polyglot conspiracy

Apropos of my last post, regarding the crazy web craziness surrounding an essay published online by danah boyd, comes this post from Anil Dash. It finally gets to the bottom of the mysterious “internet’s most annoying neologisms” poll, which got picked up in the online media as a “poll” despite not being a scientific or systematic “poll” at all - with no real source attributed, and no trace of the poll online. Dash explains it well, so you should just read it. I would like a word to describe this out-of-control media coverage of not-ready-for-prime-time information, and the resultant framing of the information as totally-ready-for-prime-time, scientific, or “published.” Send some my way, if you can think of any. (hat tip / Dan Prives + Casey O’Donnell via the AIR-list).

Of course I was interested in this “poll” anyway right off the bat, and were it legitimate data we could talk about what words people find irksome and why. But it’s still interesting as yet another strand in the people-hate-internet-language story, as well as the people-love-to-hate-language-under-pretenses-of-loving-it story.

It seems that my readership has plummeted lately due to my lack of posting. Bah! Oh well. I don’t do it for the fame, you see. Anyway, if you’re reading this - thanks for sticking with me while I struggle with how often to post and what to post and wondering why I don’t feel like posting as much as I used to do. I would point out that partially, this is not my fault: I have been loathe to type as much lately because I’m starting to have some pretty strong symptoms of carpal tunnel, and until I can deal with it in a serious way, I’m cutting down on my not-absolutely-necessary time using the keyboard.

I just went on a vacation to Lake Michigan, specifically the town of Ludington, and a couple of funny things popped up. One, there is a store there called Argue Communications. It sells all manner of cell pones, cable-getting devices, and whatnot. But its name is Argue, and its business is communications. Imagine?

Two, there is a mechanic there called B & M Transmission. If you do not see the hilarity in this name, dear reader, then I fear that I cannot help you find it. Note that there are actually lots of B & Ms, all over the country. On a similar theme, on the drive I saw a billboard for pencils where the slogan was “Turning No. 2 into No. 1!” Genius. Also a billboard for PoopyCredit.com, which is really just a clever marketing ploy based on a ridiculously juvenile domain name that redirects you to the “real” (I’m not sure how real it is, actually) website. But this made me think: is “poopy” an adjective that people up here use to mean “bad” or “crappy”? I recall my dance teacher, when I was growing up, once saying of another woman, “She’s just so…poopy,” meaning that she was dumpy-looking (my dance teacher was not a nice person). For me, this isn’t a real word that gets used in my lexicon; it’s a novelty word that’s pulled out every now and again for a cheap laugh.

My travels this summer have also taken me to a modern dance festival in Philadelphia, where I was reminded of how modern dancers have a rather strictly bounded set of linguistic practices keeping the community on track. But it’s not a set that’s strictly unique: they borrow terminology/concepts from literary theory (e.g. “structure reveals content”), feminist/postcolonial theory (e.g. “this is a gendered piece,” “i am exploring the struggle against modernity”), philosophy/religion (e.g. “it’s the Other that’s being tempted, yet it’s the Other that represent salvation from temptation”), poetry (e.g. “i’m getting a deep sense of loss from this piece…can you tell us where that emerges from?”), and other highbrow genres of academese. I hadn’t been in an environment with that kind of dancers in a really long time, and I had forgotten just how…um…esoteric? it all sounds at times. All of the pieces have to be about something; no one’s interested just in dance technique; and the vocabulary you use to describe your work is just as important as the vocabulary you use in your movement (no really; they refer to sets of movements as “vocabularies”). I think this could make for a very interesting ethnographic and sociolinguistic/DA study sometime, not least of all including the appropriation of some of the terminology from other disciplines and how they get interpreted.

Since I’ve been back I’ve just been getting ready to go to California to spend July at Stanford, for the LSA Summer Institute. Meanwhile, the past few days have been really interesting for people engaged with internet research, meme spreadery, or social network/ing sites. A few days ago danah boyd posted an essay to her blog regarding class and race distinctions as revealed by/replicated on Myspace and Facebook. It’s a messy essay, a collection of thoughts, really, to which she fully admitted when she posted it - she made very clear that it wasn’t a finished paper, it was preliminarily articulated, and she was posting it in hopes of starting a discussion about the topic and getting some constructive feedback.

What’s fascinating is the way her essay - and lots of vitriolic responses to it - have been spreading around the internet like wildfire. It somehow got picked up by the BBC, the Guardian, Time’s tech news blog, Salon, the Star-Ledger, and many others. And, most of them have been representing the essay as an actual “study,” as if boyd had sent out a press release with the results of a systematic study - which she didn’t do (she claims she sent it to the Assn of Internet Researchers list and a few colleagues [who are no doubt prominent in the tech world, but still]), and which it wasn’t (she takes pains to make this clear, in the essay). It’s inspired a ton of negative responses, both on her blog and in comment threads to other links to the piece. They accuse her of being racist, they call her a “little girl,” and they criticize her for being sloppy. There are three points I think are particularly interesting about the discourse unfolding from the barrage of attention she’s gotten.

