tag:theconversation.com,2011:/ca/topics/linguistics-1841/articlesLinguistics – The Conversation2024-03-04T19:21:48Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2249522024-03-04T19:21:48Z2024-03-04T19:21:48ZDiplomacy and resistance: how Dune shows us the power of language – including sign language<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579439/original/file-20240303-28-14rzl7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=18%2C6%2C4071%2C2146&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In Dune’s sandswept colonialist dystopia of the distant future, power is a force best handled – and transferred – surreptitiously. In a world of ultra-wealthy spice barons and interplanetary warfare, the greatest asset in both diplomacy and resistance is an intangible one: language. Nowhere is this clearer than in the films’ portrayal of sign language.</p>
<p>The Bene Gesserit is an all-woman dynasty leading an empire from behind the scenes. Their arsenal of powers include the mastery of dozens of languages. With these, they conduct diplomacy in public for the benefit of the men they pretend to serve. Meanwhile, they enact their true plans in secret, through whispers, telepathy and the native languages of their conspirators.</p>
<p>Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) is a reluctant messiah, whose prophetic ascendancy is spurred on when there are attempts to have his family exterminated. Believed dead, Paul retreats to the desert with his Bene Gesserit mother, Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson). There they find the Fremen, the free Indigenous peoples of the dune planet Arrakis. Paul and Jessica’s knowledge of the Fremen language is crucial to their acceptance by the community. Paul’s initiation into their ranks is also linguistic: the choosing of a Fremen name.</p>
<p>But Jessica and Paul’s use of the Bene Gesserits’ sign language is the most literal and urgent use of language as they survive threats in both Dune: Part One (2021) and the new Dune: Part Two (2024).</p>
<h2>The complexity of sign</h2>
<p>In the first film, the mother and son are abducted and transported across Arrakis in a helicopter. Feigning resignation, they use sign to plot their escape, unnoticed by the guards who don’t know this language. In part two, as enemies land just over the dune concealing Paul and his mother, they sign to plan an escape route in silence. Later in the film, a Bene Gesserit advisor signs to subtly annotate a verbal exchange with an untrustworthy group.</p>
<p>When Dune’s characters sign, it is with their hands by their sides, usually without eye contact, and often in brief sentences or even single signs.</p>
<p>This is very different to how sign languages are used in signing communities. In everyday communication, signers use a “<a href="https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783110261325.412/pdf?licenseType=restricted">sign space</a>”, an approximate rectangle of space in front of the head and torso, and out to the distance of about the elbows. Eye contact is essential, as are facial expressions and body angle, which not only convey emotion but syntactical markers.</p>
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<p>All of these components are part of a <a href="https://www.routledge.com/The-Routledge-Handbook-of-Sign-Language-Pedagogy/Rosen/p/book/9781032089201?gad_source=1&utm_source=cjaffiliates&utm_medium=affiliates&cjevent=848271a9d9c111ee8124011f0a18b8f7">complete grammar</a> that make sign languages as complex, emotive and capable of abstraction as any verbal language.</p>
<p>The signs used in Dune are closer to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5yk2FMCQlM">military or maritime hand gestures</a>, used in situations that require communication without sound or across distance. These generally convey basic messages rather than grammatically complete sentences, with little emotional or contextual detail.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-is-sign-language-21453">Explainer: what is sign language?</a>
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<h2>Deaf gain on screen</h2>
<p>Although not a true sign language, the use of sign in Dune can still teach us a lesson about the value of sign language.</p>
<p>“<a href="https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/deaf-gain">Deaf Gain</a>” is an academic principle that considers deaf experience in generative and positive terms: it emphasises what is gained through deafness and sign access, rather than what is lost through hearing loss.</p>
<p>Examples of deaf gain include language skills and cultural belonging, as well as physical skills such as enhanced vision or perception of vibrations. This is not to mention the benefit of being able to switch off a hearing aid or take off a cochlear implant in the presence of distracting or painful sounds.</p>
<p>Deaf gain is becoming increasingly present on contemporary screens. </p>
<p>In the horror franchise A Quiet Place, in which the world is overrun by blind, super-hearing murderous aliens, the family of a Deaf girl use American Sign Language to communicate, and even to thrive, without attracting the monsters’ attention. </p>
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<p>In Avatar: The Way of Water, the characters use the Na’vi sign language (invented for the film by <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WvsGuklGdzY">Deaf actor CJ Jones</a>) to communicate under water, considering those who cannot sign to be underdeveloped. </p>
<p>But this is not just a contemporary concept. As far back as 1959, in the Marilyn Monroe comedy Some Like It Hot a mob boss switches his hearing aid off just before he gives the order to gun down a group in an enclosed space. </p>
<p>While not deaf themselves, Dune’s characters show us deaf gain through deft manipulation of their environment, from the stealth of their signs to their attunement to the vibrations they make in the sand, which they use to attract or repel the giant beasts below.</p>
<p>These films show us how we can be in our bodies differently; how to navigate the world in different physical, linguistic and sensory ways.</p>
<h2>The power of language</h2>
<p>The director of Dune, Denis Villeneuve, has a history of making films that understand the subtle power of linguistic control. </p>
<p>Blade Runner 2049 (2017) depicts another multilingual society in a similarly gold-hued, environmentally destroyed dust bowl, in which knowledge of different languages provides access to closed spaces and protection from surveillance.</p>
<p>In his sci-fi drama Arrival (2016), extraterrestrial vessels visit Earth to global awe and creeping panic. Military and political forces cannot determine the aliens’ purpose, and interplanetary war inches closer. It is only a linguist who is able to decipher the aliens’ goal: to gift Earthlings their remarkable language. This language is an inky, visual code – much closer to a sign language than a verbal one – which rewires the brains of those who master it, so they can see through time.</p>
<p>In the Dune films, as in Arrival, language is not only a means through which we can come to know something. It is something which can transform the limits and nature of knowledge itself. As Paul and Jessica understand, sign language can be both a hiding place and a tool – for survival, and for empowerment.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/dune-a-prophetic-tale-about-the-environmental-destruction-wrought-by-the-colonisation-of-africa-170583">Dune – a prophetic tale about the environmental destruction wrought by the colonisation of Africa</a>
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<p><em>Correction: the role played by Rebecca Ferguson was originally incorrect. She plays Lady Jessica.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/224952/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gemma King receives funding from the Australian Research Council. </span></em></p>Although not a true sign language, the use of sign in Dune can still teach us a lesson about the value of sign language.Gemma King, Senior Lecturer in French Studies, ARC DECRA Fellow in Screen Studies, Australian National UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2247672024-03-01T16:00:26Z2024-03-01T16:00:26Z‘Bengali Cockney, Black Cockney, East End Cockney, Essex Cockney, Jewish Cockney, Sylheti Cockney’: why community languages matter<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579152/original/file-20240301-18-b5w2kk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C11%2C4000%2C2646&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Pros and shoppers play chess on Brick Lane market in Tower Hamlets.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/londonuk-july-282019-chess-players-popular-1521592817">Kamira|Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In response to a community petition, Tower Hamlets council in east London has designated Cockney as a “community language”. This recognition paves the way for the borough to actively challenge the linguistic discrimination that speakers of “non-standard” English dialects face.</p>
<p>Research in 2023 found that young people in the south-east of England <a href="https://theconversation.com/cockney-and-queens-english-have-all-but-disappeared-among-young-people-heres-whats-replaced-them-215478">no longer speak</a> the variety of English we think of as “Cockney”. This has led some pundits to decry what they understand to be <a href="https://www.standard.co.uk/comment/cockney-london-accents-received-pronunciation-b1117737.html">the death</a> of this longstanding dialect.</p>
<p>Cockney has long been <a href="https://www.babbel.com/en/magazine/cockney-rhyming-slang">held</a>, in the public imagination, as a criminal code of rhyming slang that emerged among Londoners born in the sound of Bow bells. This is historically inaccurate. </p>
<p>Our <a href="https://growsocialcapital.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/107983-Cockney-Brochure-P3-Compressed.pdf">new report</a> identifies – and challenges – the discriminatory, anti-working-class ideologies that underlie myths about Cockney and other non-standard varieties of English Englishes. </p>
<h2>Cockney was originally posh</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://www.oed.com/dictionary/cockney_n?tab=meaning_and_use#9035354">earliest citation of Cockney</a> dates back to the 1390s. In his medieval poem, Piers Plowman, writes: “And I sigge, bi my soule, I haue no salt Bacon, Ne no Cokeneyes”. A “Cockeneye” was an imaginary “cock’s egg” – the speaker is saying he had nothing to eat, not even imaginary food. </p>
<p>Early written uses of Cockney to describe people capitalised on an egg’s delicate and embryonic qualities. When Chaucer wrote “Cokenay” in the Canterbury Tales he meant, “a spoilt or pampered child”.</p>
<p>Even as late as 1904, “Cockney” was used to mean, “a feeble and pampered person from a city”. The word reflected the perception that city life was luxurious compared with toiling on England’s farms. </p>
<p>Because London is the prototypical English city, “Cockney” came to be used as a label for Londoners. The famous definition of the dialect as hinging on being born within earshot of Bow bells is attributed to a 1571 sermon by J. Bridges, in which he wrote: “We are thorough out all the Realme called cockneys that are borne in London, or in the sounde of Bow bell.” </p>
<p>Bridges meant that people throughout England called Londoners “Cockneys”. In the 16th century, the St Mary-le-Bow church was indeed a symbol for London, not a tool for distinguishing this one part of the city from the rest of it. All Londoners were Cockneys.</p>
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<img alt="A yellow-fronted shop with people out front." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579155/original/file-20240301-28-wtmfhg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579155/original/file-20240301-28-wtmfhg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579155/original/file-20240301-28-wtmfhg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579155/original/file-20240301-28-wtmfhg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579155/original/file-20240301-28-wtmfhg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579155/original/file-20240301-28-wtmfhg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579155/original/file-20240301-28-wtmfhg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The Beigel Shop, a long-loved east London institution.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/london-uk-december-29-2019-facade-1609429639">Alena Veasey|Shutterstock</a></span>
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<h2>Recasting Cockney as a working-class English</h2>
<p>Studies of language change in large cities <a href="https://www.wiley.com/en-us/Principles+of+Linguistic+Change%2C+Volume+2%3A+Social+Factors+-p-9780631179153">often show</a> that linguistic innovations emerge in working-class communities and then spread. It is likely that, in past centuries, east London working-class communities would have been drivers of innovations for the varieties of English spoken in the capital.</p>
<p>In the 1700s and 1800s, the emergence of the middle-class lifestyle as a target for upward mobility gave rise to a self-help industry for attaining higher social status. Along with prescriptions for how to dress and how to eat a meal, adopting “proper speech” became a target for ascending to the middle class.</p>
<p>Elocutionists sold books by picking out innovative features of London English and inveighing against using them. They recast the label “Cockney” as a working-class English that people should avoid if they wanted to sound properly middle class. </p>
<p>In the 19th century, authors including Charles Dickens followed the elocutionists. They assigned Cockney linguistic features to working-class (and often nefarious) characters. These characterisations reinforced the conceptualisation of Cockney as a working-class (and criminal) language. </p>
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<img alt="A family takes part in a colourful street festival." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579149/original/file-20240301-20-w5nxjb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579149/original/file-20240301-20-w5nxjb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579149/original/file-20240301-20-w5nxjb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579149/original/file-20240301-20-w5nxjb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579149/original/file-20240301-20-w5nxjb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579149/original/file-20240301-20-w5nxjb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579149/original/file-20240301-20-w5nxjb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Bethnal Green’s annual Boishakhi Mela celebrates the Bengali New Year.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/london-uk-63019-people-taking-part-1438262357">Olivier Guiberteau|Shutterstock</a></span>
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<h2>Changing enregisterment</h2>
<p>What changed over more than 600 years, then, was <a href="https://doi.org/10.1515/jhsl-2022-0001">the way</a> Cockney was, as linguists put it, “enregistered”. Enregisterment is the process of linguistic features becoming linked in popular consciousness to a group or place.</p>
<p>By the 1700s, Cockney was enregistered as “London English”. The leading edge of London English would have been the speech of working-class east London communities. Through the 1800s, intellectuals profited from stigmatising working-class linguistic features. This narrowed the enregisterment of Cockney to “working-class London English”.</p>
<p>Our modern understanding of Cockney is based on this recent re-enregisterment. It conceptualises Cockney as a specific set of linguistic features, associated with negative social characteristics and constrained to working-class east London.</p>
<p>This is reflected in popular explanations for rhyming slang as a definitive feature of the dialect. Rhyming slang emerged in Cockney relatively recently, probably in the late 1800s and early 1900s. </p>
<p>Contrary to popular belief, rhyming slang never could have been a way to obscure criminal activity from police. After all, code words only work until another person learns them. (Consider that today, street cops know the vocabulary for the crimes they encounter.) </p>
