14 - Word Jail

407 turns

• linkIAN CUSHING - I love coming onto podcasts and talking about this stuff, and obviously I do lots of research and that, but yeah…really, it really gets people kind of pissed off.LAUGHS
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, yeah.I asked some friends and they were like:oh, you're recording again tomorrow.What are you talking about?And I was like:oh, banning words.And everyone was like:uh huh!LAUGHTER
• linkDaniel Midgley - “Sounds good to me!I'm on board.I hate IRREGARDLESS.”
• linkINTRO MUSIC
• linkDaniel Midgley - Hello, and welcome to this episode of Because Language, a show about linguistics, the science of language.My name is Daniel Midgley, and with me is globetrotter and human, Hedvig Skirgård.Hi, Hedvig.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Hello!I have been in two countries recently, that isn't the one I live in.It's very weird at this time, but exciting.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Would you like to explain yourself?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I have been in Denmark for a weekend to get married, and then in Sweden very briefly.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Wow, congratulations!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Thank you.
• linkDaniel Midgley - This is a very exciting time, you know, between the Ph.D.and getting married, you're like a whole new person from when I first knew you.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, well, I didn't change my last name.So I'm still the same.You can join, you can all join my mom's campaign in trying and convince Ste to change to my name if you want.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I am fully on board.I did not change my name when I got married.I think maybe you should cool it on the life milestones for a little while.Just, you know.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.I agree.I agree.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Also with us is Dr Ian Cushing of Brunel University, London.Hey, Ian.
• linkIAN - Hello, hi.Thanks for having me.
• linkDaniel Midgley - It is a pleasure.Tell us a little bit about what you do.You're kind of in what used to be my field, which is educational…linguistics and education's kind of the merger of those two, is that right?
• linkIAN - Yeah, that's right.So I'm a lecturer in education in a Department of Education at Brunel.And yeah, I guess if I had to put myself into a category, then I would probably call myself probably an educational sociolinguist, which…
• linkDaniel Midgley - Wow.
• linkIAN - …I'm not sure if that's even an accepted category within linguistics, but I'm just going use it anyway.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh, it's gotta be.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I'm going to allow it.
• linkIAN - Thank you.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Linguistics is diverse, and I mean that in lots of ways.
• linkIAN - Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Let's get to the news.First up, Amazon's Swedish site has launched.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yes.Yes.Very sort of conflicted emotions about this one, hey?For those who might not be aware Amazon ships to a lot of places, but then they have sort of what they call like localised web shops.So this is Amazon.de for example, for Germany and .co.uk, for Britain and .com for America, because you guys are the default.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Because America gets to be com.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.You get to be com.And for a very long time, if you wanted to order something from Amazon to Sweden, you would scour the British and the German one and sort of figure out what you could ship to Sweden.For example, my brother, for interesting reasons, is really into being a very good host.So he wanted to have takeaway mugs for his guests.He wants to make takeaway coffee for his cleaner.So I scoured Amazon because I thought there must be some, like, compostable takeaway cups.I wanted to send him something that's environmentally nice.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah, yeah.Okay, cool.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - After being disappointed going to like regular websites, I finally succumbed and went to Amazon in Germany and sent them to my brother.That's usually how you do things.You first try and avoid Amazon, then for some reason you can't, and then you have to go through the British and the German one, and then you after hours
• linkDaniel Midgley - On the other hand, instead of getting paper cups, he could have gone to our Because Language shop on Redbubble and gotten a ton of mugs at low low prices with lots and lots of interesting linguistic designs.Just in time for the holidays!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - That's true.Amazing, Daniel!
• linkDaniel Midgley - I"m sorry.Anyway!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Anyway, actually I might do that, I might just send him a bunch.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Okay.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - But now Amazon has opened a Swedish web shop, so you can go to Amazon.se and you can shop things on this localised version.However, the launch had a bunch of hiccups.First, just a weird one:for some reason when you were sort of scrolling through a little drop down menu to get to the Swedish one, the flag that represented Sweden was not the Swedish flag.Do you guys want to guess what it was instead?
• linkDaniel Midgley - I know this one.
• linkIAN - Oh, no idea.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - It's a very weird one.It was in Argentinaaɹgintina
• linkDaniel Midgley - I think.Yeah.The Argentineaɹd͡ʒəntainflag…Argentineaɹd͡ʒəntin?Argentineaɹd͡ʒəntain.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh, wow.Or Argentinianaɹgintɪnɪan
• linkDaniel Midgley - I'm enjoying your G, actually.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Welcome.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Anyway, I've…I have no idea why the…why that happened.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - That one is a weird one.So there's a number of weird things that happen.Some of them I've understood why they've happened because they're obvious mistranslations from…they just not employed a human translator.They have just done like Google Translate on everything essentially.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Always a good move when you're launching an international site.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, some of these areas are quite clear.I can tell what's going on.So the most jarring, but unfortunately, the most understandable one has to do with the thing in English, which you call…the thing you put in canola oil.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Oh, dear, I've never understood this.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Which is…Yeah, so.So the plant in Swedish and most European languages is rapsræpsor something like this, and in English the technical name for the plant is rapeɹeipand rapeseed oil.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I'm so glad they changed it to canola.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, this has to do with Canada?I believe Canadian oil is imported to America from Canada.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Really?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, I think so.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Googling!TYPINGCa-no-la
• linkDaniel Midgley - Oh, you know what?I want that to be true.So I'm going to believe it.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Uh, yeah, it might not be true.Let's pretend it's true!Let's pretend we live in a better world where that's true.
• linkDaniel Midgley - It's because it's in cans.Cans.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh, I see.
• linkDaniel Midgley - No, no.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - But there are a number of objects which have to do with rapeseed flowers and things, like they've been marketing a jigsaw puzzle with a field of rapeseed flowers.And that one just says the word for RAPE in Swedish, which is våldtäkt, which, yeah, it's not great.There's been problems with ROOSTER and COCK and genitals.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I noticed that.I noticed a couple of crochet roosters.They were hand-knitted cocks.I also like the ones about death, for example, Death Star from Star Wars, apparently a Lego.I don't know what it is, but you can buy a Death Star from Star Wars.But it was it was död stjärna.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - But that makes sense.
• linkDaniel Midgley - The dead star.But a dead star is not quite the same as the Death Star.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - No, no, no.That's a compound.That's what we call it.DödStjärna.
