes the whole thing into one template that parents should be scared of their kids producing…and, most aggravatingly, it gives teens no credit for having their own generational trademarks, or for taking hold of online means of doing things outside of what mass-produced and distributed pop culture gives them. Even if they’re still largely referencing pop culture, I’d suggest they’re doing so creatively, in a way that marks them as a distinctive generation of Americans. To mock their music, to bitch about how their linguistic prAcTiCeS are silly, to claim that their tributes aren’t sincere, - well, this seems like the most deeply insulting attitude one could take toward the generation.

Two media things conspired yesterday to highlight to me the sorry state of people’s pride about English. Note - not the sorry state of the language itself, but the sorry state of how people feel about it. There’s a lot of linguistic hatred going on with English speakers; you can see this in grammar and usage gripes, but that’s not all.

First, a couple people (hat tip/DG+Dad) alerted me to some articles about how text messaging in Ireland is ruining written English. The Irish Times article is here, and it reports that “the emergence of the mobile phone and the rise of text messaging poses a significant threat to writing standards in English.” Apparently the national exam results from last year show that students’ writing skills have declined, particularly in terms of spelling and punctuation; the Chief Examiner blames text messaging’s phonetic spelling and the lax punctuation practices in texting and email. But there are no actual examples given here, no statistics, no survey of how people actually text and how many teens that includes, and whether students are able to codeswitch - in other words, no real evidence that such errors are in fact related to texting (or email, or whatever). And here’s an interesting twist that often isn’t included in complaints about text-based media ruining English:

The popularity of text messaging may also explain the penchant among the Junior Cert students for short, sharp answers with little elaboration. The examiner complains how many candidates were “choosing to answer sparingly, even minimally, rather than seeing questions as invitations to explore the territory they had studied and to express the breadth and depth of their learning and understanding”.

While pointing to some exceptionally impressive answers, the examiner says a “significant number of candidates need to further develop their proficiency in the basic elements of personal expression through writing . . . In many cases, however, candidates seemed unduly reliant on short sentences, simple tenses and a limited vocabulary.”

Okay, you know what? If students are only writing really short answers to things, it’s probably because either the questions don’t seem to call for longer answers, or the students haven’t been taught the convention that they should use longer answers. I suppose it could be true that texting somehow warps students’ perceptions about what’s appropriate length or depth of an answer, but I doubt it. For one thing, text conversations generally don’t involve deep, thought-invoking topics (a broad generalization that I’ll probably get in trouble for - I know of no studies on Irish texting, but in other places it’s generally either used for instrumental purposes ["Meet me at the movies at 7"] or for emotional gifting purposes ["Miss you!"]). These are very obviously different from questions of serious intellectual import, and I’d bet that students know that.

Plus, as a colleague pointed out to me, if it really is a big problem, then it does no good just to spread around blame upon the technologies - get in there and include different technologies as part of linguistic register education. As he said, “teach them thumb warriors to code-switch.” And if you are going to blame some specific social technologies, there are also a WHOLE LOT of other forms of media that probably have some impact on attention span that aren’t related to writing…television? MTV? etc.

Second, there was a story yesterday on Talk of the Nation called Would Life Be Better If We All Spoke Shakespeare? It was kind of cool actually, with some explanations of phrases that Shakespeare originated that pop up in everyday life, examples of words he coined (or seems to have coined), and famous political speeches that have incorporated his quotes. But the panel idea was apparently sparked by a column in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune: We can’t all be Shakespeare — but we could try to be.

Think upon it. What a wonderful world this would be if we salvaged just one little word from the stage of the Globe and, as a nation, forswore all use of “going forward” in favor of an elegant “henceforth.”

What harmony might we engender if, instead of the cold, legalistic “Cease and desist,” we bid the offenders end it “here, but here, upon this bank and shoal of time”?
…
Remembrance of the Bard, who is nothing if not existential, can affect events less trivial than the salvation of corporate America. As we of a certain age sense the wavering of life’s brief candle, he alone gives us the language and context to make meaning of it all.