<p>The idea that Cockney rhyming slang encoded criminality is predicated on the ideology that working-class people engage in criminal activity. Within this logic, it follows that if working-class people are talking about something, it must be crime.</p>
<p>Today, working-class east London communities continue to be a driving force behind linguistic innovations that are spreading throughout England. This kind of innovation is still stigmatised. Speakers who use them are <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/accent-discrimination-126840">routinely penalised</a> in gatekeeping settings such as school and media and in hiring decisions. </p>
<p>Some people we have spoken as part of our research identify, specifically, as Cockney. Others claim an affinity with the personal resilience and community-mindedness that have long been central to the Cockney identity. </p>
<p>Further, we have found that Cockney is not a reductive, monolithic identity, but rather a multifaceted one. We have interviewed Londoners who identify as Bengali Cockney, Black Cockney, East End Cockney, Essex Cockney, Jewish Cockney and Sylheti Cockney, among others. </p>
<p>Linguists speak about “codeswitching” to refer to people shifting from non-standard to standard English for socioeconomic attainment. This practice illustrates how judging someone’s speech as “non-standard” is always ideologically driven. </p>
<p>Tower Hamlets’ recognition of Cockney as a “community language”, by contrast, acknowledges the linguistic validity of all varieties of English spoken in the borough. It celebrates the role that non-standard dialects play in shaping individual and community identities and the ways in which identities such as “Cockney” continue to evolve. As one of our interviewees (all of whom are anonymised in our report) put it:</p>
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<p>[Cockney] is a manifestation of working-class culture. That’s how it feels, a kind of positive working-class culture, which is under the cosh. To have vibrant working-class culture is something that is absolutely valuable.</p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christopher Strelluf does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Tower Hamlets’ recognition of Cockney as a “community language” celebrates the role that all English dialects play in shaping individual and community identities.Christopher Strelluf, Associate Professor in Applied Linguistics, University of WarwickLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2240622024-02-22T19:20:43Z2024-02-22T19:20:43ZAre you ready for it? ‘Yeah-nah’ comes back stronger – with a little help from Taylor Swift<p>Much has been written about the power of Taylor Swift’s poetic lyrics to resonate deeply with her audiences. But forget poetry and literary allusions — their influence pales in comparison to the cultural impact of a resounding “yeah-nah”. </p>
<p>During last Friday evening’s concert, Swift’s dancer Kameron Saunders bellowed the cherished Australian phrase in response to Swift’s line “You know that we are never getting back together” — and 96,000 Swifties at the Melbourne Cricket Ground went wild.</p>
<h2>It was enchanting to meet you — introducing ‘yeah-nah’</h2>
<p>According to the <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0726860022000013166">first ever study</a> of this little Aussie icon, “yeah-nah” arrived on the linguistic scene probably around the late 1990s. But it didn’t really come to the attention of Australians until the early 2000s, much the same time as Swift and her guitar began to rise to fame in Nashville. And, just like Swift, it’s not always been plain sailing for “yeah-nah” — a rocky start and a career marked by continual change and innovation. </p>
<p>Condemned by many in the early 2000s, “yeah-nah” <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/national/too-much-speech-junk-yeah-no-20040619-gdy2ga.html">was branded with disparaging labels</a> such as “speech junk” — and lumped together with other “unnecessary words that clutter up our language”. “Yeah-no” was a symptom of Australia’s inarticulateness, they argued, and it should go. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/yeah-nah-aussie-slang-hasnt-carked-it-but-we-do-want-to-know-more-about-it-165746">Yeah, nah: Aussie slang hasn't carked it, but we do want to know more about it</a>
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<p>But somehow “yeah-no” climbed out of the linguistic abyss — came back stronger than a nineties trend, as Swifties would put it — and won people’s hearts. When ABC radio stations around the country asked their listeners to send in their favourite Aussie slang expressions, “yeah-nah” came second out of more than a thousand unique phrases (<a href="https://theconversation.com/yeah-nah-aussie-slang-hasnt-carked-it-but-we-do-want-to-know-more-about-it-165746">it might even have come first</a> had “mate” not got that unfair boost from other favourites like “g’day mate”).</p>
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<p>Now a major protagonist in <a href="https://www.hachette.com.au/william-mcinnes/yeah-nah-a-celebration-of-life-and-the-words-that-make-us-who-we-are">William McInnes’ book</a> Yeah, Nah!: A celebration of life and the words that make us who we are, this much loved linguistic celebrity also makes regular public appearances — popping up everywhere from car sales adverts to the branding initiatives of condom companies. It’s prominently adorned on earrings, signet rings, necklaces, T-shirts and even features in beautifully intricate needlework embroideries.</p>
<h2>What’s ‘yeah-nah’ anyway?</h2>
<p>“Yeah-nah” (or its more formal version “yeah-no”) is one of those highly idiosyncratic expressions dotted through our speech. Its functions have to do with hedging, politeness and solidarity, but they are complex and pinning them down is tricky. As you’d expect — it is after all the fall-out of the hidden thought processes of humans interacting with other humans. </p>
<p>Here are some examples to illustrate just some of its duties.</p>
<p>You might want to decline someone’s kind offer of assistance: “Do want a hand?” — “Yeah-nah, I’ll be fine.” To simply say “no” would be blunt. </p>
<p>You might want to agree with a negative question: “So you didn’t get the Taylor Swift tickets?” — “Yeah-nah, we were too slow.” A simple “yes” or “no” would be ambiguous.</p>
<p>You might want to indicate enthusiastic agreement: “So you enjoyed Taylor Swift?” — “Yeah-nah, she was fantastic.” The effect of “no” is to reinforce “yes” by knocking on the head any possibility of contradiction.</p>
<p>You start talking after a lull in the conversation: “Yeah-nah, I was hoping to go to the concert.” “Yeah-nah” strengthens rapport with your conversational partner; it suggests interest or support. </p>
<p>You’re under pressure to accept a compliment, but at the same time want to appear modest. “You played brilliantly today” — “Yeah-nah, I was lucky really.” “Yeah” acknowledges the compliment (not to would seem ungrateful), and the following “nah” effectively softens its impact.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/brekkies-barbies-mozzies-why-do-aussies-shorten-so-many-words-192616">Brekkies, barbies, mozzies: why do Aussies shorten so many words?</a>
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<h2>So which one did Taylor Swift’s dancer use?</h2>
<p>The “yeah-nah” starring in the Eras tour is one of the newest functions, sometimes dubbed the “shutdown” use: an intense, sarcastic form of disagreement, which effectively shuts down the topic altogether (“Would you give me your tickets for Saturday night’s concert?” “Yeah, nah”.) The “yeah” sarcastically feints at an agreement that is clearly not possible, before the crystal-cold clarity of the disagreement is issued: “nah”. Curiously, this use has earlier and stronger <a href="http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/%7Emyl/languagelog/archives/005525.html">documentation in US English</a>, and only more recently has it been found in Australian English.</p>
<p>“Shutdown” uses have proliferated on <a href="https://commons.emich.edu/honors/607">Twitter</a> since at least 2018 (and, yes, that an intense form of disagreement should gain momentum on Twitter is perhaps the least surprising part of this story). The strong strand of internet language feeding the development of this function is perhaps why <a href="https://becauselanguage.com/63-mailbag-of-yeah-no/">newer studies</a> have found this form of “yeah-no” is used predominantly by younger people. </p>
<p>A little surprising, really — in most other functions, Baby Boomers have been documented to be the most prolific users of “yeah-no”. </p>
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<h2>You belong with me — language binds us</h2>
<p>Language is all about communicating (of course), but it’s also about defining the gang — and never underestimate the significance of this second function. Members of Swift’s fandom are known for weaving her song lyrics (“blank space, baby”, “red lip classic”) into their conversations. These fragments of lyrics become a kind of “clique”, or in-group recognition device — <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/taylor-swift-lyrics-senate-linguistics-fanilect/">“if you’re quoting Taylor Swift, that connects us”</a>. </p>
<p>Swift is certainly aware of the power of language when it comes to creating bonds, and not just through relatable lyrics and themes. She is brilliant at acknowledging local culture and using colloquial phrases to connect with her audiences. And she nailed it with “yeah-nah”.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/224062/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kate Burridge receives funding from ARC SR200200350
Metaphors and Identities in the Australian Vernacular. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Isabelle Burke receives funding from ARC SR200200350 Metaphors and Identities in the Australian Vernacular. </span></em></p>For Australians, it’s a love story, so baby just say “yeah-nah”.Kate Burridge, Professor of Linguistics, Monash UniversityIsabelle Burke, Research fellow in Linguistics, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2230502024-02-14T12:21:09Z2024-02-14T12:21:09ZDon’t blame parents for wanting their children to speak differently – blame society<p>Rishi Sunak, the UK prime minister, <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/rishi-sunak-my-mother-didnt-want-us-to-have-accents-qtxp9zh75">recently</a> described how, growing up, his parents were determined that his Indian heritage should not be a barrier for him and his siblings. They did what they could to ensure their children would fit in. </p>
<p>One way his mother did this, he says, was to send them to extra drama lessons. The reason? To make sure they “didn’t speak with accents”, and instead would be able to “speak properly”.</p>
<p>It is hard to criticise Mrs Sunak for wanting to do what’s best for her children. She was aware of an injustice that her children were facing, and so she did what she could to minimise that injustice. One less thing for the racists to seize upon. </p>
<p>However, from a linguistic perspective, the strategy is somewhat flawed. It is, of course, objectively impossible to speak without an accent. Whenever we speak, that speech has certain characteristics, certain ways of pronouncing the sounds. And those pronunciations are what make up the accent. Speaking without an accent is, well, not actually speaking. It is silence.</p>
<p>It follows that everybody has an accent. If we don’t like it, the most we can ever do is change our accent into another one. But we can’t just decide or learn not to have one.</p>
<h2>What does ‘to speak without an accent’ mean?</h2>
<p>In Rishi Sunak’s case, it means eschewing the accent that marks you out as being different, and, instead, using the one that allows you to fit in. One accent creates obstacles, another accent opens doors. The wrong accent gets in the way, the right accent goes unnoticed. In fact, the right accent does such a good job of going unnoticed, that it ceases to be seen as an accent at all.</p>
<p>“Accentless” spoken language is the language of the elite, of authority. It’s the version of the language that is used by the people who have traditionally held power in any given society, be that social power, political power or racial power. It’s the way of speaking that goes unchallenged. It’s the way of speaking that can allow people to go about their business, unchallenged.</p>
<p>In England, this <a href="https://accentbiasbritain.org/accents-in-britain/#:%7E:text=Received%20Pronunciation%20(RP),and%20upper%2Dmiddle%2Dclasses.">prestige accent</a> is what is variably known as received pronunciation (RP), the King’s English, BBC English, or southern standard British English, depending on who you ask and what the context is. Sunak’s natural way of speaking is firmly in this area. Not as extreme as the RP of his colleague, Jacob Rees-Mogg, but in the same ballpark. </p>
<p>As any linguist will tell you, however, RP is still an accent. And like all accents, its use can give us insights into who somebody is, or who somebody is trying to be. </p>
<p>The way we speak is <a href="https://scribepublications.co.uk/books-authors/books/youare-all-talk-9781914484285">inextricably linked to who we are</a>, to our sense of identity. Whether by reflecting aspects of ourselves to the outside world (such as where we’re from, our social class, our race and ethnicity), or by helping to consciously create the version of ourselves we want to portray, our accent plays an important role in making us, us. </p>
<p>So changing the way we speak is no small undertaking. Moving towards a perceived “standard” can mean changing the bits of our spoken language that tie us to a particular regional, social or racial background. This in turn can mean erasing those aspects of our identity – at least in our speech. </p>
<p>But it is not the fault of the parents in encouraging their children to speak in ways that erase their background. It is the fault of a society that makes this necessary for people to succeed. We live in a society where speaking in a certain way still matters, despite the obvious inequalities this creates. Some people are born into this arbitrary linguistic privilege. Some do what they can to acquire it. And others are so far removed from it they don’t even get close.</p>
<p>Speaking with the wrong accent can cause serious problems. Not only can it bring <a href="https://www.suttontrust.com/our-research/speaking-up-accents-social-mobility/">criticism</a> and <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/angela-rayner-hits-back-at-abusive-emails-over-her-accent_uk_5811d990e4b04660a438156a">abuse</a>, but it can work against you <a href="https://accentbiasbritain.org/">at work</a>, with the <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000ls8x">police</a>, within the <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15377938.2019.1623963">legal system</a> and in the <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/900094">housing rental market</a>. </p>
<p>An RP accent in the wrong context can indeed make you stand out as uncomfortably posh, sometimes leading to people <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhnQTxUP56I">temporarily adapting</a> their accent to fit in. But this discomfort pales compared with genuine prejudice the other way around. </p>
<p>People will always do what needs to be done to allow them and their children to succeed in life. For some, this means changing their accents. But wouldn’t a better option be for us, collectively, to challenge what makes this necessary? Surely we should work to change the way we listen, not force others to change the way they speak.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/223050/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rob Drummond has previously received funding from The Arts and Humanities Research Council, The Leverhulme Trust, and The British Council</span></em></p>‘Accentless’ spoken language is the language of the elite, of authority. It’s the version of the language that is used by the people who have traditionally held all the power.Rob Drummond, Professor of Sociolinguistics, Manchester Metropolitan UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2220882024-02-12T16:31:36Z2024-02-12T16:31:36ZTea, weather and being on time: analysis of 100 million words reveals what Brits talk about most<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/572883/original/file-20240201-21-bi674h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=172%2C76%2C4077%2C2746&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/english-gentleman-drinking-tea-184937822">John Gomez/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Lovely weather today, isn’t it? Time for a cuppa? The way someone talks, and the words they use, tell us quite a bit about where someone is from, their social background and even their age. Language both reflects and shapes society – as a linguist, it’s my job to find out how. </p>