• linkDaniel Midgley - It really is?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I didn't see this one, hey?I'm going to look this up.If you make the space between it, then it sounds like dead star.If you have a space between Death and Star, then it means Dead Star.But if you write it as one word, then it does mean Death Star, like the thing.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Spaces matter.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Spaces matter.And this is the number one language police pet peeve everyone has, is where to put spaces.Because the awful English is making people put spaces in compounds and it's making things weird.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Is Star Wars one word if it's the movie?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - It's Stjärnornaskrig.Yeah, that's one word.Yeah, but I mean, we don't ever say that.You say Star Wars.But there's a weird one here that I don't really fully understand, and I put out to my friends on Facebook, my Swedish friends to try and understand.There's a silicon mould that you can use for baking for, like, moulding chocolate.And it says you can use it for bread, muffin, cheesecake, soap, fecesLAUGHTERand geesewater.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Sorry, did you say geesewater?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Well, it's gåsvatten, yeah, geese or goose water
• linkDaniel Midgley - Well, if you put a lot of water in there, maybe you could float some very tiny geese?Or maybe some hand-knitted cocks.You know.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - It's a wide world with many interests.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.I really don't know, if any of our listeners have any explanation.So it looks like it's truffle to feces, ganache to geese water.If anyone knows how that became that, I would love to hear it.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Hmm.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Anyway, a bit of a botched launch.Everyone's having a lot of fun at it.People are probably still going to use it because, especially now, internet shopping is very popular.It's not going to decrease being popular.And often for a lot of things, Amazon is the one sort of place people can go for things.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Could it be a secret strategy to drive Swedish traffic?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh, yeah, I saw that theory.Because everyone's talking about this.We are talking about this.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I guess we are.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.Yeah, I guess it works because they don't need you to like them.They just need you to know they exist in Sweden now, right?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - They know that they're going to get traffic if it exists.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Ironically, they would have been happy with English.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Okay, well, hopefully a better launch next time.Thanks, Amazon.Let's go to our next item.What's…what do we know about coal mining in Australia?Actually, Ian, what's the situation in London right now?Is there a lot of interest in renewables?Because I'm kind of a renewables guy.
• linkIAN - Yeah, definitely.I mean, it's definitely circulating much more.It's definitely a much more popular form of fuel, of course.Yeah.London has a ban on coal.You can't have a coal fire, for example, in your house because of the smoke and the pollution, et cetera.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Well, this story was suggested to us by Stig over there in South Australia— hey, Stig. There's a company called Adani. It's from India. It's an Indian company. They've been pouring a lot of money into political pockets, just like basically everyone in the mining sector has. And in gratitude, they got permission from the government of Queensland to open a new coal mine, a brand new coal mine —like we need more of them, right?— to export coal to India, despite the fact that coal is contributing to pollution and climate change, that renewables are cheaper and cleaner, and not only that, just for the bonus, the mine will hasten the degradation of the Great Barrier Reef, which is sitting right up against it.They're planning to start exports next year.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Which is quite well with Australia and the Australian government's new policy, which is to really, really fuel a lot of money into coal.Despite what I heard on an interview on the Signal, despite a lot of energy companies and Australian's wishes, they would like to do whatever they want with the money, but they've been asked to specifically focus on coal.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Madness.Well, Adani has decided that it's a good time to change their name, seeing as their brand is so toxic.So they have changed their name from Adani to Bravus.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Like the Iron Bank??
• linkDaniel Midgley - Like what?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - In Game of Thrones there's a place called Bravos, I believe?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Oh, you know, I, I do not know anything about Game of Thrones, and I'm kind of glad that they borked the eighth season, because now I know that there's no point in getting into it now.And it's just one more thing I don't have to worry about.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Fair enough, okay, yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - It's like, I know that this is leading to nothing, so awesome.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - It's really true that the name Adani, Ian, since you didn't even know about it.You would know this Adani.The word is just if you hear it, if you've lived in Australia, it's just immediately signifies evil.LAUGHTERThe name is just…Yeah, this is an understandable move.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah.#StopAdani is like a very famous hashtag in Australia.It's all over signs at protests.Well, they chose this word.In the words of chief executive David Boshoff, "It was the medieval Latin word for COURAGEOUS." He told the Australian Financial Review that "it took a lot of courage to get where we are and we will stand up for what we believe in." Apparently, they believe in…mining coal.It turns out that Bravus does not mean courageous, doesn't mean what they thought it did.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Does it mean short?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Short?How did you get to short?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Brevity.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Mmm, okay, Ian your guess?
• linkIAN - Yeah, similar to Hedvig.Short, slimmed down maybe?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Hmm.Okay, here's where our word BRAVE comes from.It originally comes from…Okay, so how do I tell the story, from the beginning or from the end?LAUGHTERIt comes from, it comes from Middle French BRAVA which means SPLENDID or VALIANT, and the Italian version is BRAVE or BOLD.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh, as in "bravo!" like in Italian?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Exactly.But if you take it much farther, you get sort of like WILD or SAVAGE.And the idea is that it might have come from medieval Latin "bravus", meaning a cut throat or a villain.If we take it back even farther, it comes from Latin "pravus", which means crooked or depraved.And…
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yes, I see.
• linkDaniel Midgley - It never meant, in classical Latin or medieval Latin, it never meant brave.It always meant, you know, rather…rather dodgy.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Question is if this matters, because if they say…if they have a marketing campaign saying they chose Bravus because they think it means BRAVE, and if a lot of people just use folk etymology and think that's true, then…you know…
• linkDaniel Midgley - It doesn't really matter.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - It doesn't.Truth doesn't matter in that case, unfortunately.I'm sorry.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Now, I will have you know that Joe Biden did win the election.Truth matters again.So I'm just, you know, going to…
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh, that's how we know.LAUGHTER
• linkDaniel Midgley - But I guess I'll have more to say about that a little bit later.No, I think you're right.I think that folk etymology will do its work.What do you, what do you think, Ian?Is Hedvig on to something?
• linkIAN - Yeah, I mean, it's guess it demonstrates why linguistics isLAUGHTERis needed a bit more.
• linkDaniel Midgley - That's right.This is why you employ humanities majors, right?
• linkIAN - Yeah, exactly.
• linkDaniel Midgley - No, I think you could be right though, Hedvig.I think maybe this will only matter to classicists.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I know, I'm sorry, I'm cynical.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Okay, well, maybe we'll have good news for this next story…Oh no.This next story is bad news too.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh, yeah.I should stop looking at the run sheet, because I saw that it was bad news.I'm removing myself from the run sheet.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Nooo.You want to take me through it, or do you want me to do the storytelling?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh, okay.Clicking back to the run sheet!So this next story is about language requirements at universities.So there are many degrees which requires that you learn another language.I'm guessing besides linguistics, this might be political science??
• linkDaniel Midgley - Actually, in this case, we're talking about Princeton and it's just being an undergrad generally.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh, okay, great!They all have to do one.I had to do one in my linguistics undergrad.I had to do not only a European language— I continued my French studies —but I also had to do a non Indo-European language.But I managed to convince them Hindi was weird enough.Yes!
• linkDaniel Midgley - Oh, my gosh.Well, I managed to convince them that Russian was weird enough, so yeah.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh, really?Well, that's less…Okay.Yeah, depending on…
• linkDaniel Midgley - I mean, it's Slavic.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - What I would liked to have done and which I think would have been available to me was to fill that language requirement if I wanted to, with Swedish Sign Language.I actually did take an evening class in it because our departments were merged with sign language linguistics, which is great.But here at Princeton, our news item here is that it is not the case that you can take American Sign Language at Princeton and fulfill your language requirement, because it doesn't qualify.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Argghhh.This is an article from first year student, Genrietta Churbanova in the pages of The Daily Princetonian, here's the title, "So Long As ASL Does Not Fulfill Language Requirement, Princeton Perpetuates Linguistic Ableism." How about that?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - And also, they're just being boring.Like, just let people do more interesting stuff.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Any guesses on why ASL wouldn't count?