I don’t how serious Joe Muldoon is being in this writing, but just the thought of writing such a column, and framing it in terms of how life could be better because of some fairly superficial linguistic changes, is enough to point toward some ideology about what language should and should not do, or what it should “sound like.”

I am beginning to worry that in criticizing these articles I’m going to be misinterpreted as claiming that language is not of great social importance - no! It definitely is! That’s not what I mean! But part of the reason it’s so important is precisely what these articles point to: it’s the focus of great social fears related to our ability to communicate with one another, and our ability to maintain social order by maintaining stratified linguistic practices. But I think that in these kinds of social lamentation, language is a scapegoat. At the same time, language-is-dying arguments are usually built on ideas about LANGUAGE as a system that is subject to bifurcated value judgments: right and wrong, correct and incorrect, pretty and ugly, normal and deviant.

How language relates to these values is a matter of our own doing. Shakespeare = emblem of past time perceived as more elegant; taught in school as pinnacle of linguistic achievement. Texting = emblem of current time of scary social change regarding communicative practice; publicly regarded as pinnacle of linguistic downfall. I think that both articles represent some uneasiness about modern life, and project that onto what linguistic stuff is also happening. The linguistic stuff in question isn’t going to change the big stuff that causes that unease: If we ALL talked like Shakespeare, I’m sure people would still kill each other in random sprees of violence (duh - have you ever WATCHED Shakespeare?). And if we ALL neglected punctuation and startd writng lk ths, probably the murder increase would not be too great.

Annnnnd, I feel like I’m constantly writing the same thing over and over again. Sorry for that. But you know what? Maybe if people stopped writing about how bad English is doing, I’d stop writing about how bad it is that they’re writing about how bad English is doing. If this has you depressed, just watch this. But don’t tell anyone I referred you there; it’s a little embarrassing how. much. ilovethisvideoomg.

It’s completely tacky to try to post anything related to a tragedy like this, but we always want to try, right? It’s so weird though, because there are already things I want to blog about, but whatever they are - languagey things - are totally inconsequential. And it’s not going to do anyone any good to think or talk about them now, right? We can perhaps view them in retrospect as not inconsequential to the broader process of modern tragedy: how the media treat the situation, interactive aspects of grief and solidarity, what rhetoric is used by whom, how the event is referred to. I’m already noticing some of these things, but I hate myself for doing it. What else can I do? I’m just sitting here listening to NPR, listening to the shaky voices explain the events, watching how related support Groups are rapidly forming on Facebook. I should be praying, or sending a giant shipment of vigil candles, or simply meditating in the lucky simple sunshine of Michigan today.

I have strong ties to the state of Virginia, but I only know one person currently who attends Tech, and I’ve had confirmation that she’s fine. Nonetheless, things like this affect the larger community, whether directly or through networks of shock and hurt. I don’t even feel qualified to talk about stuff like this though, because I’ve never experienced anything even remotely like it, and I can’t imagine doing so. So I’ll cut it off, and just make this my public offering of support and love for Virginia(ns). May your healing, eventually, be whole.

I have been having this argument with people in my semantics class: American English speakers, can you say “I’m going to the bar” and have it mean either a) any one of the set of all bars, or b) any one of a smaller set of familiar bars? Or can it only mean one specific bar that is the bar you typically go to? This arose because my professor had a handout listing indefinite uses of the “definite” article, and one example is

I’m going to the pub. (British English)

I objected that I could say this as well (substituting bar for pub), and I could perfectly well have it mean any bar at all. My professor and a few of my classmates looked at me like that was crazy.

Then, a few days later, one of my friends said, “So I called her but she was already out at the bar.” I asked him if he had a specific bar in mind, and he said, “No, I don’t know where she was. Well, I guess it probably wouldn’t mean anywhere that we don’t usually hang out at - so one of, like, four places.” So this the bar shrinks the set a little, but it still doesn’t imply one specific bar. Then, last night, another one of my friends said something like, “I missed it; I was at the bar.” To which I said, “Which bar? Could you have meant any bar?” Now several people have confirmed that they indeed have indefinite the preceding a term denoting a location to imbibe. Is this an Upper Midwest thing, or do people in other regions have this too?