<p>One way to do this is by analysing large collections of language, which linguists call corpora (or “bodies”). By measuring the frequency of words, we can determine what a particular society or group prioritises and values.</p>
<p>In <a href="https://cass.lancs.ac.uk/words-words-words-a-new-frequency-dictionary-of-british-english/">research</a> for a new frequency dictionary of British English, my colleague Dana Gablasova and I, both at Lancaster University, analysed every word in the British National Corpus 2014. </p>
<p>The corpus is a 100 million-word sample of current language. It covers language used in informal speech, fiction, newspapers, magazines, academic writing and online sources between 2010 and 2020. It is free and publicly accessible at <a href="https://lancsbox.lancs.ac.uk/">#LancsBox</a> and <a href="https://lancslex.lancs.ac.uk/">LancsLex</a>. Here are five frequently discussed topics and some of the words that define them, including how many times they appeared per million words.</p>
<h2>1. Time and punctuality</h2>
<p>According to our analysis, “year” and “time” are the two most frequent nouns in British English, occurring 1,963 and 1,898 per million words, respectively. People talk and write about them all year round, time (and time) again. The idea of time is closely connected with punctuality – something <a href="https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/4132-punctuality-are-you-usually-early-late-or-right-ti">highly valued</a> in Britain.</p>
<p>The expressions “on time” and “in time” occur with the combined frequency of 47 per million words. When we look at preferences of individual time-related words, summer (144 per million) is preferred over winter (63 per million). Sunday (114 per million) and Saturday (104 per million) are spoken and written about more than any of the other days. Morning (206 per million) is twice as frequent as evening (103 per million) and almost three times as frequent as afternoon (70 per million). The most popular month is December (149 per million), followed by March and May (145 and 142 per million respectively).</p>
<h2>2. Weather and climate</h2>
<p>Cultural stereotypes – and <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/extras/lifestyle/british-people-time-spent-talking-weather-conversation-topic-heatwave-a8496166.html">plenty of polling</a> – suggest that Brits frequently talk about the weather. Our language data supports this. </p>
<p>The word “weather” occurs with the frequency of 60 per million, alongside words such as “pub” and “restaurant”, which occur with similar frequencies. “Weather” is most frequently used in online language (mainly emails and text messages) followed by newspapers (weather reports). </p>
<p>Here is an example from the corpus of a casual exchange of text messages showing a typical weather small talk: </p>
<p>Looking at specific weather terms, people more frequently talk about the sun (91 per million) than the rain (51 per million as a noun, and 15 per million as a verb). Storms (32 per million), clouds (39 per million), floods (19 per million) and even snow (37 per million) receive their due share of attention in texts and conversations. Major storms are often referred to by their names, such as Desmond, which caused extensive flooding in 2015. </p>
<p>Climate change (29 per million), emissions (43 per million) and renewable energy (6 per million) also now dominate the public discourse, indicating a growing focus on longer-term changes, not just current weather conditions. There has been a 21% increase in the combined relative frequencies of these terms between 2010-2015 and 2016-2020.</p>
<h2>3. Food and drink</h2>
<p>This category reflects eating and drinking habits as well as dietary preferences. “Dinner” appears 68 times per million words, “lunch” 51 times and “breakfast” 43 times per million. The most frequently mentioned food items include eggs, fish, cake, apples, chocolate, cream, chicken, meat, fruit and cheese. And a cultural sweet tooth is evident: cake is spoken about three times more frequently than salad. </p>
<p>The most commonly mentioned beverages include: tea, wine, coffee, beer, milk, juice and champagne. The quintessentially British beverage, tea, is almost six times more frequent than champagne.</p>
<p>The graph below shows what words are prominently associated with the verb “to eat”. We measured these to show how strongly the words are connected in text and speech. The closer the word appears to the node in the middle, the stronger the association – and the size of the circle reflects the frequency of these words appearing together in texts and speech.</p>
<h2>4. Emotions</h2>
<p>Keep calm and carry on? While the British disposition is known to be composed and slightly reserved, the data shows that the most frequent adjective expressing an emotion is “happy”. It occurs 208 times per million, often used in phrases expressing contentment, such as “I’m quite happy to stay at home”. </p>
<p>In contrast, the most frequent adjective expressing a negative emotion is “sorry” (204 per million), often used in apologies or polite refusals. Other adjectives expressing emotions include proud, sad (both 54 per million), pleased (53 per million), afraid (47 per million) and glad (46 per million). </p>
<h2>5. Our bodies</h2>
<p>The review of the British National Corpus 2014 also shows that people spend quite a bit of time talking about their bodies. Specifically, hand, head, eye, foot and heart are the top five most frequently used words referring to our body. </p>
<p>Many uses of words in this category are metaphors or a part of fixed expressions. About one third of uses of the term “head” are metaphorical or have another meaning, such as a job title: “head of marketing”. Expressions such as “on the one hand”, “in the public eye”, “put one’s foot down” and “break somebody’s heart” are all examples of how our bodily experience of the world is present in ordinary language as we use it every day.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/222088/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Vaclav Brezina receives funding from the ESRC, British Council. </span></em></p>‘Year’ and ‘time’ are the two most frequent nouns in British English.Vaclav Brezina, Professor in Corpus Linguistics, Lancaster UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2224802024-02-12T13:26:11Z2024-02-12T13:26:11ZAre you really in love? How expanding your love lexicon can change your relationships and how you see yourself<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574485/original/file-20240208-20-i320ao.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C1732%2C1732&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Language can steer your heart in unexpected ways.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/illustration/heart-with-speech-bubbles-royalty-free-illustration/639561892">VLADGRIN/Stock via Getty Images Plus</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>What is love? Could those feelings you label as love be something else? </p>
<p>What about infatuation? Obsession? A passing fancy? Being smitten? Enthrallment? Beguilement? Lust? A crush? A <a href="https://medium.com/@caitlin_murphy/whats-a-squish-cb07ce59adc1">squish</a>? Platonic admiration? Why do people categorize some attachments as romantic love but not others? </p>
<p>Suppose Holly meets someone on vacation. They quickly become romantically and sexually intimate and seem deeply compatible. Holly is from the U.K., where the term “<a href="https://www.oed.com/dictionary/holiday-romance_n">holiday romance</a>” is commonly used and part of her vocabulary. Because she knows this term, she can apply its social scaffolding to this relationship. She understands that the rapid emotional intimacy and apparent compatibility she experienced likely sprang from <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/travel-truths/36-questions-to-fall-in-love-arthur-aron-holiday-romance/">fleeting circumstances</a> that aren’t meant to last. </p>
<p>Someone from the U.S., however, where this term is <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/holiday-romance">rarely used</a>, might more easily interpret this rapid intimacy as a sign of deep, significant lifelong compatibility.</p>
<p>Judging that you are in love <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-does-love-feel-magical-its-an-evolutionary-advantage-180443">can be powerful</a>. It can affect your feelings, relationships and even your sexuality. But how do people judge whether they are in love?</p>
<p>This, I argue, depends on your <a href="https://philpapers.org/rec/GARWFT">linguistic community</a>. That is, how the people around you talk about romance, relationships and attraction. </p>
<p>I am a philosopher who <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=M5Vxs_cAAAAJ&hl=en">studies categorization schemas</a> – how, when and why people label things such as emotions, sexuality and health. I examine the effects of those labels on how people understand themselves and on their well-being, and how alternative taxonomies and labels can make people understand and shape the world differently. </p>
<p>What happens when a culture instills a broader, more encompassing definition of love, or a narrower, more restrictive definition? How does having a richer vocabulary of words in the neighborhood of love change how we understand it?</p>
<h2>The social scaffolding of words</h2>
<p>Self-ascriptions of love <a href="https://philpapers.org/rec/GARWFT">depend on two things</a>. The first are introspective judgments about your feelings: Are you attracted to the person? Energized by them? Nervous around them? And the second is what you think love is: Does love require caring about the person? Thinking about them a lot? Sexual attraction? When how you feel about a person and what you think love is match up, you self-ascribe love. That is, you judge that you are in love. </p>
<p>Words provide social scaffolding. That is, they create expectations and norms that steer how you behave and react to other people. And vocabularies vary by culture and era.</p>
<p>Categorizing an attachment as a “holiday romance” doesn’t just describe it but can also change its course. The label affects what Holly notices and values about the time she spends together with another person and whether she is inclined to pursue a long-term relationship.</p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/the-power-of-language-we-translate-our-thoughts-into-words-but-words-also-affect-the-way-we-think-111801">Vocabulary is empowering</a>. Having an even more expansive vocabulary would allow Holly to experiment with different labels, and these could shape her relationships in different ways. </p>
<p>For example, the term “<a href="https://www.theheartradio.org/season1/thehurricane">eintagsliebe</a>,” based on the German word for “mayfly” and translating to “one day’s love,” refers to an intense and brief relationship. “<a href="https://poly.land/2021/08/31/what-are-comet-relationships/">Comet lovers</a>” have a deep romantic bond but see each other only intermittently, living far apart the rest of the time without much contact. A “<a href="https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=holibae">holibae</a>” is a perennial date that happens only when you’re visiting home for the holidays. See also “<a href="https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Post%2FZip%20Code%20Rule">zipcoding</a>” – dating someone only when you’re both in the same ZIP code.</p>
<h2>The dictionary of polyamory</h2>
<p>Words create possibilities, and the recent surge of <a href="https://theconversation.com/whats-a-polycule-an-expert-on-polyamory-explains-195083">interest in polyamory</a>, or having more than one romantic relationship at a time, has introduced substantial amounts of <a href="https://www.readyforpolyamory.com/polyamory-glossary">new vocabulary</a>.</p>
<p>An “anchor partner” is a central figure in your romantic life. A “nesting partner” is a partner you live with. And a “satellite partner” has emotional and physical distance from your home. Vocabularies sculpted by traditional monogamous relationships might not distinguish between these types of attachments because they see non-cohabitating partnerships only as <a href="https://www.cosmopolitan.com/sex-love/a41443281/relationship-escalator/">temporary transition phases</a> that end by breaking up or become serious by moving in.</p>
<p>By rejecting the mainstream social scaffolding about relationships, polyamory creates the <a href="https://blog.franklinveaux.com/2017/12/an-update-to-the-map-of-non-monogamy/">need for more terms</a> to describe innovative relationship structures. And those words in turn create more possibilities for how polyamorous people interpret and structure their attachments.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574493/original/file-20240208-26-zsfx3i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Backs of group of people with their arms links around each other, backlit by the sun" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574493/original/file-20240208-26-zsfx3i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574493/original/file-20240208-26-zsfx3i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574493/original/file-20240208-26-zsfx3i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574493/original/file-20240208-26-zsfx3i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574493/original/file-20240208-26-zsfx3i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574493/original/file-20240208-26-zsfx3i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574493/original/file-20240208-26-zsfx3i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Polyamory has inspired new vocabulary to describe nontraditional relationship structures.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/low-angle-view-of-friends-with-arm-around-standing-royalty-free-image/961358016">Cavan Images/Cavan via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>“<a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-polyamorists-next-door/201910/new-relationship-energy-what-it-is-how-deal-it">New relationship energy</a>” is the buzzing excitement of a new relationship. “<a href="https://polywithabigheart.com/2020/01/27/established-relationship-energy/">Established relationship energy</a>” is the comfort of a stable, long-term relationship. These emotions are especially salient within polyamorous relationships, where the excitement of a new relationship can arise alongside the comfort of preexisting relationships. </p>
<p>But monogamous relationships also benefit from these linguistic innovations. Monogamous relationships might also involve new relationship energy, established relationship energy, and nesting, anchor and satellite partnerships, even if they aren’t labeled as such. Such self-understandings affect the values, emotions, commitments and beliefs people use to forge relationships.</p>
<h2>Conceptual tourism</h2>
<p>Conceptual schemas, or the words and concepts we have for understanding ourselves and the world around us, have <a href="https://philpapers.org/rec/GARWFT">permissive flexibility</a>: People can disagree about what words like “love,” “crush” and “bi-curious” mean. Disagreement doesn’t mean that someone is wrong. Rather, flexibility allows us to explore different ways to understand the world and ourselves. We can be conceptual tourists.</p>