• linkIAN - I don't know the specifics about this story, but I mean, this is just a quite concrete illustration of how signed languages are fairly systematically marginalised by linguistics itself as a discipline, I think as well.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Indeed.
• linkIAN - No idea as to why this is why this wouldn't count as such, and I use the word "count" inverted commas here, but yeah, I mean, it absolutely does perpetuate this idea of ableism.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Is it that they think there's not enough users?
• linkDaniel Midgley - I'm not sure.There are other languages that that do qualify, like Arabic, Korean, Hebrew…
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Pretty huge populations, all of those.
• linkIAN - Is it something to do with the way that they are assessing so-called language competency?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Our friend Gail on Facebook says that she thinks that's the case.She says, "it's not right, but because it is, you know, different to teach, different to grade, like there's no oral component, even though, yeah, we know that the ASL does have what we would call phonology — the way you move your hands and so on, and the way you move your parts of your body.Different to teach, different to grade and would take money from already established programs.Ha ha.It is not done widely." That's Gail's take, which I thought was a good take.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - It's probably true.
• linkDaniel Midgley - There's a good deal of inertia.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.And very brief of this.Did you say it was a first year student at Princeton who wrote in their newspaper?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - That's…good job!
• linkIAN - Yeah, yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah, I'm here for that.What I find especially galling is that ASL doesn't fulfill the language requirement, but…
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah…?
• linkDaniel Midgley - …Latin does.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, I took Latin in school.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah, me too.Latin's awesome!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Latin is awesome.And Latin is…I mean it is true that, you know, I can't have conversations in it, but um…learning linguistics…it has been helpful to know Latin.And my mom actually knows some Latin and Greek because she's a nurse.In medical literature, it's very helpful to know if you want to learn all the names of all the muscles in the body.It's very helpful to know some basic Latin and Greek terminology.
• linkDaniel Midgley - You bet.Love it.Love Latin.However, I will say that it is indicative, once again, of considerations of prestige and history and power that Latin is considered, Latin passes as a language.but American Sign LANGUAGE…American Sign LANGUAGE doesn't count for the language requirement, even though it's got language in its name.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Booo!
• linkDaniel Midgley - Boo, Princeton, and boo lots of other colleges, as well.So we should ask Princeton about this.I'm going to, I'm going to write a letter and say, "Hey, Princeton, what's up?And we will have that on our Facebook and Twitter.We are @becauselangpod on those places.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - That's a good idea.
• linkDaniel Midgley - And finally, for some good news, and I first noticed this from Jesse Sheidlower, there's a new edition of the Historical Thesaurus of English.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oooh
• linkDaniel Midgley - Now online courtesy of the University of Glasgow.It's been a fantastic tool for a long time, but they've got a new edition.It's actually a proper new edition because they've included lots of new information.It's a big update.They've also included timelines for the individual words.So let me just…let me just tell you what this is about.I'm going to the Historical Thesaurus right now, and I'm going to have you two pick for me what I should be looking up.Okay, so I'm going to this is really easy to remember because it's a historical thesaurus, right?H-T dot A-C dot U-K (ht.ac.uk), if you can remember those six letters, H-T-A-C-U-K, then you can go there.Okay, and I start at the top and I've got the world, the mind or society.Go ahead.Which one should I do?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Ian, what do you think?
• linkIAN - Yeah, let's go for mind.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Okay, opening up mind.I now have more choices.I'm going to dig in a level, I'm going to choose three;goodness and badness, possession, or language.There are lots more.
• linkIAN - Ooh, let's go for language.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Language it is.Okay, and now…ooh, okay, I'm going to choose this one.This one's malediction and oaths.Okay, so I'm looking up the oaths category.Oh, here are the different kinds.There are 10 words here:Oath, hunting oath, exorcism, rapper – that's dialectical from 1678 to 1734, so I don't think that's the rapper that we know.Oathlet and rounder.Wow.And for every one of these words, it's got like a timeline for when it was popular.Hmm.Oaths other than religious or obscene.Oh, here we go.FISH FACE from 1625.PORKLING…What, TEG?What is TEG?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - What is TEG?
• linkDaniel Midgley - I don't know, but it looks like it's from about 1529.I need to get a definition on this one.So here we go.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Fun trivia:besides me becoming a wife, which is very interesting…
• linkDaniel Midgley - That is weird.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Ste has now become my mother's oath-son in Swedish.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Oath-son?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.Because he's her son by oath.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Right.Oh, of course.Of course he is.Wow.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - You guys do in-law.We do oath, or yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Oh, right, okay.Which avoids that whole pluralisation problem.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yep.
• linkDaniel Midgley - A TEG is a sheep in its second year, but apparently it counted for some kind of insult back in 1529, approximately.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - We have that, we have that for, like, a female sheep can be an insult.
• linkDaniel Midgley - What?!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Sladdertacka.Means like gossip ewe…as in the sheep word!I can't do that properly.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah, so it's fun to look up a category and see not only what are synonyms for that, but when approximately those synonyms were popular.I love looking up DRUNK.DRUNK is fun because then you get words like TEMULANT and POTTABLE and crap…What is the word?Oh yeah, CRAPULENT.Oh, yes, I'm feeling a bit crapulant.Words that need to come back.
• linkDaniel Midgley - TRANSITIONAL MUSIC
• linkDaniel Midgley - We are here with Dr Ian Cushing of Brunel University, London.Hey, Ian.
• linkIAN - Hi.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Thanks for joining us.
• linkIAN - Nice to be here.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I noticed some work that you've been doing.I thought it was good.It spoke to my interests for a couple of reasons.Number one, I have taught educational linguistics, and this is about the kinds of language ideologies that are going about in schools.
• linkIAN - Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - But also when I talk about this kind of stuff, people on the…I do another gig on the ABC Radio Perth, it's called the Speakeasy.And when I talk about this stuff, people lose their minds.LAUGHTERThey think that I'm mad, because I'm talking about something that most linguists I think agree with and some educators agree with.
• linkIAN - Sure.
• linkDaniel Midgley - And the general public is just not on board.So tell us about what you've been doing with education in schools.
• linkIAN - Okay.So, I'm running a project which is all about, as you say, language ideology.So, kind of the big ideas about language which circulate in schools.And in particular, my work is about how language ideologies get transformed into language policies.And language policies taken to mean various curriculum documents, language tests, signs and posters placed on classroom walls, certain pedagogies.Anything concrete about language that is kind of underpinned by a language ideology.