Tulugaq has a hilarious post up right now about putting the “science” into “linguistics.” This strikes me not just as funny, but also genuinely sad, or maybe just confused. I’m not sure what the popular working definition of either “science” or “linguistics” is, but people typically describe “linguistics” as “scientific study of language.” And lots of people consider it a “social science” - but I’m not sure if this implies that it’s somehow less sciencey than “hard” sciences. Then again, some people consider it part of humanities more properly: I honestly can’t remember where I saw this the other day, but somewhere on Michigan’s website where disciplines are listed categorically, Linguistics was in Humanities yet Anthropology was in Social Sciences. And, for administrative purposes (like fellowships awards) I believe linguists are considered for humanities awards. But then there’s a course offered here this semester called Linguistics as a Natural Science - is it not usually? What’s social isn’t natural? What’s soft isn’t hard? I don’t get these things.

Then you have a whole other group (smattering?) of people who still consider linguistics to be really closely tied to philosophy, such as AcademicBlogs and its Linguistics and Philosophy list, and MIT. See also recent posts at Mr. Verb on linguists, language departments, and the relationships therebetween. This resonates with a panel discussion we had here last week involving faculty from various departments, titled “Being a Linguist in a Non-Linguistics Department.” Wherein it was discussed how linguists are obliged to understand the basic theoretical outlook of other disciplines that they seek to work with, that certain amounts of freedom come with being outside of the confines (whatever that means) of a linguistics department, and that it’s our burden to “convince” other fields that we have something relevant to them.

This applies within the department as well, where interests are so varied and subfields are sometimes so firmly divided that there’s not a lot of cross-cutting interest (see Roger Shuy’s recent “I’m a linguist.” post). One of the panelists said something I can’t get out of my head: “Other departments, they just want to shove everything that has to do with ‘language’ into linguistics departments now. No one in [Romance Languages & Literatures] is doing anything related to language anymore; it’s all about lit crit and cultural studies.” Now, a part of me wants to think this is good: linguistics is still a young discipline, and if more people get into it, it will broaden its scope, strengthen its numbers/influence, and create more jobs for people like me someday (godwilling). On the other hand, I find it hard to get behind looking at “linguistics” as anything other than something that’s ultimately interdisciplinary, involving cognition, psychology, physiology, audiology, literacy, sociology, anthropology, socialization, childhood development, languageS, computation, history….and on and on and on. In which case, what sense does it make to narrowly shuffle all the people interested in “language” into one building, when “language” fundamentally involves all these other things?

This is of course hypocritical on the face of it, since I’m *in* a linguistics department and chose to be in one. So this makes me deconstruct what a “discipline” is in the first place: is it supposed to contain people with a set of shared objectives, methods, and ideologies? Or is it just supposed to provide a home from which to work out of and come back to at the end of the day, a place to keep your things? I feel like it should be a little of both, but more like the latter: a home built on shared objectives, methods, and ideologies, but welcoming to visitors, doors always unlocked, bikes waiting for you to ride next door or across the street.

That’s enough barely-woken-up rambling on this topic - I’m sure it’ll keep rearing its head. I’m pretty reflexive about these issues, and luckily I have colleagues around me who are, too. [ps, sorry for the *terrible* headline. Ugh. I'm not thinking right today.]

Man, I’ve really been laggard on the blogging lately. This semester has officially been teh suck, for a few reasons. It’s been good for a few other reasons, but it’s overwhelmingly been teh suck. I wasn’t used to only having a week off during winter break; I had four classes, only two of which moderately interested me (no offense to any of my professors, who are great - it’s the subject matter!); I experienced some professional letdowns and have been trying to scrounge together summer plans; I was sick most of the time. And so on.