<p>Suppose Nell develops an ambiguous attachment to a new classmate. She finds her charming, witty and pretty, but it isn’t a clear-cut case of romantic attraction. Nell can adopt a broad or narrow definition of the word “crush,” depending on whether her feelings meet how she defines a “crush.” Altering what she means by a “crush” would change whether she labels herself as having a crush. This, in turn, could affect whether Nell sees herself as queer or straight.</p>
<p>If she knows other terms to describe her feelings, Nell might interpret them as “<a href="https://www.choosingtherapy.com/types-of-attraction/">alterous attraction</a>,” which is the desire for emotional intimacy in a way that is neither platonic nor romantic. She might seek a “<a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/bound-together/202109/queerplatonic-relationships-new-term-old-custom">queerplatonic relationship</a>,” which resembles a conventional romantic relationship but without sex or conventional romance. Or, if her feelings are intense, Nell might self-ascribe “<a href="https://digitalcommons.sacredheart.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1134&context=psych_fac">limerence</a>,” which is obsessive infatuation.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574487/original/file-20240208-28-blh1vu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Two people sitting back to back on grass, hands loosely intertwined" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574487/original/file-20240208-28-blh1vu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574487/original/file-20240208-28-blh1vu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574487/original/file-20240208-28-blh1vu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574487/original/file-20240208-28-blh1vu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574487/original/file-20240208-28-blh1vu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574487/original/file-20240208-28-blh1vu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574487/original/file-20240208-28-blh1vu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">How you label your feelings toward someone influences how you interpret them.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/couple-holding-hands-royalty-free-image/1209086354">Johner Images/Johner Images Royalty-Free via Getty Images</a></span>
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</figure>
<p><a href="https://philpapers.org/rec/GARWFT">Self-ascribing labels</a> affects what people notice about themselves, how they interpret their feelings and what they appreciate about their attachments. What she pays attention to <a href="https://philarchive.org/rec/GARAOT-11">fuels particular emotions</a> and can bolster certain attitudes, like profound gratitude, that might distinguish love from crushes. </p>
<p>For example, if Nell interprets herself as having a crush, she may become more attuned to the excitement she feels around her classmate, which can fuel those emotions in a feedback loop. If she labels her feelings as platonic admiration, she might <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt7snpw.8">instead interpret</a> herself as being nervous about impressing her new classmate. </p>
<p>Nell can experimentally adopt different labels – alterous attraction, queer, crush, limerence, straight and more – to see which fit best. Some labels might better match her emotions. And those labels might also change her emotions and become <a href="https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-a-self-fulfilling-prophecy-6740420">self-fulfilling prophecies</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://philpapers.org/rec/GARWFT">Conceptual tourism</a> can be a valuable cognitive skill. It requires the mental dexterity to inhabit rival <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190860974.003.0002">conceptual schemas</a> and try on new interpretative terms. Doing so can increase your self-understanding, cultivate self-determination and even help steer your heart. </p>
<p>Culture unavoidably provides a lexicon of attachment that shapes how you relate to other people. A culture that is more <a href="https://www.bonn-institute.org/en/news/psychology-in-journalism-2">deliberate about the words</a> it uses for different kinds of attraction can help people bond in new and more open-minded ways. </p>
<p>It’s also a great motivator for education: Learning new words can help you improve your love life.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/222480/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Georgi Gardiner receives funding from the University of Tennessee. She has previously received funding from the American Council for Learned Societies (ACLS) and the Institute for Humane Studies (IHS). </span></em></p>Words have power, and what vocabulary you have at your disposal to describe your relationships with other people can shape what directions those relationships can take.Georgi Gardiner, Associate Professor of Philosophy and Fellow of the University of Tennessee Humanities Center (UTHC), University of TennesseeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2206132024-01-25T12:21:02Z2024-01-25T12:21:02ZHow the tide turned on transgender support charity Mermaids<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/568172/original/file-20240108-20-cwznj1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=35%2C26%2C5955%2C3961&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/lgbt-pride-flag-symbol-lesbian-gay-1722901423">BlurryMe/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The charity Mermaids, which offers support services to transgender young people and their caregivers in the UK, was once portrayed in the media as a respected source of advice and information. But by 2022, this had changed. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17405904.2023.2291136?src=exp-la">Our recent study</a> showed that negative attention to the charity peaked in 2022, a year that saw British newspapers regularly publishing stories that helped establish an image of Mermaids as a danger to young people. Similar complaints and concerns from members of the public led the Charity Commission to open a regulatory compliance case on Mermaids, in <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-63081644">late September 2022</a>.</p>
<p>Our findings show how some media outlets have used negative representations of Mermaids to imply that those who support trans young people are untrustworthy. Such representations have threatened to turn the organisation into a weapon against the very people it is trying to help. </p>
<p>In the past decade, there has been a significant increase in media attention on transgender people and the issues that affect them, something that has been noted <a href="https://mermaidsuk.org.uk/news/exclusive-mermaids-research-into-newspaper-coverage-on-trans-issues/">in research</a> commissioned by Mermaids and carried out by linguistics professor Paul Baker.</p>
<p>Studies have also shown how these media representations of transgender people <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14680777.2022.2097727">often dehumanise</a> them, <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1363460717740259">ignore and disregard</a> their identities, and characterise them as either <a href="https://glaad.org/publications/victims-or-villains-examining-ten-years-transgender-images-television">victims or villains</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://mermaidsuk.org.uk/news/exclusive-mermaids-research-into-newspaper-coverage-on-trans-issues/">Representations of young transgender people</a> have tended to be more positive, or at least neutral. Yet news stories often suggest that their efforts to transition, for example through the adoption of a new name or clothing choices, should not be supported. </p>
<h2>Increasing interest</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17405904.2023.2291136?src=exp-la">Our study</a> showed that Mermaids became the subject of particularly intense media scrutiny in late 2022. At this time, news articles and opinion pieces were calling into question the charity’s legitimacy and authority, with particular attention to their support of young people’s decisions and preferences around clothing and names. The Times and Telegraph published numerous reports in the autumn of 2022 that called Mermaids’ practices a “danger” to young people. </p>
<p>For example, in October 2022 the Daily Telegraph published an article titled “Trans charity helping 16-year-olds legally change names in secret”, which also states that Mermaids “gave potentially dangerous chest-flattening devices to 14-year-olds against their parents’ wishes”.</p>
<p>Chest binders were a particular focus in many articles. Our research shows that the frequency of the word “binder” dramatically increased in 2022 articles about Mermaids. Binders are tight-fitting items of clothing that some trans and gender questioning young people wear in order to minimise <a href="https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/gender-dysphoria/#:%7E:text=Gender%20dysphoria%20is%20a%20term,harmful%20impact%20on%20daily%20life">gender dysphoria</a> and affirm their gender identities. </p>
<p>Many of the articles describe binders as destructive, powerful mechanisms that are dangerous to young people. They focus on physical health problems, such as musculoskeletal and breathing issues, which can result from unsafe or unregulated binding.</p>
<p>The articles do not tend to acknowledge the harm that can be caused by gender dysphoria, or by attempting to bind the chest without adult supervision. <a href="https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/full/10.1089/trgh.2018.0017">Research has shown</a> that the potential for health risks may be worsened if young people try to hide their use of a binder from adults, instead of discussing how to use one safely. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Happy young people dancing at an outdoor event." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/568174/original/file-20240108-156527-ff2c23.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/568174/original/file-20240108-156527-ff2c23.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568174/original/file-20240108-156527-ff2c23.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568174/original/file-20240108-156527-ff2c23.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568174/original/file-20240108-156527-ff2c23.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568174/original/file-20240108-156527-ff2c23.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568174/original/file-20240108-156527-ff2c23.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">New guidance to schools takes a restrictive approach to gender transitions.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/happy-young-people-dancing-outdoor-festival-2192448719">Tint Media/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Mermaids <a href="https://mermaidsuk.org.uk/news/statement-in-response-to-a-telegraph-article-published-sunday-25-september/">responded to the Telegraph</a> article by clarifying that they are working to reduce harm for young people. They note that providing “comprehensive safety guidelines from an experienced member of staff is preferable to the likely alternative”. Mermaids’ guidance says it is important to follow safety tips such as limiting use as much as possible in warm weather, even if you’re struggling with gender dysphoria.</p>
<h2>Changing perspectives</h2>
<p>The services offered by Mermaids have remained largely unchanged over the years. However, when we <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17405904.2023.2291136?src=exp-la">investigated the representation</a> of Mermaids in British newspapers, we found there hadn’t always been such high levels of negative attention. </p>
<p>Between 2015 and 2016, during their first year operating as a charity, there was hardly any interest in Mermaids’ activities. Where it was mentioned, the organisation was usually represented as a valuable support service. </p>
<p>In 2018, media interest increased significantly after the release of Butterfly, an ITV drama about a trans young person and their family. In the same year, the National Lottery announced they would be awarding a grant of £500,000 to support Mermaids’ work through the Big Lottery Fund. </p>
<p>While newspapers were still signposting Mermaids as a source of information and support at this time, there was also resistance to the charity’s growing recognition and positive reputation. For example, the Sunday Times reported “an outcry” following the Big Lottery announcement, calling into question the value of Mermaids’ work as a public service.</p>
<p>Between 2019 and 2022, the frequency of articles grew again. 2022 saw the most significant peak in interest, with four times as many articles being published than in the previous year. </p>
<p>In late November 2022, the Charity Commission opened a <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/regulator-announces-statutory-inquiry-into-mermaids">statutory inquiry</a> that focused on “newly identified issues about the charity’s governance and management”, including internal issues of equality and diversity amongst staff. The charity’s CEO, Susie Green, resigned in November 2022. </p>
<p>These events further contributed to negative interest in the charity. They were frequently labelled a “<a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/12/02/mermaids-transgender-charity-formal-investigation/">scandal-hit</a>” organisation whose experience with trans young people could not be trusted. The commission has yet to report its findings. </p>
<p>These changing representations of Mermaids are in line with wider shifts in the climate for trans young people in Britain. Just before Christmas, the UK government’s Department for Education released its <a href="https://consult.education.gov.uk/equalities-political-impartiality-anti-bullying-team/gender-questioning-children-proposed-guidance/supporting_documents/Gender%20Questioning%20Children%20%20nonstatutory%20guidance.pdf">long-awaited guidance</a> on gender questioning children for schools and colleges in England.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/trans-guidance-for-schools-the-voices-of-young-people-are-missing-207663">Trans guidance for schools: the voices of young people are missing</a>
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<p>The guidance, which is undergoing public consultation and is not legally enforceable, advises educators to take a restrictive approach to transgender pupils’ social transition at school. The LGBTQ+ charity <a href="https://stonewall.org.uk/about-us/news/not-fit-purpose-stonewalls-response-draft-trans-guidance-schools-england">Stonewall said</a> the guidance has “the potential to have a very chilling effect” akin to section 28, which banned the discussion of same-sex relationships in English schools between 1988 and 2003. </p>
<p>Recent years have seen more awareness of trans identities among the general public, and a <a href="https://gids.nhs.uk/about-us/number-of-referrals/">significant increase</a> in referrals to gender identity services. Much of the <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12366421/The-trans-lobby-pushed-double-masectomy-bitterly-regret-Thats-Costas-advert-dangerous-writes-SINEAD-WATSON-detransitioned-woman-double-mastectomy.html">media coverage</a> around trans young people alludes to the potential for regret. </p>
<p>However, the <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1054139X22005031?via%3Dihub">vast majority</a> of young people who socially transition maintain a stable gender identity into adulthood and a 2021 US study found rates of <a href="https://atm.amegroups.org/article/view/64719/html">post-surgery regret</a> are 0.3%. </p>
<p><a href="https://mermaidsuk.org.uk/news/exclusive-mermaids-research-into-newspaper-coverage-on-trans-issues/">Paul Baker’s research</a> suggested that organisations like Mermaids may be targeted because they can more easily be named and critiqued than trans young people themselves. We would agree. </p>
<p>Discrediting the organisation, not the people, allows journalists to question and oppose young people’s gender identities without breaking media <a href="https://www.ipso.co.uk/media/1275/guidance_transgender-reporting.pdf">guidelines</a> for reporting about trans people and children. </p>