• linkIAN - And in particular, I'm looking at those language policies in schools which are fairly prevalent in the UK at the moment, which seek to quite uncritically champion standardised forms over non-standardised forms.So often these policies will involve the kind of fairly blanket imposition or requirement for students and teachers to speak in a certain way.And very generally, that certain way is so-called Standard English.And so, I mean, probably reading a couple of examples of some of the school policies that I've been looking at will give an example of what I mean.So a paper that I published recently begins with these extracts, which are taken from a school policy which says, "Teachers must model accurate talk by addressing grammatical errors, and teachers must model competent speech and show students the difference between clarity and slang." And then the policy goes on to say, "The way that people speak to each other and to staff denotes their character."
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh, wow!
• linkDaniel Midgley - Gosh.
• linkIAN - Yeah."We expect people to speak in full sentences and to speak in Standard English.The use of slang will not be tolerated."
• linkDaniel Midgley - Oh, man.So they're basically trying to ban slang, and enforce Standard English…Standardised English.There were a couple of things that you just read that kind of got me thinking there.I mean, schools are encouraged to show students the difference between clarity…
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - And slang.Slang can be very clear.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Perfectly clear.Yeah.
• linkIAN - So the real kind of offsetting here between very socially constructed notions of what counts as "proper" or "correct", versus things which don't count as "proper" or "correct", and slang and non-Standard English are obviously getting framed here as a variety of the language that isn't deemed to be acceptable or appropriate within school.And so these policies target teachers, but also target both teachers and students.Because the teachers themselves are positioned here as kind of authorities of the language and as kind of standard language role models, who are given this moral and professional duty to champion Standard English, but also to police and regulate other people's language as well.So the policies target kind of everybody in school.
• linkDaniel Midgley - How does that policing play out?Like, what kind of stuff are teachers doing to police student language?
• linkIAN - Yeah, I mean, that's a good question.So obviously it's important to realise that written policies don't automatically translate into classroom practice.You know, a policy is one thing, it doesn't necessarily mean that the teachers are following these policies word by word.And indeed, the policies represent a very, quite punitive and quite extreme attempt by management typically in school, to try and impose language practices in schools.
• linkIAN - So part of the research that I've been doing, as well as also been spending some time in schools, and actually looking at how teachers enact these policies.And what tends to happen is that in a lot of schools– and it's important to realise that these policies aren't characteristic of every single school, of course –but in schools that have a lot of these policies, we see classroom discourse or natural classroom interaction that kind of gets peppered with quite micro-level language policing.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Ugh.
• linkIAN - So if a student uses non-standard, let's say, a non-standard verb construction like "we was going", rather than "we were going", I've seen a lot of evidence of teachers…um, yeah, instructing students and picking students up on these so-called "errors".And either waiting for the student to kind of correct themselves, because the student knows that they've done something wrong in accordance with these policies, or the teacher very explicitly asking students to repeat themselves in Standard English.
• linkIAN - And often these kind of micro-level instances of language policing interrupt very, very spontaneous classroom discussion.So I've seen quite a lot of examples of where students might be discussing, I don't know, a math problem or a literary text or whatever it might be that's characteristic of very, very spontaneous natural classroom talk, and their ideas, and their turns and their contributions get, I would say unnecessarily policed in terms of their grammar.And what happens is you see students kind of not wanting to contribute further, because they kind of live in fear that their language is going to get policed or regulated or controlled in the future.So it does have quite material consequences for how students might feel about themselves in their own language and their willingness to contribute to classroom discussion.
• linkDaniel Midgley - If I could just channel the thinking of some of the people that I talk to on the radio, they might say something like:well, but it's very important for those students to be able to speak Standard English.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - This is what I was going to say.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Because…Why don't you take this one, Hedvig?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - So the discussion that we've had on this show a couple of times before, I believe…where it's sort of saying the world is not nice.The world is such that having access and being able to speak a certain variety of your language, be it within English or other languages, is unfortunately going to bring you greater success, probably, in life.You might have an easier time getting a job, applying for apartments, etc.So therefore, you can argue that the school, schools and government, the state has an obligation to make sure that there's a level playing field.That it's not only those who happen to be brought up in the posh middle class homes or whatever, who are able to present themselves in this way, but that this way of presenting should be accessible to more.But in order for this to work, you still need to frame it, as a teacher, you need to frame it like that, which I've heard some teachers do.What they've said is:it's perfectly valid to speak this way, you know, in these and these circumstances.But in like, when we have Swedish class, you write a formal essay, this is not acceptable.
• linkIAN - Sure.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah.Your variety of language is adequate and valid.Just don't bring that gutter talk into the classroom.
• linkIAN - LAUGHTERYeah.I mean, I think that's you know, there is a tension here.And I know, as you say, no one would deny the importance for students to speak and use language in a variety of codes, because that's…those are the demands that society places on them.And so it is, we might argue, a kind of argument about access here.However, a lot of the policies that I've looked at seem to impose very blanket requirements on the use of so-called Standard English.Whereas actually, in very natural classroom discussion, there's really no need to be using Standard English at all times.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkIAN - So my colleague, Julia Snell, who also just worked on this makes a really nice distinction between what she calls "talk for performance" and "talk for learning".So she would…she kind of makes this idea that okay, in talk for performance there are certain expectations perhaps, or certain requirements to use so-called Standard English;a formal presentation, a written essay, whatever.But talk for learning is such a very natural classroom discussion, there's really no requirement for that to take place in Standard English.So, as with everything in linguistics, contexts and register is something that's really crucial.And on top of this, I would also argue that students don't just need access to Standard English as such, but what they need is, they need access to why it is that Standard English carries this kind of socio-political power?So it's not just…
• linkHedvig Skirgård - …that it is correct.
• linkIAN - Sure.So it's not just that we need to teach students how to use Standard English, although some people might contest that, but it's about teaching *about* Standard English, including Standardised English's role in its political status, its kind of intersectional nature with race and class and power.And that's where critical language awareness really comes in.So, an explicit knowledge about language is crucial.
• linkDaniel Midgley - It sounds then like the goal is to get students to examine their language use critically.And to do that, we don't have to say that one kind or another is good or bad.And in fact, making those kind of judgments could be harmful.But in ways that you've described it, it shuts students down.It invalidates their language of origin.Is there anything else that I'm missing?
• linkIAN - No.I mean, I think you're right.I mean, the very…The very concept of Standard English is really problematic, of course.It's the idea that Standard English is something that feeds into what we call the Standard Language Ideology, right?This kind of myth that there's a better or worse variety of using language.But what often gets forgotten, especially in schools, is that Standard English is a social construct.It's a kind of imagined, constructed, artificial version of the language that's being built and maintained by members of society who typically enjoy social power.White, middle class, so-called literate, so-called native speakers.
• linkIAN - So Standard English itself is a very racialised and very classed construct.So any use of that phrase is, in a way, propagating and perpetuating these ideas, that kind of middle class norm and middle class values.And in places like schools, it tends to get used in a very uncritical and kind of very sanitised way.So the kind of blanket impositions and blanket policies of using Standard English, all they serve to do is they serve to bolster and perpetuate the social power and the social dominance that those speakers have.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Which they don't need any help with.LAUGHTER
• linkIAN - Sure, sure.I mean, Alim and Smitherman use a really nice alternative to Standard English, which…they call it White Mainstream English.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Oh, man.
