http://polyglotconspiracy.net which is to be master? Sun, 29 Jun 2008 21:01:49 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Summertime! Summertime! Summertime! OK, so there's not much going on in PC-land, other than dodging some awesome Michigan storms, trying to get work done on two papers (which I've not *completely* failed at), and spending a lot of time reading on the internets. Which leads me to a few ... http://polyglotconspiracy.net/index.php/archives/2008/06/29/maureen-dowd-is-bad-for-you-and-me-and-other-dispatches-from-summer/ Really, really mainstream: Well, sort of - for me the expression "X [heart] Y" seems gendered, so that it connotes femaleness, but in a way similar to how lots of "netspeak"-y things in general connote femaleness because standard US language ideologies link emotive language/text with femaleness (i.e. "omg i'm soooooo excited lol!!!!!!!" couldn't ... http://polyglotconspiracy.net/index.php/archives/2008/06/15/heart-goes-mainstream-sort-of/ Oh boy, I love catching typos right before they get corrected. Especially in papers like the NYT. Especially when they are typos that might be construed as insidious rather than innocuous, Freudian-like rather than Cupertino-like, given the media-cultural climate that the story the typo is in is in (! whoah! ... http://polyglotconspiracy.net/index.php/archives/2008/06/08/mr-her/ I'm not sure if there's discourse in the box or if the sign is a contemporary commentary on itself, kind of "This is not a pipe" style, but this box of discourse is sitting in our department...awesome. http://polyglotconspiracy.net/index.php/archives/2008/06/02/box-of-discourse/ English is totally a null subject language. http://polyglotconspiracy.net/index.php/archives/2008/05/29/will-now/ This is a pretty funny (and seemingly accurate, from where I sit anyway) characterization of the current social network site scene:I am totally of the cohort that used Friendster obsessively for about 2 years while exploring what it meant to be on a social network site, then used Myspace obsessively ... http://polyglotconspiracy.net/index.php/archives/2008/05/20/skank-power/ Despite Chris Matthews' apparently being a total sexist and racist) ass (I don't have TV so this is just read-say to me), he did do something impressive and stunning which you should see. See what media could be like? If the people who know their shit and are in positions ... http://polyglotconspiracy.net/index.php/archives/2008/05/16/this-is-amazing/ A while ago - before the presidential primary races really heated up - I wrote something that intimated a feeling I was getting about media coverage (as one genre of public discussion) of the primary candidates. Namely, that the coverage (and other public discussion) was often sexist, and that ... http://polyglotconspiracy.net/index.php/archives/2008/05/14/its-not-just-me/ 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 ... http://polyglotconspiracy.net/index.php/archives/2008/04/13/guys-and-anything/ 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 ... http://polyglotconspiracy.net/index.php/archives/2008/04/07/english-women-and-muffins/