<p>The dominant image of Mermaids as a dangerous and controversial organisation has probably contributed to a growing culture of fear and suspicion around trans young people and those who support them. </p>
<p>Hardly a negative word has been directed towards transgender young people, yet the seeds of mistrust, in anyone who upholds their identities and choices, have been firmly planted by the British media. </p>
<p><em>This article has been updated to add details of the Charity Commission’s ongoing regulatory compliance case and statutory inquiry into Mermaids.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/220613/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Research shows how the group once portrayed as a respected source of advice began to be seen by some outlets as a danger to young people.Aimee Bailey, Lecturer in English Language, De Montfort UniversityJai Mackenzie, Senior Lecturer in Applied Writing and Humanities, Newman UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2205202024-01-11T13:24:37Z2024-01-11T13:24:37ZSellout! How political corruption shaped an American insult<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/568059/original/file-20240105-15-op8mrg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=6%2C55%2C4034%2C2967&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Alf Bruseth, 'Politician Coin Bank' (1938).</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.20772.html"> Index of American Design</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>If you follow politics, sports, Hollywood or the arts, you’ve no doubt heard the insult “sellout” thrown around to describe someone perceived to have betrayed a core principle or shared value in their pursuit of personal gain. </p>
<p>The term has recently been hurled at a range of well-known targets: Donald Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows for <a href="https://www.msnbc.com/deadline-white-house/watch/-hail-mary-attempt-fails-appeals-court-rules-mark-meadows-cannot-move-case-out-of-georgia-200487493763">cooperating with</a> a special counsel investigating election fraud in 2020; Kim Kardashian for advertising <a href="https://time.com/4314413/modern-feminism-is-selling-out/">her personal brands</a> as a form of women’s empowerment; even former NFL great Deion Sanders, for leaving Jackson State, a historically Black university, <a href="https://theconversation.com/calling-deion-sanders-a-sellout-ignores-the-growing-role-of-clout-chasing-in-college-sports-196792">to coach</a> at the University of Colorado.</p>
<p>Most people, I find, are familiar with this accusation. But few people really know the full story of “selling out” – when and where the term originated, how it spread across so many different sectors of American culture, and just why this insult hurts so much. These are the questions I set out to answer in the book I’m currently writing, tentatively titled “Sellouts! The Story of an American Insult.” </p>
<p>Through my research, I found that the idea of selling out originates with American politics — and more precisely, with the scandals of the Gilded Age.</p>
<h2>Gilded Age origins</h2>
<p>This era, which gets its name from Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner’s 1873 satirical novel “<a href="https://www.loa.org/books/178-the-gilded-age-amp-later-novels/">The Gilded Age: A Tale of To-day</a>,” spans roughly from the 1870s to the 1900s. These <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/25144440">decades saw the rise</a> of industrial capitalism in the United States: people moving to cities, technologies transforming industries like the railroads, growing unrest and activism by workers, and crises erupting from an economy built around banks, stocks and corporations.</p>
<p>Until this time, the phrase “selling out” had largely <a href="https://www.oed.com/dictionary/sell_v?tab=phrasal_verbs#23525421">been used to describe</a> the sale of one’s stock or holdings – cattle, steel, grain, real estate. But <a href="https://www.oed.com/dictionary/sell_n2?tab=meaning_and_use#23522487">by the 1870s</a>, the term had quickly gained a new meaning as an insult for public figures — especially politicians — who had compromised their morals, and the needs of the community, in pursuit of illicit personal gain.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Cartoon of obese men representing various industries looming over senators." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/568056/original/file-20240105-19-bjst1t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/568056/original/file-20240105-19-bjst1t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568056/original/file-20240105-19-bjst1t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568056/original/file-20240105-19-bjst1t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568056/original/file-20240105-19-bjst1t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568056/original/file-20240105-19-bjst1t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568056/original/file-20240105-19-bjst1t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘The Bosses of the Senate’ by Joseph Keppler, published in the Jan. 23, 1889, issue of Puck.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Bosses_of_the_Senate_by_Joseph_Keppler.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Of course, political scandals were hardly a novelty of the 1870s. What changed in the Gilded Age, <a href="https://networks.h-net.org/node/20317/reviews/21375/burg-summers-gilded-age-or-hazard-new-functions">historians suggest</a>, was not the frequency or severity of unethical behavior by politicians, but rather the public’s awareness of the corruption plaguing the U.S. political system. </p>
<h2>The Tweed Ring</h2>
<p>Party politics has always involved graft: skimming off the top of budgets, directing contracts to favored firms, and securing offices for friends. But <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2023/07/02/george-santos-william-boss-tweed-tammany-hall/">William Tweed, widely known as “Boss Tweed,”</a> took this corruption to new heights.</p>
<p>In the 1860s, Tweed ran New York’s Democratic Party. His circle of influence extended to dozens of city and state offices. The Tweed Ring would provide someone with a job, and then the beneficiary would provide the ring with a kickback.</p>
<p>Whenever contracts were issued for services like carpentry, the ring inflated costs and skimmed off the extra — at first, adding a mere 10%, but later exaggerating these expenses wildly. One carpeting bill from a Tweed contractor ran to US$565,731, a cost high enough for a carpet in New York City to get “<a href="https://kennethackerman.com/books/boss-tweed/">halfway to Albany</a>.” </p>
<p>The ring would also buy up large chunks of city real estate, especially plots they knew were about to receive development projects. Estimates on the total wealth they siphoned through such graft <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Boss_Tweed/ipAxruFk54AC?hl=en&gbpv=1&printsec=frontcover">range from</a> $20 million to a staggering $200 million – or around $5 billion in 2024, when adjusted for inflation.</p>
<p>Tweed’s cronies also fixed elections with a boldness that’s unthinkable today; one drunken accomplice <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Tiger-Rise-Fall-Tammany-Hall/dp/020162463X">confessed he had voted</a> at least 28 times on Election Day.</p>
<p>In 1870, The New York Times began an unprecedented journalistic exposé of Tweed and his ring. Their editorials used the phrase “selling out” to capture how city and state politics were <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1870/11/26/archives/the-tammany-ring-and-its-agents.html">manipulated by a corrupt few</a> who lined their pockets and kept a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1871/10/16/archives/the-democratic-circus.html">chokehold on elections</a>. </p>
<p>The Times also attacked other newspapers, like the New York World, which took large “advertising revenues” from Tweed, as evidence that these papers would “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1870/11/23/archives/the-mission-of-the-democratic-party.html">sell out to the highest bidder</a>.” In a <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/American_Journalism/eatZAAAAMAAJ?hl=en">major coup</a>, the Times eventually published complete records of the city’s finances, proving the ring’s corruption and landing Tweed inside the Ludlow Street Jail. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Cartoon of men standing in a circle pointing their fingers." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/568057/original/file-20240105-27-m5onvj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/568057/original/file-20240105-27-m5onvj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=445&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568057/original/file-20240105-27-m5onvj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=445&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568057/original/file-20240105-27-m5onvj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=445&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568057/original/file-20240105-27-m5onvj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=559&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568057/original/file-20240105-27-m5onvj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=559&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568057/original/file-20240105-27-m5onvj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=559&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Thomas Nast’s cartoons in Harper’s transformed the public’s perception of William ‘Boss’ Tweed.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/55200970-dc40-0130-375d-58d385a7bbd0">New York Public Library Digital Collections</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Times’ crusade against Tweed pioneered a new, activist form of journalism, while also helping establish “selling out” as a recognizable idea in American life. </p>
<p>Later journalists, known as muckrakers, would launch their own famous investigations, such as Lincoln Steffens’ writing on <a href="https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.31822043023084&seq=7">political machines</a> in other U.S. cities, David Graham Philips’ coverage of the <a href="https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/100646108">widespread misdeeds</a> of U.S. senators, and Ida Tarbell’s exposure of Standard Oil’s <a href="https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/004490918">illicit business practices</a>.</p>
<p>All used the newly popularized phrase “selling out” to describe the corruption of a democratic society. The “corrupt government of Illinois sold out its people to its own grafters,” <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Struggle_for_Self_government/EYYmAAAAMAAJ?hl=en">wrote Steffens</a>, whereas “the organized grafters of Missouri, Wisconsin, and Rhode Island sold, or are selling, out their States to bigger grafters outside.” </p>
<h2>A contested concept</h2>
<p>Over the next century, the idea of selling out spread from politics to numerous other corners of American culture: <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/pmla/article/abs/on-the-literary-history-of-selling-out-craft-identity-and-commercial-recognition/2AA296CB7FEA8768D1F944CF88F7DBDB">Novelists chastised peers</a> who went to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/01956051.1984.10661963">write for Hollywood</a> as sellouts, while <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/810368/summary">Black intellectuals</a> debated what, if anything, Black elected officials had to do to be seen as <a href="https://hls.harvard.edu/bibliography/sellout-the-politics-of-racial-betrayal/">“authentic” racial representatives</a> and not sellouts. </p>
<p>For all its many uses in American culture, however, selling out remains a contested concept. For virtually any action that some people view as a betrayal, others will see as a rational choice. </p>
<p>Consider Bob Johnson, co-founder of Black Entertainment Television, who became the first Black billionaire when <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Billion_Dollar_BET/aF_LAgAAQBAJ?hl=en">he sold the cable channel</a> to Viacom in 2001. Some applauded his historic sale, but <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/2000/11/04/but-has-the-network-sold-a-bit-of-its-soul/2c7ef34b-7c04-451b-8239-74f34a2c998b/">others accused</a> Johnson of “selling out” this unique platform for Black voices. </p>
<p>Trump supporters may similarly see Meadows as a traitor — a sellout who abandoned his party’s leader to save his own skin. But Democrats may see him as a Republican who has chosen the values of the country over protecting his party’s standard-bearer. Each side follows its own logic.</p>
<p>Selling out, then, is not always a clear-cut transgression. When a group feels like one of its own has betrayed some shared values, there are often meaningful questions to be asked about what that group’s values ought to be in the first place.</p>
<p>Some critics have <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/ibram-x-kendi-hasan-minhaj-and-the-question-of-selling-out">wondered whether</a> selling out is an <a href="https://mumbrella.com.au/is-selling-out-no-longer-a-concept-for-gen-z-356761">obsolete notion</a> in <a href="https://lithiumagazine.com/2020/05/22/what-does-it-mean-to-be-a-sell-out-in-2020/">an age when</a> so many people aspire to be an influencer or entrepreneur. But as long as this term gets used to scold public figures like Meadows, it means Americans still believe some form of loyalty — to a community or a shared principle — matters more than personal gain.</p>
<p>But what does it say that so many Americans share the concern that success and integrity are in conflict, as if one comes at the expense of the other? Is it an increasingly unavoidable moral contradiction in a capitalist society?</p>
<p>“Selling out” evokes a widespread fear that anyone who pursues success will corrupt both their morality and their community. Some people – say, billionaires in their private jets – can perhaps suppress this fear more easily than others. But everyone knows its name.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/220520/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ian Afflerbach does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Why do so many Americans share the concern that success and integrity are in conflict, as if one comes at the expense of the other?Ian Afflerbach, Associate Professor of American Literature, University of North GeorgiaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1977512024-01-11T07:09:39Z2024-01-11T07:09:39ZWhy AI software ‘softening’ accents is problematic<p><a href="https://www.voanews.com/a/accent-masking-software-aims-to-smooth-call-center-interactions/7252799.html">“Why isn’t it a beautiful thing?”</a> a puzzled Sharath Keshava Narayana asked of his AI device masking accents.</p>
<p>Produced by his company, Sanas, the recent technology seeks to “soften” the accents of call centre workers in real-time to allegedly shield them from bias and discrimination. It has sparked widespread interest both in the <a href="https://abc7news.com/sanas-voice-technology-silicon-valley-startup-accent-remover-translator/12162646/">English-speaking</a> and <a href="https://www.ouest-france.fr/leditiondusoir/2022-09-02/ce-logiciel-qui-gomme-les-accents-dans-la-voix-des-teleoperateurs-fait-polemique-voici-pourquoi-933e7c7f-96eb-498e-b444-f4753f9019f5#:%7E:text=La%20start%2Dup%20am%C3%A9rican%20Sanas,new%20technology%20surrect%20the%20controversy.">French-speaking world</a> since it was launched in September 2022. </p>
<p>Far from everyone is convinced of the software’s anti-racist credentials, however. Rather, critics contend it plunges us into a <a href="https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-03831544">contemporary dystopia</a> where technology is used to erase individuals’ differences, identity markers and cultures. </p>
<p>To understand them, we could do worse than reviewing what constitutes an accent in the first place. How can they be suppressed? And in what ways does ironing them out bends far more than sound waves? </p>
<h2>How artificial intelligence can silence an accent</h2>
