Sociolinguistics
Hal and the Cell Phone
Tweet I love my cell phone and would not like to go back to a world without them. But like Hal, the bossy computer in Stanley Kubric’s great film, 2001: a Space Oddysey, these little machines are messing with our heads. I teach first-year university students, and have noticed two new developments this year: 1) […]
Journals: a comment on literacy
Tweet This weekend I saw Dr. Andrew Weil speak about mental health at the Book Fair in Tucson, Arizona. Dr. Weil is a well known author and doctor who advocates integrated health care, using both traditional and modern medical techniques. Among the many elements of maintaining mental health, he mentioned gratitude. We should be grateful, […]
Fiction Exercise: Part 3
Tweet The fiction-writing exercise described in the posts of February 2 and 7 was the first assignment of a class in which the students would later write essays on assigned subjects, using works of fiction and poetry as sources. The goal was to provide the students with some insight into what it takes to write fiction. (Poetry writing was […]
Heritage languages
Tweet Diversity is often just a concept. Many people live in a diverse town, yet never visit the “foreign” parts of it. Students can be members of a diverse class, yet never come into contact with the parts of their peers’ lives that reflect their different backgrounds. Students with an Italian background, for example, often […]
Language in the classroom — it’s not quite that simple
Tweet Quote from La Canada Valley Sun story about sexual and racial harassment of students by a teacher: “Spurred by complaints that the La Cañada High math teacher regularly used racist and sexist language in her classroom, officials presented a modified draft of the district’s code of ethics during a public meeting Monday.” Think about this a minute. What […]
Language Controversies
Tweet Language seems benign – don’t swear in front of your grandmother, don’t shout “fire” in a crowded theatre, and you’re okay. There are, however, many inflammatory issues which intimately involve language and here are a few. Controversy One: The New York City Council once debated whether to ban the words, “bitch, “whore,” and “nigger,” […]
September 11th, 9-11, 9/11 – Words from our worst day
Tweet We still are not sure how to refer to that awful day — is it “nine eleven” or “September 11th?” As a society, we’re still vacillating. In 2001, 9-11 (or equivalents) was the Word of the Year, according to the American Dialect Society. In 2002, it was Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). What do […]
Language is the bedfellow of politics
Tweet There has been a debate among linguists about the language used by the rioters who shook up England recently — they are using slang and “bad grammar.” I’m not British, so I’m making some assumptions here, but it seems to me that the very thing that these young people want to do is to […]
Testing your voice
Tweet In writing and speaking, “voice” means your instantly identifiable style. It is a combination of word choice, philosophy, level of formality, and other factors, such as local or age-appropriate slang. The following exercise challenges students to use someone else’s voice, which will illuminate their own voice for them, I hope. Exercise: Each student must […]
New book: Grammar Matters: The Social Significance of How We Use Language
Tweet Jila Ghomeshi writes about many aspects of language from a social and historical point of view. We have a tendency, for example, to judge as unintelligent those people who don’t use language in the same way we do. Ghomeshi helps us understand why this is an unproductive way to evaluate others. She writes of […]