Anyway, in between defending sociolinguists from implicit charges of not having studied prescriptivism and ruminating on Wikipedia’s neologism policy and stuff, I *have* actually been keeping a pretty good watch on the linguablogosphere, despite having not much to contribute myself. So here’s a rare “roundup”-style post, mixed in with a half-written-entries-style post.

YouTube
It started when I finally watched the Danish comedy sketch (hat tip/Brook), and discovered that there must be a bunch of interesting stuff on YouTube having to do with language - I don’t YouTube as much as I probably ought to, so having others send me links is much appreciated. To start, though, I just clicked on the “language” tag to see what popped up.

Imagine my excitement when one of the first things was from A Bit of Fry & Laurie, in probably the most language-centric sketch from that show. It’s here and you must watch it if you haven’t before. And speaking of Danes, here’s Victor Borge on “inflationary language.”

Linguablogs
-Catafora Paratactica recently wrote an post “On Chomsky”, in which frustrations are shared that very much match my own, namely, why the hell does everyone want to know what I think about Chomsky just because I’m in linguistics?!

-Mark Liberman on the flight delay due to cussing. This isn’t nearly as surprising to me as the flight delay due to farting was - if someone is cursing profusely on the job, I might be worried about their ability to rationally fly my plane. This is not because cursing is bad, of course, but because cursing on the job (especially a public service job like piloting) unequivocally violates the sociolinguistic norms of the job setting, and this is a potentially disconcerting thing.

-Ben Zimmer responded to the Newt Gingrich “ghetto” quote with an explanation of his probably-channeling the English-only movement’s rhetoric. He mentioned me in the post as a source that had “followed suit” in interpreting Gingrich’s comment as equating Spanish with speakers who reside in ghettos. I’d like to point out that my headline (Spanish is indeed spoken by many individuals who do not live in the ghetto) was echoic of a commenter on Gingrich’s remarks, not Gingrich’s remarks per se. That said, I disagree with Zimmer’s argument - I think Gingrich meant ghetto, not linguistic ghetto - and even if he meant the latter, I’m not all tha sure the two are different if you get down to what’s under the metaphor. I disagree even more after seeing Gingrich’s multiple online “apologies,” in which he not only makes no reference to anything resembling linguistic ghettoization, but he also says explicitly that he was drawing on imagery of the Jewish ghettos. Jewish ghettos were (are?) urban ghettos, centers of marginalization and cultural oppression and discrimination. This isn’t a linguistic thing, at least not foremost.

-Mr. Verb is a language blog I just found out about.

Wants
-In reading Mark Liberman’s recent LSA Talk on The Future of Linguistics (in which I have a great stake, mind you), I was struck by a page that compares the number of websites linking to the American Psychological Association vs. the Linguistic Society of America, and Liberman’s figures represent something like that the APA gets 12 times as many links as the LSA. On the one hand, this doesn’t surprise me, since the number of psychologists out there far outnumbers the number of linguists, and because APA has involvement in a number of other fields as well (i.e., we use APA style in lots of our journals). But, it made me add the link to my sidebar, which I shamefully hadn’t done before (probably because - honestly - LSA’s website isn’t very useful for those who don’t have business to conduct there), and it also made me think that I’d love to have a little button (like my Creative Commons or Technorati button) that stands for the professional organizations I’m a member of. I don’t even think that AoIR has one of these, but with the number of AoIR bloggers out there, it sure should. I don’t know how much publicity this would actually bring to the organizations, but I’d be pretty proud to show my affiliation in this way, and possibly provide some traffic to them. (FWIW, Language Log doesn’t even permalink to LSA [not that I can tell, anyway]. This seems problematic; if the most-read linguistics blog doesn’t link to the linguistics professional organization, who will?!) Does anyone know of any organizations who have something like this?

I very much wish that this had been an April Fool’s story (it was sent to me yesterday [hat tip/Rizwan] but published the 31st).