• linkIAN - And then as soon as you start to use that phrase, instead of Standard English, then you really begin to foreground and highlight some of the very problematic ideas that get wrapped up with Standard English.So if you swap the phrase Standard English with White Mainstream English into some of those policies, for example, then what you get instead is something like, "We expect people to speak in full sentences and use White Mainstream English."LAUGHTER
• linkIAN - And in swapping out a Standard English to White Mainstream English, you really begin to highlight some of the very problematic ideas about Standard English as a concept itself.But because it's so deeply embedded in schools, the kind of sociopolitical status of Standard English often gets masked or gets downplayed.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah, I'm going to call it that from now on.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.And as my…my husband will point out sometimes is…he's from the north of England and this White Mainstream English is even usually even more picky.So it's not even just White Mainstream.There's plenty of white people who also get told that they don't speak Standard Englishes either.And another thing that these policies do is also they rob people of the exercise of adapting.So if you get exposed to different varieties of your native language in daily communication, you widen your, you know, your comprehensive ability to adapt to a new situation.
• linkIAN - Yeah.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I have friends in Sweden who are from Stockholm, who mainly have Stockholm friends, and they struggle with understanding some dialects, and Norwegian.Whereas I've travelled around a little bit more Sweden than have some relatives and things, and I struggle less.Some of the varieties I still struggle, but I struggle less.And this comes up for me actually in English.The reason I can understand so many of the British dialects as I can is actually because of BBC panel shows.Because they put people like Ross Noble.My mom can't understand Ross Noble, and she speaks perfect English, but she's just like, what is this man, what is this man saying?LAUGHTERAnd in order to function well in British society and in any society, really, if you are locked in and only able to comprehend a very small amount of variation, I mean, that is actually going to be a problem.
• linkIAN - Yeah, yeah, sure.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I want to push a little bit on this, though, because if I go on the radio and I say that language policing and the emphasis on Standardised English is borderline racist, I will get geniuses who argue:No, the real racism is in thinking that people of colour can't use language properly, but they can if they are forced to.And then that will lift them out of poverty or some shit like that.How do I…how do I respond to that?
• linkIAN - Yeah, I mean, I can…I think this comes back to a knowledge of critical language awareness, of having the tools to understand concepts like Standard English and White Mainstream English and non-standardised forms of language.And having the language in order to talk about language, and the role that language has in often perpetuating and further embedding some of those social injustices.I mean, the argument about Standard English in schools is often about a kind of social justice argument, right?It's about giving kind of working class, racialised children access to the standard of English, which is seen as a kind of tool which they require to become accepted members of society.But actually, a social mobility argument would actually argue that a critical awareness of language is the key to social mobility because it allows you to dismantle and understand some of those deeply embedded structural inequalities.
• linkIAN - It's not just about the simple grafting-on of Standard English onto non-standardised forms or non-standard speakers, but it's about having a very explicit, critical awareness of what Standard English is, and the history and the political status of Standard English, in order to understand how it is that a version of the language plays such an important part in reproducing some of the social injustices that happen.And schools, certainly in the UK, the opportunity for studying critical language and critical linguistics is really low, because the curriculum for secondary English has very, very limited opportunities for that kind of work to happen.And historically, it's been the case that students might have had the opportunity to study those things.But in the UK in the last 10 years or so, we've gone under a huge amount of curriculum reform, which has shifted towards a more conservative end of the spectrum, in terms of curriculum content and ideas about language.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I think the social mobility argument also falls flat because like I keep saying:It isn't necessarily about language.Even if a student were able to "pass" as a Standardised English speaker, they might still face social barriers because of the way they look, or the way…their background.So it's not about language, really.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yes, it's unfortunately true.And it is possible that if all children going to school were introduced to this framework of a more critical view of language use, where you're told there are different varieties and there's this problem of judgment.And if you got exposed to greater variety— how to say this in a nice way —if some of those white posh people then become landlords and have that framework, maybe they will be a bit more fair in how they treat applicants possibly, if they had a way and a framework for dismantling that problem themselves.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah, yeah, yeah.I would rather dismantle racism than teach people to work within it, although I can see why that is attractive.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.But it is also more— I don't know —for many people that's more urgent.Yeah.It's hard to play the long game when that involves you having a shitty time for a while.
• linkDaniel Midgley - But in the meantime, what this language ideology does, is it demonises non-standardised varieties of English as, as you say Ian, "deviant and non-compliant".
• linkIAN - Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I mean, the example that was especially salient for me, was the teacher who used the "word jail." Certain words were placed in jail.And I just thought, well, that's not too symbolic!You know, talk about the school-to-prison pipeline!We're doing it for words, do we do it for people as well.What's going on here?
• linkIAN - Of course.Of course.It's all part of a of a bigger metaphor about surveillance and policing in schools, which includes language, as you say, in the use of word jails, in which so-called slang and non-standardised constructions are kind of incarcerated in.I mean, some of the classrooms I've seen have this as a physical poster with a kind of mock up of jail bars with non-standard constructions and slang words, which…
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I'm guessing LIKE is in there.
• linkIAN - …the teacher writes down, puts it on a piece of card and sticks onto the wall.And so it serves that this kind of omnipresent…Yeah, like a surveillant kind of linguistic landscape which looms over…
• linkHedvig Skirgård - God.
• linkDaniel Midgley - This awaits you.
• linkIAN - Right, exactly.But you're right.It's…there's a…I mean, in the UK and in the US, there's been a big shift about police presence in schools, teacher surveillance, teacher authority, and discipline.And language gets wrapped up in that, these notions of very punitive measurements in schools.Language plays a huge part in that.And as you say, Daniel, it's…these arguments are always about something bigger than just language.You know, it's there's always something else there.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - And it spreads to other things as well.Like the way that the kind of history that's being taught, the kind of people that are put forward as great pioneers of various disciplines, et cetera.
• linkIAN - Yeah.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - That also has major scale, which is besides language.And it's like we're having this big worldwide debate right now how to unskew that, and what to do about it, while at the same time some of these things are increasing in how they're being punished.
• linkIAN - Yeah, yeah.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - SIGHS DEEPLYI don't want to think about it too much.
• linkIAN - I mean, teacher education has a huge role to play, in educating new teachers about, as I say, critical language awareness.I mean, certainly in the UK there's a…there's a fairly long history of teachers having fairly inadequate training in knowledge about language or knowledge about linguistics, coupled with the fact that not many linguistics graduates go into teaching.So linguists working with teachers is a huge area if we need to try and challenge some of these discourses and some of these ideas about language.
• linkIAN - But you're right, people always have quite strong reactions to this.People always get very upset if you suggest that the students don't need Standard English.Which, of course, is never the argument, you know, the argument is not that we're not saying students shouldn't have access to Standard English.That's not what we're saying at all.But what we are saying is that they need some political awareness of what Standard English is, why it is seen to be so powerful, and why it seems to be associated with certain dominant groups.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Can I ask what kind of pushback you're getting from people?Any?Or…what are people saying about this?