<p>“Accents” can be defined, among others, as a set of oral clues (vowels, consonants, intonation, etc.) that contribute to the more or less conscious elaboration of hypotheses on the identity of individuals (e.g. geographically or socially). An accent can be described as regional or foreign according to different narratives. </p>
<p>With start-up technologies typically akin to black boxes, we have little information about the tools deployed by Sanas to standardise our way of speaking. However, we know most methods aim to at least partially transform the structure of the sound wave in order to bring certain acoustic cues closer <a href="https://www.cairn.info/la-phonetique--9782130653356-page-58.htm">to a perceptive criteria</a>. The technology tweaks vowels, consonants along with parameters such as rhythm, intonation or accentuation. At the same time, the technology will be looking to safeguard as many vocal cues as possible to allow for the recognition of the original speaker’s voice, such as with <a href="https://ircamamplify.com/realisations/cloning-vocal-pour-thierry-ardisson/"><em>voice cloning</em></a>, a process that can result in <a href="https://www.20minutes.fr/high-tech/2831107-20200729-le-deepfake-audio-la-nouvelle-arnaque-tendance-des-hackers"><em>deepfake vocal</em></a> scams. These technologies make it possible to dissociate what is speech-related from what is voice-related.</p>
<p>The automatic and real-time processing of speech poses technological difficulties, the main one being the quality of the sound signal to be processed. Software developers have succeeded in overcoming them by basing themselves on <a href="https://www.science-et-vie.com/definitions-science/deep-learning-69467.html"><em>deep learning</em></a>, <a href="https://www.rts.ch/info/sciences-tech/12796888-supprimer-les-accents-dune-voix-peut-la-rendre-plus-comprehensible.html">neural networks</a>, as well as <a href="https://www.cairn.info/revue-francaise-de-linguistique-appliquee-2007-1-page-71.htm">large data bases of speech audio files</a>, which make it possible to better manage the uncertainties in the signal.</p>
<p>In the case of foreign languages, Sylvain Detey, Lionel Fontan and Thomas Pellegrini identify <a href="http://www.atala.org/sites/default/files/article-tap-didactique_21092017.pdf">some of the issues inherent in the development of these technologies</a>, including that of which standard to use for comparison, or the role that speech audio files can have in determining them. </p>
<h2>The myth of the neutral accent</h2>
<p>But accent identification is not limited to acoustics alone. Donald L. Rubin has shown that listeners can <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/40196047">recreate the impression of a perceived accent</a> simply by associating faces of supposedly different origins with speech. In fact, absent these other cues, speakers are <a href="http://glottopol.univ-rouen.fr/telecharger/numero_31/gpl31_03avanzi_boulademareuil.pdf">not so good at recognising accents</a> that they do not regularly hear or that they might stereotypically picture, such as German, which many associate with <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_xUIDRxdmc">“aggressive” consonants</a>.</p>
<p>The wishful desire to iron out accents to combat prejudice raises the question of what a “neutral” accent is. Rosina Lippi-Green points out that <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9780203348802/english-accent-rosina-lippi-green">the ideology of the standard language</a> - the idea that there is a way of expressing oneself that is not marked - holds sway over much of society but has no basis in fact. <a href="https://luminosoa.org/site/chapters/e/10.1525/luminos.148.c/">Vijay Ramjattan</a> further links recent collossal efforts to develop accent “reduction” and “suppression” tools with the neoliberal model, under which people are assigned skills and attributes on which they depend. Recent capitalism perceives language as a skill, and therefore the “wrong accent” is said to lead to reduced opportunities. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1735696216170676732"}"></div></p>
<p>Intelligibility thus becomes a pretext for blaming individuals for their lack of skills in tasks requiring oral communication according to <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0261927X19884619">Janin Roessel</a>. Rather than forcing individuals with “an accent to reduce it”, researchers such as <a href="https://www.jbe-platform.com/content/journals/10.1075/jslp.20038.mun">Munro and Derwing</a> have shown that it is possible to train individuals to adapt their aural abilities to phonological variation. What’s more, it’s not up to individuals to change, but for public policies to better protect those who are discriminated against on the basis of their accent - <a href="https://accentism.org/">accentism</a>.</p>
<h2>Delete or keep, the chicken or the egg?</h2>
<p>In the field of sociology, Wayne Brekhus calls on us to pay specific attention to the invisible, weighing up what isn’t marked as much as what is, the “lack of accent” as well as its reverse. This leads us to reconsider the power relations that exist between individuals and the way in which we homogenise the marked: the one who has (according to others) an accent. </p>
<p>So we are led to Catherine Pascal’s question of <a href="https://www-cairn-info.bases-doc.univ-lorraine.fr/revue-management-des-technologies-organisationnelles-2019-1-page-221.htm">how emerging technologies can hone our roles as “citizens” rather than “machines”</a>. To “remove an accent” is to value a dominant type of “accent” while neglecting the fact that other co-factors will participate in the perception of this accent as well as the emergence of discrimination. “Removing the accent” does not remove discrimination. On the contrary, the accent gives voice to identity, thus participating in the phenomena of humanisation, group membership and even empathy: the accent is a channel for otherness.</p>
<p>If technologies such AI and <em>deep learning</em> offers us untapped possibilities, they can also lead to a dystopia where dehumanisation overshadows priorities such as the common good or diversity, as spelt out in the <a href="https://www.unesco.org/fr/legal-affairs/unesco-universal-declaration-cultural-diversity">UNESCO Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity</a>. Rather than hiding them, it seems necessary to make recruiters aware of how accents can contribute to customer satisfaction and for politicians to take up this issue.</p>
<p>Research projects such as <a href="https://prosophon.atilf.fr/">PROSOPHON at the University of Lorraine (France)</a>, which bring together researchers in applied linguistics and work psychology, are aimed at making recruiters more aware of their responsibilities in terms of <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0261927X19884619">biais awareness</a>, but also at empowering job applicants “with an accent”. By asking the question “Why isn’t this a beautiful thing?”, companies like SANAS remind us why technologies based on internalized oppressions don’t make people happy at work.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/197751/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Grégory Miras ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.</span></em></p>While AI now allows us to erase accents, is this really a good idea? Besides, who doesn’t have an accent?Grégory Miras, Professeur des Universités en didactique des langues, Université de LorraineLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2206182024-01-10T13:29:31Z2024-01-10T13:29:31Z‘Thirst trap’ and ‘edgelord’ were recently added to the dictionary – so why hasn’t ‘nibling’ made the cut?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/568127/original/file-20240107-19-mm0vw0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=59%2C29%2C4902%2C3211&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A rose by any other name would smell as sweet – but would it sound as sweet?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/little-rose-royalty-free-image/1280008568?phrase=open+dictionary+flowers&searchscope=image%2Cfilm&adppopup=true">Alicia Llop/Moment via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>A student in my graduate seminar recently mentioned seeing her “niblings” at Thanksgiving. Some of the students in my class were clearly familiar with the term. But others frowned, suggesting that they hadn’t heard the term before, or didn’t know what it meant.</p>
<p>A nibling is the child of one’s brothers or sisters. The word is a blend of the “n” in “niece” and “nephew” with “sibling,” and it was coined in the <a href="https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783110857610/html">early 1950s</a> by linguist Samuel Martin.</p>
<p>But even though it’s been around for over 70 years, the word <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/nibling">isn’t included</a> in the online Merriam-Webster dictionary. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/new-words-in-the-dictionary">most recent crop</a> of terms added to the dictionary includes words like <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/edgelord">edgelord</a> – a person who makes provocative statements online – and <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/thirst%20trap">thirst trap</a>, which is an online photo that’s meant to grab attention. Edgelord was first recorded in 2015, and thirst trap dates from 2011.</p>
<p>So why have these newbie words made the cut? Why have they been chosen for inclusion, but not nibling?</p>
<p>In making such decisions, the dictionary’s editors note that they employ <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/help/faq-words-into-dictionary">two criteria</a>. First, a term “must be used in a substantial number of citations that come from a wide range of publications.” Second, these citations need to cover “a considerable period of time.”</p>
<p>But there may be another litmus test that the editors employ, perhaps subconsciously: aesthetics. </p>
<h2>Blended words</h2>
<p>Many new terms are a blend of two words that already exist. </p>
<p>Some of these mashups are now so familiar that they aren’t even perceived as such, such as <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/smog">smog</a>, a combination of “smoke” and “fog,” and <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/motel">motel</a>, a union of “motor” and “hotel.”</p>
<p>Dictionary editors are conservative because they want to enshrine just the new words that remain reasonably popular and that are likely to have some staying power. But dictionaries are full of terms that have fallen out of use. When is the last time you heard someone refer to a <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/houppelande">houppelande</a> or a <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/blatherskite">blatherskite</a>?</p>
<p>Editors have chosen to exclude some terms despite the fact that they have been around for a long time. <a href="https://www.dictionary.com/e/aunt-uncle-niece-nephew-words/">Nibling</a> is one, and <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/no-antidisestablishmentarianism-is-not-in-the-dictionary">antidisestablishmentarianism</a> is another, even though the latter was first used over a century ago, <a href="https://www.oed.com/dictionary/antidisestablishmentarianism_n?tab=meaning_and_use#1726801">in 1900</a>.</p>
<p>But after 70 years in the shadows, nibling may finally be having its moment. In 2020, Jennifer Lopez used it in an <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/jennifer-lopez-shares-video-about-transgender-nibling-brendon-n1237838">Instagram post</a> to refer to her sister’s transgender child. Her post was viewed over <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CENEADXpCao/?utm_source=ig_embed&ig_rid=0dff33a9-c77e-4da7-8a49-e8983a791088">2 million times</a>. The term was also used in the sixth season of the TV show “<a href="https://bigbangtheory.fandom.com/wiki/Four_Hundred_Cartons_of_Undeclared_Cigarettes_and_a_Niblingo">Young Sheldon</a>” to refer to the title character’s unborn niece or nephew.</p>
<p>However, nibling has <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/search?dropmab=false&query=nibling&sort=best">never graced</a> the pages of The New York Times, and it’s appeared <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/search/?query=nibling">just twice</a> in The Washington Post, in articles from late 2023.</p>
<h2>The importance of aesthetics</h2>
<p>With English speakers becoming more comfortable with gender-neutral terms, such as the <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/singular-nonbinary-they">singular “they</a>,” nibling seems like a natural addition to English’s gender-neutral lexicon.</p>
<p>But it seems that, in addition to utility and widespread use, a third factor plays a role: aesthetic quality. Nibling simply sounds off-putting, too similar to “nibbling” – and not exactly something that you want to associate with family members.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-9627475/Do-call-niece-nephew-nibling-1950s-gender-neutral-term-wildly-popular.html">A 2021 Daily Mail article</a> agreed, calling nibling “skin crawling and awkward.” </p>
<p>And consider the case of Latinx, a word that was coined to be gender-neutral and inclusive. Although it has appeared in Merriam-Webster since 2018, it may end up going the way of an expression like “<a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/colored">colored</a>,” a term that was once “<a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2014/03/30/295931070/the-journey-from-colored-to-minorities-to-people-of-color">a term of racial pride</a>,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary, but which is now considered offensive and has fallen out of use.</p>
<p>No matter how useful Latinx may be, the term is <a href="https://theconversation.com/stop-using-latinx-if-you-really-want-to-be-inclusive-189358">widely disliked</a> in the Hispanic community. A major reason seems to be the word’s lack of aesthetics. One Latina interviewed by Billboard described it as <a href="https://www.billboard.com/music/latin/latinx-term-latin-community-9514370/">sounding “ugly</a>,” and people can’t seem to agree on <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/word-history-latinx">how to pronounce it</a>. The more pronounceable <a href="https://www.bestcolleges.com/blog/hispanic-latino-latinx-latine/">Latine</a> has been proposed as an alternative.</p>
<h2>“Phablet” not fabulous?</h2>
<p>Aesthetics may also help explain why some other blended words, such as <a href="https://www.oed.com/dictionary/phablet_n?tab=meaning_and_use#302938524">phablet</a>, a fusion of phone and tablet, have failed to catch on. A term for large cellphones, it’s been in use since <a href="https://www.oed.com/dictionary/phablet_n?tab=meaning_and_use#302938524">at least 2010</a>, although it doesn’t currently appear in Merriam-Webster’s word list.</p>
<p>Phablet made its <a href="https://archive.nytimes.com/boss.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/21/this-week-in-small-business-facebook-search/?searchResultPosition=1">first appearance</a> in The New York Times in 2013 and was set off by quotation marks – a standard way of demarcating a new term. In its <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/05/opinion/sunday/apple-china.html?searchResultPosition=4">last appearance</a>, excluding in puzzles, in that newspaper in 2019, it was still bracketed by quotation marks. </p>
<p>Why did it fail to catch on?</p>
<p>In a <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/01/what-is-a-phablet/319563/">2013 article</a>, The Atlantic characterized phablet as “horrible,” “stupid” and “clumsy.” The piece suggested that it reminded people of words like “flab” and “phlegm.” Usage data compiled by Oxford English Dictionary editors indicates that phablet <a href="https://www.oed.com/dictionary/phablet_n?tab=frequency#302938524">peaked in popularity</a> in 2018 and has been dropping ever since.</p>
<h2>Utility versus aesthetics</h2>
<p>In some cases, however, utility has clearly trumped aesthetics. The initialism LGBT, which is clunky to say, has been used since at least 1992 and has appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/search?dropmab=false&query=lgbt&sort=oldest">almost 6,000 articles</a> in The New York Times since 2000.</p>