1. It got me a little nervous about ever blogging preliminary thoughts about ongoing research. Nothing like this would ever happen to me, probably, because she has connections in the tech world and the academic world that I don’t have; she’s already well-known to media sources and does in some senses keep public, thereby inviting publicity. Still, it’s something to think about: if I ever wanted to put up something relatively provocative, in hopes of starting a conversation and better understanding how my research fits in with the public, and even a single newsmedia outlet picked up on it, how would they represent it? And what might the repercussions be of their misrepresentations of it, which I have no control over?

2. Many of the negative comments being thrown at boyd make a point of criticizing her typographical practices, and using this as a way to show how young/unsophisticated/unintelligent she is! She doesn’t capitalize her name (legally), and this gives people who are prone to easy, meaningless criticism an easy weapon with which to attack her credibility. Check out some of the comments on her blog (like here and here), and places like this blog, which says:

According to a project by tech researcher danah boyd, who is so down with dotcoms that she legally ee cumminized [sic] her name, Facebook is for college preps and MySpace is for Latin Kings, or at least economically depressed, goth-wearing, gang-banging, extreme bass-playing meth addicts.

“ee cummingization”! i love it.

3. Lots of reactions point to a very ambivalent public attitude toward academics. I’ll just reprint here what I wrote on boyd’s blog, because I’m lazy and my wrists hurt :-(

what’s really interesting to me about how this is unfolding, though, is the fascinating “class” (or whatever you want to call it - it’s somehow *related* to class, at any rate) dynamics playing out in comments both here on your blog and elsewhere online. this has mostly to do with people’s attitudes toward academics, or towards college education. i obviously know nothing about any of the people who’ve been leaving negative comments, but i’ve noticed that lots of them are using your academic credentials *against* you.

there’s an ideology being articulated a couple of different ways here, either: (1) she is just another privileged academic who thinks they know everything, when really they know nothing about the real world; academics are useless and their “research” does no one any good. [see comments by Dara, Alex U-A, and even Nina above* - i'm not sure how to interpret her comment other than that you're a useful, provocative researcher in a sea of useless, complacent ones] OR (2) if she’s an academic, she should know better than to let the world see something that’s not up to academic standards, and it was her responsibility to have facts and statistics and proofreading in place before going public. [equals: we trust academics, but she let us down with her sloppiness...equals: academics are ones we look to to help us understand society...equals: nominally opposite sentiment of (1)]

and there you have it, the double-edged sword of being a researcher/academic/ivorytowerresident. it *sucks* to see this so clearly coming out, and it sucks that it’s part of such hateful commentary spinning your way. i mean, your own self-positioning (referring to “the academics” as if you’re outside of them) is perhaps something to think about here, too. the way you wrote this particular essay, i guess you have to claim your credentials to establish some legitimacy (”i’ve been doing systematic ethnography; i’m a phd candidate!”), but you also have to temporarily suspend the standards that come along with that (”but these are just anecdotes; this comes from observation; my terms aren’t theoretical!”). so it’s sticky. i wonder how many of the negative interpretations are related to this positioning, though, more than the content of the essay.

also, i’ve chosen not to capitalize just to piss off everyone who’s bitching about your name being uncapitalized, particularly those who don’t even spell your name correctly when chastising you for said uncapitalization ;-)

That last part was just for fun.

*refer to comment thread.

I swear, the more I travel, the less well I can parse the constant drone of airport announcements over the loudspeaker.  Yesterday I got really fed up with the announcement prohibiting “unauthorized limousine providers” from soliciting in the airport.  All they say is something like, “Soliciting in the airport by unauthorized limousine providers is strictly prohibited.  If you are approached by an unauthorized driver, tell airport security officials immediately.”  This implies that there are actually *authorized* limousine providers, but it doesn’t tell you what counts as authorized and what doesn’t.  Do authorized ones carry a special badge given to them by the airport?  How many companies are authorized? Do authorized ones come inside at all, or do they just chill out in the loading zone?  What if someone claims they’re authorized, but they’re really not?  How will I know?!?!

My hometown might be about to get a little more famous. Springfields all across the country are competing to host the The Simpsons Movie premiere - including Springfield, Missouri, where I grew up. Now, I find this rather funny:

Many have taken this competition to mean the Springfield of the Simpsons will be selected. However, according to 20th Century Fox representatives, the competition is to honor the Springfield with the most Simpsons spirit. They appear to have no interest in removing the shroud of mystery surrounding the show’s true hometown.

The most “Simpsons spirit”? So basically the towns are competing for which one iconically represents the most simultaneously mundane and wacky American residential setting. What an honor!