• linkIAN - I mean, a lot of…it's interesting because a lot of…what we have to realise here is that a lot of these policies in schools come about because of pressure from so-called top-down policies.And so in the UK, as I mentioned, over the last ten years or so, there's been a shift towards quite well, quite much more conservative educational policies, including the use of Standard English and other things as well.
• linkIAN - And so a lot of schools design their policies in what they see as in accordance with the kind of pressures that they feel from government to have their schools and classrooms as places where Standard English is absolutely favoured over open non-standardised forms.So a lot of teachers kind of justify and rationalise the school-level policies because they're doing that in response to what they see as government requirements.So a lot of the defenses around these policies are in the sense that, well, this is what a government policy is.Schools are pressured into doing these things because of government.So there's always interesting power relations between school-level policies and government-level policies.
• linkIAN - And yeah, a lot of a lot of the other pushbacks have been in the sense that, well, students need to speak Standard English, and the way that I'm going to do that is banning non-Standard English from the classroom.I've got a moral responsibility for students to go out into the world of work and they have to use Standard English to do that.And, of course, I sympathise with schools and teachers in that way, absolutely, because there is that government pressure and there is that societal pressure.But at the same time, the simple eradication of non-standardised forms and the simple banning of slang and non-standardised forms is not the pedagogy to teach students about Standard English.It's a very crude way to try and give students access to Standard English.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Language eradication has historically been a veeery dangerous thing.
• linkIAN - Yeah.Yeah.And these kind of, these pedagogies and these policies which are geared around eradicationist moves, simply seek to kind of remove and replace non-standardised forms with their standardised equivalents.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - It's also amazing that people think…So usually if you're actually encountering a problem with comprehension, which is the main main goal of language, after all, being understood and communicative, you usually see on your interlocutors, when you're speaking— when you're writing of course it's different —you can tell if you're doing something wrong or if you're not being understood and you have a very strong pressure in that situation to adapt and to try and be understood.And when people have to engage like that with other people in their surroundings, a lot of them are probably going to find that they will be better viewed or better understood if they speak a certain way and they look at TV…like, Standard English or White Mainstream English has a lot of support, a lot of pressure for people to conform to it already.
• linkIAN - Yeah.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - It seems it doesn't need much help!LAUGHTER
• linkIAN - Yeah.It's going…it gets protected and maintained all the time.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.It's fine, it's doing fine.I don't think it makes that much help.
• linkIAN - Sure, sure.But these policies all are doing is perpetuating the kind of enjoyment that middle class communities have.
• linkDaniel Midgley - And also sending a message about whose language is acceptable in public, whose language deserves to be represented in the public sphere.
• linkIAN - Yeah, yeah.It's an interesting thing to research, but quite frightening sometimes at the same time.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I was wondering if you have any resources or advice?I know I happen to be aware…we had Dr Hannah Gibson on a couple of episodes ago, and she's also interested in these things.And on her web page, I found before some resources for some anti-racist pedagogy for schools and things, that I think are quite helpful.And I know we have other teachers listen to this show.So I wondered if you also had some tips.
• linkIAN - Yeah.I mean, one thing that I would definitely guide teachers towards is…I mean, there's a lot of work being done in the US, for example, on anti-racist language pedagogies, which are really seeking to dismantle this idea of Standard English and give teachers the kind of critical awareness and critical tools that they need to think and talk about language in the classroom.So one really good book is by April Baker-Bell, it's called "Linguistic Justice, Black Language, Literacy, Identity, and Pedagogy".And that was published earlier this year.And that's a really brilliant book, which talks teachers through some of the historical and political ideas about Standard English, and it offers teachers an alternative pedagogy where non-standardised forms of language respected and celebrated and understood as part of a valued aspect of speakers' identities.So that's the book that I would absolutely recommend for teachers.And it's a really nice mix of some of the historical and theoretical ideas about Standard English and White Mainstream English, but also has some really practical tools for negotiating those things in classrooms.And so that's by April Baker-Bell.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, I just looked it up and it looks very cool.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I had the opportunity to design a linguistics unit for high school students here in Perth.And one thing that I tried to do was to ask students about their language and tell them, you know, the way that you use language is interesting and I am interested.I am a linguist and I am interested in studying this.And you can do analysis on your language as well.And what that did was it led to some self-analysis and some awareness.And I just feel like that is really valuable in helping students to understand about language.
• linkIAN - Yeah, definitely.
• linkDaniel Midgley - So let's get out the magic wand, just to finish.If I could ask you two questions, what would you like teachers to know about language, and what would you like students to know about language?
• linkIAN - Ooh, okay.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Now's your chance.LAUGHTER
• linkHedvig Skirgård - This will be immediately transmitted to everyone's brain.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yes.
• linkIAN - I would like teachers to have some awareness of sociolinguistics very broadly.I think…I always…I never quite understand why, why sociolinguistics has to get prefixed with socio, because all language is about is about social interaction, right?So I would like teachers to have an explicit awareness of sociolinguistics, including what I see as key things around language ideology.And giving teachers some of the tools and the knowledge to understand the histories and the genealogies around quite problematic concepts, such as Standard English, and to have some critical language awareness themselves.That's what that's what I would wish for, for teachers.
• linkDaniel Midgley - And then students?
• linkIAN - And students, I would like to…I would like to give them the space and the opportunity to learn about their own language, and to learn about why language varies, and to learn about why it is that certain varieties of a language come to be stigmatised.And so they then have the critical awareness to challenge that that stigma and that prejudice.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Ian Cushing of Brunel University, London.His most recent article…well, one of your most recent articles, "Say it Like The Queen" available open access from Taylor and Francis online.We'll have a link to that on our blog, becauselanguage.com
• linkIAN - Great.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Ian, thanks so much for hanging out with us.
• linkIAN - Thank you.
• linkIAN - TRANSITIONAL MUSIC
• linkDaniel Midgley - And now it's time for Words of the Week.Boy, do we have a lot of them, but Ian Cushing of Brunel University, London is bringing one to us.Ian:what you got?
• linkIAN - Okay, I'm going to…I thought a long time about this.Over the last few days, I've been…
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I don't think Daniel always does.That's mean, I'm sorry, I take that back.LAUGHTER
• linkDaniel Midgley - I really sweat these.LAUGHTERI think:What will Ben like?Well, Ben's not here.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - What will Ben hate?is what you think.LAUGHTER
• linkIAN - So mine comes from…over the last few days, whilst I've been trying to get some work done and switching between the constant rolling news of the election coverage…LAUGHTER
• linkDaniel Midgley - Oh god.