<p>LGBT has sprouted a number of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/21/style/lgbtq-gender-language.html">more inclusive variants</a>, such as LGBTQ, LGBTQ+ and LGBTQIA, which makes it difficult to know <a href="https://thecentercv.org/en/blog/the-guide-to-lgbtq-acronyms-is-it-lgbt-or-lgbtq-or-lgbtqia/">which one to use</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A sign reading 'LGBTQIA+ Info' is taped to a blue tarp." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/568082/original/file-20240105-19-uhx6n4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/568082/original/file-20240105-19-uhx6n4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568082/original/file-20240105-19-uhx6n4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568082/original/file-20240105-19-uhx6n4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568082/original/file-20240105-19-uhx6n4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=588&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568082/original/file-20240105-19-uhx6n4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=588&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568082/original/file-20240105-19-uhx6n4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=588&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘LGBTQ,’ even as an ever-evolving mouthful, has caught on.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/march-2022-berlin-lgbtqia-info-is-written-on-a-poster-news-photo/1239046196?adppopup=true">Annette Riedl/Picture Alliance via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Nevertheless, these ungainly initialisms remain popular, despite their awkwardness, because they clearly fill a need.</p>
<p>Will nibling go the way of phablet, or will it become as common as LGBTQ? </p>
<p>Merriam-Webster’s editors have nibling on their list of <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/words-were-watching-nibling">words they are watching</a>. But it remains to be seen whether a useful but awkward blend will appeal to a more inclusive world.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/220618/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Roger J. Kreuz does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Pleasant-sounding words might have a leg up.Roger J. Kreuz, Associate Dean and Professor of Psychology, University of MemphisLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2102142023-12-28T09:13:36Z2023-12-28T09:13:36ZThey’re serving what?! How the c-word went from camp to internet mainstream<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/565289/original/file-20231212-25-1vks8n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=463%2C53%2C1379%2C931&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Beyoncé uses the c-word in staging for her 2023 Renaissance tour, as well as in lyrics for the track Pure/Honey.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Beyoncé_-_Tottenham_Hotspur_Stadium_-_1st_June_2023_(25_of_118)_(52946287590).jpg">Raph_PH/Wiki Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Warning: this article contains language that some readers may find offensive.</em></p>
<p>If someone told you that you were “serving cunt”, would you be offended? Despite the inclusion of the c-word, this phrase isn’t meant as an insult or a misogynistic slur. In fact, it is <a href="https://read.dukeupress.edu/american-speech/article/86/1/52/5899/Intersecting-Variables-and-Perceived-Sexual">quite the opposite</a> – at least, among those in <a href="https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/jola.12218">queer communities</a> who have long used it.</p>
<p>The phrase describes someone displaying characteristics such as being confident, sassy or fierce. It’s a state of mind – a stance anyone can embody, regardless of gender.</p>
<p>And while the phrase is now part of the “internet vernacular” – to the point that it has achieved <a href="https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/serving-cunt">meme-level status</a> – its origins predate digital culture. The phrase has a long history in drag, and those immersed in queer culture will recognise qualities associated with this now ubiquitous phrase. </p>
<p>To be evaluated as fierce, sassy or even “sickening” (another counter-intuitive compliment) is an honour – or, in drag terminology, the ultimate “slay” (something done very well). Such qualities are epitomised in RuPaul’s now iconic phrase: “Charisma, Uniqueness, Nerve and Talent” (C.U.N.T.). To snatch the crown, the queen must “serve” (display) these qualities throughout the competition.</p>
<p>Evidently, this is very different to the more conventional meaning of the c-word. Referring to the vulva or vagina, it is typically used as an offensive and vulgar term that reduces women to an object of sexual gratification. Frequently used as a misogynistic slur, it is <a href="https://www.oed.com/dictionary/cunt_n?tab=meaning_and_use#7755669">often labelled</a> as one of the most offensive words in the English language.</p>
<p>Arguably, the mainstreaming of this queer phrase represents could be seen as a turning point in the status of the c-word. Some social commentators have said it is a type of reclamation, whereby a term which is often weaponised against women has been appropriated, but used in deep respect as a form of protest and resistance. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1659207387239313408"}"></div></p>
<h2>Ball culture</h2>
<p>But people aren’t just “serving cunt”. They’re “slaying the house down boots” (doing something amazing). They’re “reading people to filth” (thoroughly insulting someone), or “throwing shade” (playfully insulting someone). </p>
<p>They’re also labelling popstars such as Rina Sawayama and Dua Lipa “mother” (a term of endearment and admiration). And they’re “leaving no crumbs” (doing something very well).</p>
<p>The diffusion – or appropriation – of these phrases is symptomatic of a more widespread trend, whereby the language typically associated with drag culture has become mainstream and is now considered part of what people often label the <a href="https://fanbytes.co.uk/tiktok-slang-guide/">internet vernacular</a>.</p>
<p>Another popstar, Beyoncé, made frequent use of the c-word in the lyrics to her 2022 song, Pure/Honey. It also featured in the staging of her 2023 Renaissance world tour, where she performed behind a news desk labelled “<a href="https://twitter.com/OrianaBeLike/status/1656414592476622848">KNTY 4 News</a>”. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/_t4YuPXdLZw?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Pose (2018) followed the lives of members of New York’s ‘ball’ community.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>To understand this development, it’s important to recognise where much of the language associated with drag culture originates. Terms like “shade” and “slay”, and phrases like “read to filth”, are originally from <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/african-american-english/1AE59657F9CF1BBC3A2BF2B9BB29D1D0">African American Vernacular English</a> (AAVE) – <a href="https://www.hawaii.edu/satocenter/langnet/definitions/aave.html">a variety of English</a> spoken <a href="https://www.linguisticsociety.org/content/what-ebonics-african-american-english">by black Americans</a>, particularly those living in urban areas.</p>
<p>But how did the language of a minority ethnic group become associated with drag queens? The answer is “<a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/striking-a-pose-a-brief-history-of-ball-culture-629280/">ballroom</a>” or “ball culture” – an LGBTQ+ subculture formed by African American and Latino people in New York City in the late 20th century, where participants “walk” (compete) for trophies, prizes and fame at events known as balls. For the unacquainted, the 2018 drama <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/m0003g1h/pose">Pose</a> documented the ball culture in New York City in the 1980s.</p>
<p>As ball culture became more mainstream, so too did the language associated with this community – until it was associated with the LGBTQ+ community more generally. “Throwing shade”, “reading” and “spilling tea” (sharing gossip) were no longer confined to the ballroom</p>
<h2>Language and appropriation</h2>
<p>The diffusion of this language has led to intense debates about appropriation and authenticity. In 2019, I examined this issue with regard to <a href="https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?cluster=7995271392233630652&hl=en&as_sdt=2005&sciodt=0,5">linguistic variation on Twitter</a>. Analysing a corpus of gay British men’s tweets, I argued they used features of AAVE such as “work dat pole gurl” and “y’all mad at hunty” (a dialect that gay men wouldn’t typically be expected to speak) not so much to claim “blackness” but to present themselves as “sassy”. By stylistically using features of AAVE, the men evoked these tropes to perform a gay identity which I called the “sassy queen”.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A man in a shirt squats to dance in front of a board of eager judges." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539534/original/file-20230726-17-whozou.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539534/original/file-20230726-17-whozou.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539534/original/file-20230726-17-whozou.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539534/original/file-20230726-17-whozou.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539534/original/file-20230726-17-whozou.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=567&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539534/original/file-20230726-17-whozou.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=567&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539534/original/file-20230726-17-whozou.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=567&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A ‘ball’ as shown in the 1990 documentary, Paris is Burning.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.alamy.com/paris-is-burning-1990-de-jennie-livingston-prod-db-art-matters-inc-bbc-television-miramax-new-york-foundation-for-the-arts-off-white-produc-image369577542.html?imageid=3DAF782F-0BF3-42BC-889A-FA78FE1254AD&p=728508&pn=1&searchId=6f58c7b396a91ca601880e0eaa055984&searchtype=0">TCD/Prod.DB / Alamy Stock Photo</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>However, in my view, these practices are problematic because they rely on a racial imagining of the “sassy black woman” – a historical trope that reifies black women as vivacious, outspoken and lively. </p>
<p>Many users of the phrase “serving cunt” and other AAVE features also appear unaware of their history. For instance, in 2020, Brittany Broski (aka the internet-famous <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2020/8/25/21399317/brittany-broski-kombucha-tiktok-tomlinson">Kombucha Girl</a>) incorrectly described AAVE terms as “<a href="https://www.dictionary.com/browse/stan-culture">stan culture</a>” – referring to the behaviour of an extreme group of fans.</p>
<p>At the same time, a series of <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@leia/video/6908151153536568581">black TikTok creators</a> have rightly rejected claims of a “new TikTok or Gen Z language”, by arguing that many of the features said to comprise this “new” variety were in fact AAVE.</p>
<p>So, while anyone can, in principle, “serve cunt”, it’s important to acknowledge the long history of this phrase, and many others, in drag culture – and, before that, their origins in AAVE. </p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christian Ilbury does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The language associated with drag culture has become mainstream and is now often considered part of the ‘internet vernacular’.Christian Ilbury, Lecturer, Linguistics and English Language, The University of EdinburghLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2182862023-12-22T15:42:50Z2023-12-22T15:42:50ZI’m an expert in slang – here are my picks for word of the year<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/564829/original/file-20231211-22-1pr9ym.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=155%2C40%2C5308%2C3596&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">New Year's Eve -- time to perfect your rizz.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/close-couple-celebrating-new-year-having-1836506470">Drazen Zigic/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>As a linguist who specialises in tracking slang and language change, there’s one holiday tradition I always look forward to: the annual selection of the word of the year. </p>
<p>Dictionary publishers and linguistics associations choose a word or expression – usually a new term or one that has taken on new meaning in the past year. Oxford Dictionaries describes it a word that reflects “the ethos, mood, or preoccupations of that particular year” and has “lasting potential as a word of cultural significance”.</p>
<p>Their choices nearly always spark controversy. Older readers harrumph they’ve “never heard of it”. Millennials and Generation Z dismiss it as “so last year”. Pedants protest that “it’s more than one word”.</p>
<p>In recent years, publishers have tried to appear objective by releasing a shortlist, selected by scanning massive digital collections of language (called corpora) to track how frequently words are used. They then invite the public to vote on their favourite. This is how we got Oxford Dictionaries’ <a href="https://corp.oup.com/news/eight-words-go-head-to-head-for-oxford-word-of-the-year-2023/">2023 pick, “rizz”</a> – a shortened version of “charisma” used to denote attractiveness or charm.</p>
<p>Individual linguists and lexicographers take a more subjective approach, inviting colleagues or followers to nominate terms, or (as I admit to doing) relying on their own informal reading and assumed expertise.</p>
<h2>The 2023 words of the year</h2>
<p>A strong candidate in 2023, given its prominence on social media and in the news, is the abbreviation AI. This was my own <a href="https://language-and-innovation.com/2018/12/12/the-real-words-of-the-year-2018/">pick in 2018</a> and it’s this year’s nomination by <a href="https://www.collinsdictionary.com/woty">Collins Dictionary</a>. </p>
<p>Cambridge Dictionaries opted for the more specific <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/nov/15/hallucinate-cambridge-dictionary-word-of-the-year">“hallucinate”</a>, in its new sense of AI’s destabilising tendency to provide false information or veer into incoherence while the Economist magazine chose the name of the chatbot tool <a href="https://www.economist.com/culture/2023/12/07/our-word-of-the-year-for-2023">ChatGPT</a>.</p>
<p>US dictionary Merriam-Webster announced their choice of <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/word-of-the-year#:%7E:text=Merriam%2DWebster's%20Word%20of%20the,and%20judging%20more%20than%20ever.">“authentic”</a>, noting its role in discourse about AI, celebrity and social media.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/merriam-websters-word-of-the-year-authentic-reflects-growing-concerns-over-ais-ability-to-deceive-and-dehumanize-217171">Merriam-Webster's word of the year – authentic – reflects growing concerns over AI's ability to deceive and dehumanize</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Australian publishers regularly supply quirky new terms from down under. This year, Macquarie Dictionaries selected <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/nov/28/cozzie-livs-light-hearted-term-for-cost-of-living-crisis-named-macquarie-dictionary-word-of-the-year">“cozzie livs”</a>, an irreverent nickname for the cost of living crisis that I <a href="https://language-and-innovation.com/2023/01/13/levity-or-levy-t/">first recorded</a> a year ago in the UK. The Australian National Dictionary Centre has chosen <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/football/2023/nov/15/matilda-australia-2023-word-of-the-year-womens-world-cup">“Matilda”</a>, the nickname for members of their national women’s soccer team.</p>
<h2>Highlights from history</h2>
<p>The tradition of choosing the year’s most evocative, apt or significant expression dates back to 1970 in Germany and to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_of_the_year">1990 in the Anglosphere</a>. </p>