You can vote for the Springfield of your choice, after watching their entry videos, here. If Missouri wins, it’ll be at least the second potentially high-visibility movie premiere the city has hosted: in 1998, hometown golden boy Brad Pitt brought Meet Joe Black to a charity premiere. (I was lucky enough to Meet Brad Pitt at such event, being editor of the Kickapoo Prairie News at the time.) Note that the Simpsons movie will undoubtedly be about 20 times better than Meet Joe Black (really–that movie was *awful*).

I was browsing through my bookmarks to get up-to-date with my, um, bookmarks, and I came across Mark Liberman’s over-a-month-old WTF post at Language Log regarding this comic strip:

I think I bookmarked this because I didn’t understand what Liberman wasn’t understanding, if that makes any sense. He expresses befuddlement which seems to arise from a) not understanding why “LOL” is considered something different from regular old slang, b) not understanding why “LOL” and the like are considered a new language instead of just a new word, and c) believing that the strip fails to display either “common sense” or “intellect.” (Unless his last statement there is ironic? In which case forget everything I’m about to say?)

What is Liberman seeing in this that’s there to be gotten but that he doesn’t get, that I’m not seeing and thereby not not getting? As he reprints from reader John Cowan, this seems like “the same old same old ‘degenerate youth’ business. No special explanation needed.” I think Cowan’s comment adequately addresses (a) noted above. To really get at (b), you have to note that LOL, BRB, WTF, and so forth are talked about in public discourse as part of the whole Netspeak (by that or any other name) thing, which many people - many people - perceive as being its own language, or at least its own very distinctive dialect (and let’s not forget how the public, and often linguists too, play fast and loose with these terms language/dialect/accent/slang/jargon/argot/etc). Being primarily associated with the internet, they are actively seen as and metadiscursively constructed as being altogether different from abbreviations/initialisms emerging from other discourse settings; it’s often forgotten that English speakers have a rich history with acronyms and abbreviations. Lots of people don’t even know that AWOL and FUBAR and SNAFU and RADAR are acronyms!

To really get at (c), I think you just need to recognize that the strip is kind of funny ’cause it’s true: we’re always longing for the good ol’ days of language, and lots of adults feel lost in the swarm of unknown usages they see online (though lots, of course, do not - and lots of kids probably feel lost in various online settings as well). Witness the fear here, for instance. It may not accord with a linguist’s reality (maybe LOL isn’t part of a new language), but it accords with the reality that lots of internet users, as well as non-users, perceive.

I was listening to On Point the other day, wherein host Tom Ashbrook was talking with columnist Clarence Page and news analyst Jack Beatty. At one point when Tom was directing a question to Clarence, he accidentally called him “Clarence Thomas.” Clarence himself had to correct Tom, to which Tom replied something like, “Oh I’m sorry; the Supreme Court’s been on my mind. Anyway, I always get the ‘Ashcroft’ confusion.” To which Jack said, “Yeah, and I’m always ‘Warren Beatty.’” This was one of the most pleasurable radio-listening experiences I had had in a long time, because you don’t often find all three discussants commiserating over something so trivial as how people mistake their names for names of more famous people. Anyway, is there a name for the slip-up that specifically confuses people’s names? It’s not a spoonerism, and it’s not an eggcorn [Is it just me, or might the eggcorn entry break Wikipedia's no neologisms rule? --PC] I don’t know much about processing errors or vocabulary retrieval, particularly when it’s tied to something like a proper referential name rather than a more typical lexical item that doesn’t have direct reference - does name retrieval require more working memory?

Also, in the ongoing annals of the in/effability of text, I have two recent observations. One is that several of my friends have lately been lamenting how there’s not really a way to reproduce the phrase teh _____ (as in, teh lame or teh suck), because if you try to say teh out loud, you’ll probably just get a confused look because [tÉ›] doesn’t really get you anywhere in English. This tells me that people do deposit these online-originating things into their big mental lexicon to be ready for general use, rather than compartmentalizing the terms they see online into some text-only sphere of linguistic practice (this is an exaggeration of the phenomenon, but gets you the point).

The other observation is that yesterday one of my friends was delving into the world of lolcats for the first time, and he was reading aloud several of the postcards he came across. From the other room, I heard him say “blah blah blah editionz.” This caught my ear because I knew it had to be spelled with the stylized Z. But how could I tell it was editionz, not editions? Either way it should be said something like [?d????nz], since edition already has the [z] plural allomorph. But I knew it had the Z because he actually said [?d????nz:], with a geminated [z]. Might geminated consonants someday be distinctive in English, stylistically at least, because of this trend? Another example I can think of is hot as either [h?t] or [h??t] {unreleased [t]} but hott(t) as [h?t:] or [h?t]. I mean, what’s funny about the -z spelling is that it signals phonetically what the -s spelling already signals phonetically, but it *means* something different.

Also, when I brought up this distinction to my friends, they didn’t get it - they basically swore that editions is [?d????ns] and editionz is [?d????nz]. Of course, this is a misperception based on orthography, and it demonstrates that people aren’t always just using the -z spelling because it’s phonetically more accurate than the -s spelling; they’re often using the -z spelling simply because it’s NOT the -s spelling.