• linkIAN - …one word that I've seen come up a lot is the word "wall", W-A-L-L.And I'm going to choose the word WALL, which I've heard about and seen whilst I've been watching this this rolling coverage of the US election.And I've chosen this word because of its metaphorical use in in reference to the kind of cluster of states in North America and the coastal areas of the US, which historically lean towards Democratic votes.So, for example, "Joe Biden rebuilds the blue wall" or "the Democrats see that blue wall crumble", or Donald Trump talking about his beautiful red wall, whatever it is.Which is now crumbling and has fallen.So I'm interested here because of the way that the word WALL gets talked about in metaphorical terms, both linguistically and also visually.So we think about those election maps and kind of the blue wall, which is being rebuilt.And, of course, the word WALL has taken on a kind of extra shade of mourning…err, of meaning in reference to the US elections, given the very real and non-metaphorical wall, the US Mexico border, which, of course, has been a kind of symbol of Trump's presidency.
• linkIAN - So I'm interested in the way that the word WALL gets used metaphorically to talk about states and the distribution of votes in ways that can divide the country.But at the same time, Joe Biden's politics and his campaign is being geared around a kind of rebuilding metaphor, where he wants to bring the country together and create cohesion.So I've been interested in the way that that word is used as a metaphor.And, of course, it's part of a larger metaphor about politics being war, where we see politicians kind of fighting out of battle grounds and deploying ideas as weapons and so on.
• linkDaniel Midgley - And, oh, now I found a book, "Verbal Pitfalls", from about one hundred years ago, where they complained about the word CAMPAIGN being used for politics.They said, "this is not a political word, this is a word about war." But it really does underscore this war-like metaphor.
• linkIAN - Sure.And those things are so deeply embedded, right?I mean, the word FIGHT and the word CAMPAIGN, as you say, it's all part of a much broader narrative where ideas about war get mapped on to ideas about politics.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I mean, walls are meant to protect people, but also keep some people out.
• linkIAN - Right, right.
• linkDaniel Midgley - So that is super interesting.
• linkIAN - Yeah.Yeah.So it's…so that's my word of the week.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Thank you.That's awesome.I have also got some words from politics.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh, have you?Is anything going on in politics?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Hmmm.So we're recording this at a time when Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have just given their acceptance speeches for president and vice president of the USA.The coverage surrounding the election told us — and then we all forgot_ that the Democratic voters tended to vote early and/or by mail, whereas Republicans in general had a tendency to turn up on the day and vote in person.And so I knew that and I expected that.But I was…as I was watching the initial coverage, you know, in Florida goes for Trump, I was like:oh, shoot, the Republicans are pulling ahead!Yeah, I knew that they were going to do that because it's on the day, right?Things are coming later, the Democratic votes are coming later.But I still it didn't stop me from chewing my nails down to the lunulae.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - So a couple of terms that came up was "Red Mirage".The Red Mirage is the one where it looks like it's going red, but it turns out that it's not going to hold.And in fact, it didn't hold in states like Arizona and Pennsylvania and so on.And then the corresponding term was "blue shift", which refers to the way that things look red, but then they're turning blue.They look Republican, but they're turning Democratic as more votes come in.So I felt like that was pretty interesting.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Isn't "blue shift" also a term in, like, physics?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yes, that's right.As objects move away from us…wait, that's….I've heard of blue shift amd I've heard of red shift.And I forget which one it is when things are coming toward us and…Is the red shift when it's coming toward us, and blue shift as it's moving away?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Don't know.I don't know.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Looking that up, it's towards us.Another political term came from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, or as I am fond of calling her:AOC.she tweeted, "And after we work to command victory in November, I need folks to realise that there's no going back to brunch."
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, I saw this.I like this.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah.What does it mean to you?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Well, I've seen her say this same sentiment in other places saying, you know, if Trump loses, that doesn't mean that the racism and the intolerance that he instigated goes away.We don't…the fight's not over.And I don't know if this tweet was in relation to that.But, for example, we're still in a pandemic.Like, it's not like just because he won all of these things are no longer true.And as I'm sure many Europeans might also be feeling right now, when we were watching the election from afar, maybe also many Americans, we were surprised at how many votes he still got.Which says something about how about the climate that this new presidency is starting in.
• linkDaniel Midgley - It shouldn't have been this close.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - It's weird that it was this close.You know, maybe that says something about me and the media I consume, etc.But I was a bit surprised that it was close.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Like, almost half the electorate saw the Trump presidency and said:yeah, I want more of that.I'm going for that.There was one more political one, and then we'll keep going.What's the opposite of doomscrolling?We know about doomscrolling, when you just keep on obsessively going through your Twitter and you just…nothing good is happening here, but you keep going anyway.But people are getting maybe a little bit of…hope.What's the opposite of doomscrolling?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Fun-freshing!LAUGHTER
• linkDaniel Midgley - That is very close to a term coined by Heather Schwedel in Slate, this was noticed by Ben Zimmer on Twitter:Gleefreshing.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.I like it.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah, it's good.She says, "I think we may need a new word for this behavior.Youths, I am told, speak of hope-ium and cope-ium.But we need a word that incorporates the neverending mainlining of information as well as the positive or negative cast of that information.I humbly submit gleefreshing:If you've been reflexively reloading news sites, but with anticipation, rather than dread than you, my friend, are gleefreshing." How about that?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - It's amazing.I like it.
• linkDaniel Midgley - So, WALL, BLUE SHIFT, RED MIRAGE, BACK TO BRUNCH, and GLEEFRESHING:our Words of the Week.We have comments!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - They're all good.
• linkDaniel Midgley - They're all lovely.This one's from Doug.Doug says, "Thank you for doing what you do.This show and Talk the Talk have been a lot of fun to listen to.On an episode a while back, Hedvig mentioned that she reads a lot of grammars.I am wondering where she finds them.Any insights would be great."
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Ahhh.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Where do you find those grammars, you human who reads grammars?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - That is a great question.I find them through a lot of different places.I happen to have access to good, like, university libraries.I know that people who aren't students or who aren't staff at universities often face very annoying obstacles to getting access to stuff.And I happen to be privileged and have access to this stuff.But there are also a lot of open access publications and journals and grammars.The Association of Linguistic Typology has something they called, I believe, Open Access Grammar Watch, where they post grammars that are open access free.I can really recommend following and supporting Language Science Press, which is a publication house that does open access publishing and linguistics, and has a lot of senior people behind it.So it has a lot of prestige, which is often what open access initiatives lack.Including Chomsky.Where else do I get them?Yeah, library.When it comes to older stuff, there's sort of a network of linguists where we sort of exchange PDFs over emails.When we want to get a hold of out of copyright things from the 1800s, someone has to scan.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I thought…maybe I didn't point out, but I probably should.When you are reading a grammar, what you are doing is you're reading somebody's description of how a language works.And that's fun to do because…it's interesting?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - It's fun to do because it's interesting.I work on a project where what we do is we read grammars and we take that information and we sort of standardise it and distill it into a database.So we've read a section where they say something like, "adjectives don't agree for gender." And then we have a little questionnaire.We fill that out.Sometimes that's a lot harder than it looks because the grammar writer is being…uhh…describing things in their own words or describing things in a theoretical paradigm that's a bit hard to decipher, if I say so.Or that the grammar writer didn't really focus on the grammatical phenomena that we're after and we therefore have to sort of go looking and read between the lines to figure out what's going on.That happens a fair bit as well.I've been doing this for five, coming on six years and I've been tutoring a lot of student assistants in this, we just hired seven new ones.So I'm right in the middle of it, but it's mostly fun.And I think reading a lot of grammars you get you become a bit…how do you say, you become…
• linkDaniel Midgley - Jaded?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Jaded.You become a bit tired of some obtuse ways that grammar writers write things.But I think it is a great thing when someone writes a grammatical description.And I am always grateful, even when I can't understand what they're doing.I am always grateful for the work they're doing.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I suppose we could slap up a few resources on our blog becauselanguage.com, ¿no?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yes.So if you just want to know if a grammar exists, the place to go as always for these things is glottolog.org.But if you want to get a hold of an actual PDF or a book, then Worldcat, Grammar Watch, and Language Science Press are our places to go.We could put those up.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Awesome, thank you.Dr Ian Cushing, thank you so much for hanging out with us on the show.It's been a lot of fun to have you and this has really got me thinking about stuff.
