Sociolinguistics Beep Boop Bop

Hello, I am late to the blog party. Here are some memes to hopefully express my current state of mental stability. 

   

Sociolinguistics

Language differences are sometimes easily noticeable and can be a key to understanding a person and how they live or how they were raised. I read an article called "The Need for New Approaches To Social Class Analysis In Sociolinguistics" that's about the approaches to research within sociolinguistics and thought it would help me find a new perspective on how people interact with each other and its relation to language. Basically, the article focuses on the importance of social class, ethnicity, and network. Another important factor within this article is their weight of importance on the socio side of linguistics and that made me think of a sociology project I had to complete this semester that is focused on the relationships between students and professors across the departments within Clarion University. I had used participation observation as a method of conducting my research for that project. This brought me to make a connection of networking that was one of the key factors within the article. I noticed through my observations within the classrooms that there are social structures within the students and they seem to be connected by their goals in that class. Those who seem to have a strategy of when participation would help them most sat with those who had a similar technique. I think this relates to how humans process language and learn from it, but also has shown me that within the student body there were little groupings based on how they learn. I noticed that these groups were also linked by the way they spoke based on when the professor was around or not. There were also differences in types of mannerisms or jokes being said within the classroom. I find networking to be a very important skill set and can be varied based on how a person was raised and with the inequality within America, there can be disadvantages that can lead to variations with how people speak when they are networking.   

 -Zoe Stone

http://web.stanford.edu/~eckert/Institute2015/Readings/Rickford1986.pdf   -  Article Link

Proceedings of our Last Meeting

Well, our blog has run its course—and performed its primary function, which was to keep us all engaged and talking to each other about the topics and ideas of this class in "American Voices." I am so pleased with the way all of you rose to this very unexpected occasion and together created such an interesting conversation about language and dialect in the time of quarantine.

For those of you who haven't been able to zoom in, last Wednesday we had our final "meeting"—party, really, because all we did was shoot the breeze, crack some jokes, and toast the future, whatever it may bring.

Oh, and play some music. Zoom doesn't permit overlapping audio feeds, so jamming was a complete non-starter. So we took turns. I played a couple, then Nate played one, then Eli—well, I think Eli was about to play something, but then we fell down a rabbit hole and forgot that was ever going to happen. (Sorry, Eli!)

Nate's tune was a cover of Ben King's "Stand By Me". Here's a cool version of it (although I feel I must point out that any "standing by" now needs to be at a safe distance of six feet):

These were my tunes, plus a third one that I meant to play but forgot:


https://open.spotify.com/artist/4fM1RtB7pgnhic6phSkanx

https://open.spotify.com/artist/1CPwHx5lgVxv0rfcp7UXLx

 

https://open.spotify.com/artist/0hh1N707d2q6xRvhnvraIK     

I literally have no idea what Eli was going to play, so here's my best guess as to what it might have been...

Bye folks, it's been swell. I can't tell you how much I've enjoyed our little time together. Stay well, stay home, stay sane, and we'll all meet again on the other side of Covid-19!

Marine Vocabulary Lesson

The other day I was talking to a friend of mine who is in the Marines. I was joking about how I don’t know what he’s talking about half the time when he uses their lingo/slang- and then I remembered this class and realized, hey, I can use that! So I got him to define a few terms for me, and now I will share them with you: slang apparently used by Marines, as informally defined for me by my friend Mark.

1. Grunt: “Ground Unit Not Trained,” or “musclehead” infantrymen.
2. POG: “Person Other than Grunt.” An insulting term which implies you aren’t a “real” Marine if you aren’t infantry.
3. Blue Falcon: That one guy that screws everyone else over; someone who really needs to get their act together.
4. Boot: Someone fresh out of boot camp, especially one who flaunts the fact that they’re a Marine now and gives you secondhand embarrassment.
5. Skate: A verb; to get the easiest job where you have to do minimal work.
6. Barney style: Instructions given in words even a toddler could understand.
7. Terminal lance: I quote, “the many, many lance corporals who have given up on life, and are just waiting out the rest of their enlistment in agony so they can get out.”
8. Ninja punch: NJP, Non-Judicial Punishment. Mark says this is his favorite term, and is basically criminal charges without a trial and with its own punishment system, used when someone does something stupid but not warranting an actual trial.

Anyone else never heard of most of these before? Or, alternatively, have others to share?

"He" to "he/she" to "they" to...?

One of the passages that interested me in our textbook was the section on the gradual shift away from using masculine words as generic forms. For a long time, it was commonly accepted practice to use “man” as synonymous with “humankind,” to use the pronoun “he” by default when referring to an unknown individual, and so on. This only changed around the 1970s, prompted by the second wave of feminism. Generic “he,” and considering men the default in general, started to fall out of favor. Today, the generic “he” seems old-fashioned, and it’s more common to see “he or she,” “he/she,” “(s)he” or some other variation on including both male and female pronouns. Another option, which I haven’t seen as frequently, is to alternate the pronouns used for the unknown or hypothetical person every time you start a new sentence.

Even more recently, though, singular “they” has been making a comeback- probably helped along by many people (including myself!) using it as a personal pronoun. The advantages of “they” in place of “he/she” are greater inclusivity, eliminating the need for one pronoun or the other to come first, and generally being less clunky to write, read, and say. However, it also has its disadvantages, such as the possibility of confusion if a single unknown person is referred to with “they” in the same passage where a group of people is also referred to with “they.” This can be avoided with careful enough phrasing, but having to phrase things carefully to avoid pronoun confusion can get annoying.

So, after reading about how quickly the generic “he” became “he or she,” and knowing that “he or she” now seems to be turning into singular “they,” I’ve been wondering: is there going to be another shift? If we move away from “they,” where will we go next? Or do you think we’ll be sticking with it for a while, until it’s swept away in some big social movement? I don’t know if anyone is still looking at this blog, since the semester is over, but if anyone does read this, I’d like to hear your thoughts!