• linkIAN - My pleasure.Thanks for inviting me on.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, I think it's a really important discussion to have and thank you for the tips and for the work you do coming on to the show.
• linkIAN - Thank you both.
• linkDaniel Midgley - How can people find out what you're doing?
• linkIAN - Funnily, we're talking about open access and stuff.So luckily my institution is very, very generous with paying open access fees for my journal articles and things.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh, that's amazing, yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Gosh.
• linkIAN - So there's links to all of my publications on my Brunel profile, which is quite easy to find, just googling my name and Brunel.And a lot of those are open access to there, so they're accessible to people who might not have institutional access.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Well, once again, thanks for being on the show with us, it's been great.
• linkIAN - Thank you.
• linkIAN - OUTRO MUSIC
• linkHedvig Skirgård - It's been really fun coming back to this show.Thank you, Daniel, for making this a smooth ride.I'm looking forward to all of our upcoming episodes and engaging with everyone again, I was gone for a little bit.And if you want to get in touch with us and send us your reactions or ideas, or if we said something wrong or if we said something really great, you can get in touch with us.We are on most/all of the things.We are on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Mastodon, Patreon, And I believe Daniel, you've also started the TikTok, did you?
• linkDaniel Midgley - We have one video.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - We have one video.We are officially on TikTok.
• linkDaniel Midgley - It's a start.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - We are down with the kids.And in all the places, hopefully, including TikTok…
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yup
• linkHedvig Skirgård - …we are @becauselangpod.
• linkDaniel Midgley - That is true.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - That is true.Amazing.You can also send us an old fashionedOLD MAN VOICEe-mail.You do that by emailing hello@becauselanguage.com.And besides getting in touch with us and talking to us, we would also appreciate it if you talk to other people about us.If you like our show, you might know a friend who also likes our show.So tell them about it and leave us a review wherever you can leave a review.
• linkDaniel Midgley - We are very grateful to our patrons.With their support we are getting transcripts for all our episodes and we are even making bonus episodes besides.So you can come join us at patreon.com/becauselangpod and we'll even send you stuff.And here are some of our great patrons:Termy, Chris B, Lyssa, The Major, Chris L, Matt, Damien, Helen, Bob, Jack, Kitty, Lord Mortis, Christelle, Elías, Michael, Larry, Binh, Kristofer, Dustin, Andy, Maj, Nigel, Kate, Jen, Nasrin, Nikoli, Ayesha, Emma, Andrew, and Samuel.What a lot of great people!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yes, amazing.You did a great job reading out all those names as well.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Well, thanks to all of you for being patrons.We are very thankful.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - We are very grateful indeed.Thank you for making this possible.Our music is written and performed by Drew Krapljanov and you can also hear him in the bands Ryan Beno and Dideon's Bible.Thanks for listening.Catch you next time.Because Language.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Wow, you got to say the end this time.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, I know.Did I do it okay?
• linkDaniel Midgley - It was great.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I stuffed up less often than I usually do.LAUGHTERI think I'm just happy.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - PAUSE
• linkDaniel Midgley - Now, let's see, Hedvig, you wanted to test us.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yes.So my HUSBAND has…sorry, I'm going to stop doing this very soon…but we don't, we can't really socialise with anyone, so whenever I get the chance, I get very obnoxious right now.I'm sorry.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Are you still doing the thing where you say:"my husband…Oh, that sounds so weird!"
• linkHedvig Skirgård - No, we're doing the husband.OoohSQUEALS.That is fun.
• linkDaniel Midgley - SQUEALS
• linkHedvig Skirgård - But anyway, my husband is very into crosswords at the moment.And particularly cryptic crosswords.Are you familiar with this style?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Oh, man.Yes.The clues tend to come in two parts:one, which is like a straight definition, and then the other you arrive at the answer by wordplay.Ian, is this your thing?
• linkIAN - I'm awful at them.So I'm getting nervous that I'm about to be put on the spot here.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - So I didn't get it by figuring it out.I just listed all instances I knew of the category until Ste said yes.So the clue is, "Language spoken at that Cockney woman's party".Four letters.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Language spoken at that Cockney woman's party.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Who's a Cockney woman and what kind of party are we talking about?How…And it's only four letters?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.How many.Yeah.Think of a language name, four letters.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Now this could be a word for language in general, or it could be a specific language, like Urdu or….
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Doodododoododooo!LIKE DING DING DING DING
• linkDaniel Midgley - How?!How?!I do not understand how I got there.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - (h)er- Do.Her do.Her party.LAUGHTER
• linkDaniel Midgley - It was the only four letter language I could think of on the spot, and it turned out to be right.That is….Her do.Wow.
• linkIAN - That's good.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Wow, I like that.Thank you.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, I'm extremely impressed.I went through a couple of other four letter ones until I was like, Urdu qualifies, but like what?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah.Wait until…wait until I get it right for real.I do have a favorite cryptic crossword clue."Don't go without a pen." Three letters.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Don't go without a pen…
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - How many?Three.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Three letters."Don't go without a pen."
• linkHedvig Skirgård - So it's going to be…a pen is not going to be like a writing pen.It's going to be something else.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Okay, I like where you're going.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - But the other thing is like where you keep horses, so that doesn't…
• linkDaniel Midgley - Okay, well, I'll walk you through it.Don't go, but instead you should…
• linkIAN - …stay.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Without A…
• linkIAN - Without, without the letter "a"?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah.
• linkIAN - S-T-Y.Is that right?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - GASPSSty!
• linkIAN - Sty.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Like where pigs live!
• linkDaniel Midgley - Pen!Isn't that great?
• linkIAN - Ooh, okay.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I love that one.Oh my gosh.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Well, the beginning of my married life is Ste doing cryptic crosswords and torturing me like this every evening.So I'm now torturing you, and I'll get tortured back as well.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Well, thank you very much for that.That was…that was kind of enjoyable.And I hope that you're not getting on each other's nerves too much.LAUGHTER