<p>One of the <a href="https://eu.usatoday.com/picture-gallery/money/2019/10/22/american-dialect-society-word-of-year-since-1990/4061030002/">first official</a> words of the year was “bushlips” in 1990. Meaning “insincere political rhetoric”, it referred to then US president George HW Bush’s boastful soundbite, “Read my lips: no new taxes.” </p>
<p>In 2015, Oxford Dictionaries teased its readership by nominating the smiling face with tears of joy <a href="https://languages.oup.com/word-of-the-year/2015/#:%7E:text=Oxford%20Word%20of%20the%20Year,Oxford%20Languages&text=That's%20right%20%E2%80%93%20for%20the%20first,know%20it%20by%20other%20names.">emoji</a>. This resulted in predictable expressions of outrage from purists.</p>
<p>One of the features of slang in general is that it derives its glamour from novelty and exclusivity, but once it escapes its original settings it ceases to be cool. Last year’s Oxford nomination for word of the year was “goblin mode”, a nickname for sloppy hedonism that many users abandoned as soon as they coined it.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/goblin-mode-a-gothic-expert-explains-the-trends-mythical-origins-and-why-we-should-all-go-vampire-mode-instead-180282">Goblin mode: a gothic expert explains the trend's mythical origins, and why we should all go 'vampire mode' instead</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>New words and phrases often come from tech innovation – see past selections of <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-24992393">selfie</a>, <a href="https://languages.oup.com/word-of-the-year/2022/">metaverse</a> and <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-59401046">NFT</a>.</p>
<p>They can also be generated by lifestyle changes, trends and obsessions, mostly driven by young people. Many new expressions created and exchanged by younger millennials, Generation Z or Generation Alpha are mocked, misunderstood or simply ignored by <a href="https://language-and-innovation.com/2023/01/03/language-aesthetics-and-innovation-in-2022-the-role-of-gen-z/">mainstream media</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Two young women recording a video for social media. They are smiling and posing in a pink-lit bedroom, in front of a ring light and smartphone on a tripod." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/564832/original/file-20231211-27-us2uc3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/564832/original/file-20231211-27-us2uc3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564832/original/file-20231211-27-us2uc3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564832/original/file-20231211-27-us2uc3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564832/original/file-20231211-27-us2uc3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564832/original/file-20231211-27-us2uc3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564832/original/file-20231211-27-us2uc3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">New words and phrases often originate and spread on social media.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/happy-asian-generation-z-woman-friends-2323910807">CandyRetriever/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>My picks for 2023</h2>
<p>If I were four decades younger, my choice <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/nov/29/delulu-solulu-k-pop-insult-ultimate-compliment?CMP=share_btn_tw">would be “delulu”</a>. Short for “delusional”, this representation of GenZ attitudes and TikTok-inspired language change plays with the techniques of word formation. Cutting or reordering syllables, reduplicating sounds for comic effect and creating nuances or ambiguities of meaning are all features of modern slang. </p>
<p>However, I suspect that, like rizz, it won’t cross the generational divide or endure. It’s characteristic of these fashionable descriptors that nobody can predict which ones will last. </p>
<p>I fear that – just like 2020 – this year will be remembered more for worldwide experience rather than quirky expressions. My instinct then is to choose not slang, jargon or tech-speak, but something else that reflects the tragedies taking place in Israel and Palestine, in Ukraine and elsewhere. </p>
<p>Not a new word at all, but one which, in the language of armed conflict and sectarian cruelty, sums up for me the particular nature of this year’s atrocities and the ambiguous doublespeak <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/oct/16/the-language-being-used-to-describe-palestinians-is-genocidal">used to report them</a>. My word of the year, as a plural noun or as a singular verb, is “targets”.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/218286/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tony Thorne does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>2023 will be remembered for more than quirky new phrases.Tony Thorne, Director of Slang and New Language Archive, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, King's College LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2196732023-12-12T14:46:52Z2023-12-12T14:46:52ZRizz: I study the history of charisma – here’s why the word of the year is misunderstood<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/565144/original/file-20231212-25-d7muc4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=485%2C305%2C5505%2C3682&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Got rizz?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/confident-adult-man-winking-pointing-finger-2151302797">Mix and Match Studio/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Oxford English Dictionary has selected rizz as its word of 2023. If you’ve heard of it at all, you’ll probably have heard that it comes from the word charisma. However, the <a href="https://corp.oup.com/news/rizz-crowned-oxford-word-of-the-year-2023/">OED definition</a> pins it down as “style, charm or attractiveness, and the ability to attract a romantic or sexual partner”.</p>
<p>So, wait – which is it? Charm or charisma? The difference seems small – most people switch them up all the time. However, there has always been a subtle rivalry between the two ideas, because each embodies a quite different vision of how power works. Rizz takes this in a fascinating – and troubling – new direction, with implications for how young people talk about politics and masculinity. </p>
<p>Rizz migrated online from Baltimore street slang during 2021, when <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZRVZ4ppIhY">YouTuber Kai Cenat</a> started dropping it into his videos as a shorthand for the ability to seduce women. Hundreds of millions of streams later, it has taken on a life of its own. He has taught a generation to use rizz <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@cloutynaz/video/7275837887562681642">as a verb</a>, to spot different kinds of rizz when they see it, and to aspire to be “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5ny4dHOm1s">rizz kings</a>”.</p>
<p>It is fascinating for those of us who enjoy head-scratching about language change. I am one of those people, a historian writing about <a href="https://www.academia.edu/49108167/Orenda_and_the_Indigenous_Roots_of_Charisma_Symbiosis_2021_">the history of charisma</a>.</p>
<p>In the 1910s, German sociologist Max Weber repurposed “charisma”, the ancient Greek word for the Christian “gift of grace”, to talk about new styles of democratic leadership.</p>
<p>The word had a slow start. Data shows it <a href="https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=charisma%2C+charismatic&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=en-2019&smoothing=3">bursting into popularity</a> from the 1960s onwards, when it became a buzzword for talking about celebrity-driven politics. Since then, it has become the first term many of us reach for when explaining the appeal of populist politicians like Donald Trump, or <a href="https://hbr.org/2002/09/the-curse-of-the-superstar-ceo">charismatic CEOs</a> like Apple’s Steve Jobs.</p>
<h2>Charisma or charm?</h2>
<p>Now, with rizz erupting like an alien from its middle syllable, charisma has gone from a theological word to a political word to a dating word.</p>
<p>And here’s where the paradox comes in. Today’s typical rizz post on social media sees a young woman apparently won over by a man’s slick confidence. But what we’re actually watching here is a different word, one we used to call charm. Since that word <a href="https://www.oed.com/dictionary/charm_n1?tl=true">comes from the Latin <em>carmen</em>, for song</a>, being charming can be thought of as “singing pleasing melodies to your audience” – in other words, telling people what they want to hear, or conforming to what you think another person wants. </p>
<p>By contrast, Weber adopted charisma as an anti-establishment idea, the “<a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1gxpcb6?turn_away=true">specifically creative revolutionary force of history</a>” by which compelling individuals could mobilise people against authority. Throughout history, leaders called charismatic have frequently been abrasive, “singing songs” that crowds didn’t realise they wanted to hear. </p>
<p>Hitler had little endearing rizz in the 2023 sense. Neither does the charmless but charismatic hero at the heart of Ridley Scott’s Napoleon. By contrast, being a rizz king today is more about beguiling than challenging one’s audience.</p>
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<p>Charm and charisma also differ in scale. Rizz is native to platforms such as TikTok that, even if they involve reaching vast numbers of people, depict interactions between individuals or small groups of people. In this intimate arena, charm triumphs.</p>
<p>Charisma, by contrast, is seduction scaled up from the individual to a mass. It is larger than life, the macro to charm’s micro. Charisma only makes sense as magnetism exerted over a crowd or populace, more attuned the cinema or television than the smartphone screen.</p>
<h2>Rizz and gender</h2>
<p>Most worryingly, by making charisma all about charm, rizz brings toxic gender politics and misogyny to the surface. It makes sexual prowess the measure of all things. As <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XURzBIs_Ivs">critics of rizz culture</a> have begun to observe, rizz is a <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-dictionary-of-the-manosphere-five-terms-to-understand-the-language-of-online-male-supremacists-200206">manosphere term</a> – a way that young heterosexual men measure their own and rival men’s place in the world. </p>
<p>It is quite possible that rizz owes nothing to charisma, since Kai Cenat has <a href="https://www.complex.com/pop-culture/a/brad-callas/kai-cenat-whether-he-invented-term-rizz">claimed</a> the etymology is a red herring. </p>
<p>But in another sense it owes everything, since the newly-acquired rizz obsession of older generations – including the OED – is clearly down to how it links back to reassuringly well-established concepts. It makes us Millennials (and older) feel that we have a grip on the language of the young.</p>
<p>Such interest may even kill the word off. After all, nothing has less rizz with Generations Z and Alpha than the dictionary of a 1,000-year-old university in England.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/219673/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tom F. Wright does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>An expert on rhetoric explains why ‘rizz’ may be more like charm than charisma.Tom F. Wright, Reader in Rhetoric, University of SussexLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2195422023-12-11T11:34:01Z2023-12-11T11:34:01ZBenjamin Zephaniah: how the poet’s linguistic anarchy and abolitionist politics impacted education – and me<p>Like so many others who work in education, I was devastated to hear the news of <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-benjamin-zephaniah-became-the-face-of-british-rastafari-219515">Benjamin Zephaniah’s</a> death. His work has profoundly shaped our understandings of <a href="https://theconversation.com/whiteness-is-at-the-heart-of-racism-in-britain-so-why-is-it-portrayed-as-a-black-problem-181742">race</a>, language and education – and his work continues to have enormous influence in classrooms around the world.</p>
<p>I first encountered Benjamin’s writing when I was at secondary school. Our English teacher used his poetry to explore issues of local and global injustices. Like him, she encouraged us all to challenge normative ways of using language and reject the linguistic hierarchies that shape schools. She, like Benjamin, saw teaching as a political act.</p>
<p>My school was located in a racially diverse, working-class area of a post-industrial town in the north of England. The issues that Benjamin examined – <a href="https://theconversation.com/whiteness-characterises-higher-education-institutions-so-why-are-we-surprised-by-racism-93147">race</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/whiteness-is-an-invented-concept-that-has-been-used-as-a-tool-of-oppression-183387">whiteness</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/racial-wealth-gaps-are-yet-another-thing-the-us-and-uk-have-in-common-185646">capitalism</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/kenya-at-60-the-shameful-truth-about-british-colonial-abuse-and-how-it-was-covered-up-218608">colonialism</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-can-black-people-feel-safe-and-have-confidence-in-policing-191521">injustice</a>, hostile <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-police-wont-acknowledge-institutional-racism-in-their-race-action-plan-heres-why-that-matters-183853">policing</a>, state violence and, of course, <a href="https://theconversation.com/you-cant-even-talk-english-so-dont-talk-how-linguistic-racism-impacts-immigrants-in-the-uk-182173">language</a> – were so pertinent to us all. He wrote about things that children, parents and teachers alike recognised. </p>
<p>For many of the children in that school, Benjamin’s work will have been the first time they encountered published literature that was written in a language that represented how they spoke and that talked about the things that mattered to them. </p>
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<p>This paucity of diverse educational materials continues to this day. By far, the majority of literature that children study in schools is <a href="https://litincolour.penguin.co.uk/assets/Lit-in-Colour-research-report.pdf">written by white authors</a>. It overwhelmingly features white protagonists and is overwhelmingly written in “standard English”– a colonial variety of the language that <a href="https://benjaminzephaniah.com/poetic-thoughts/">Benjamin outrightedly rejected</a>.</p>
<p>Benjamin’s work, by contrast, is shaped by his <a href="https://autonomies.org/2019/06/why-i-am-an-anarchist-benjamin-zephaniah/">anarchist</a> and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2002/feb/20/poetry.features">abolitionist</a> principles. It challenges readers and listeners to examine how language education policy, discipline practices and curricula normalise <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00405841.2019.1665415">anti-Black linguistic racism</a>. </p>
<h2>Linguistic injustice</h2>
<p>Benjamin’s work draws its power from the fact that he refused to separate out issues of language injustice from broader dimensions of social injustice. For him, anti-Black language policing was simply part of the same logics of anti-Black policing more broadly. His work is part of a long history of <a href="https://manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526143938/">Black resistance to British policing</a> – which includes the policing of language.</p>
<p>His 1996 poetry collection <a href="https://www.bloodaxebooks.com/ecs/product/propa-propaganda-533">Propa Propaganda</a>, for example, brought together issues of racist policing, Black culture, hostile immigration rhetoric, and linguistic colonialism. The opening lines to his poem, Neighbours, capture just that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I am the type you are supposed to fear</p>
<p>Black and foreign</p>
<p>Big and dreadlocks</p>
<p>An uneducated grass eater.</p>
<p>I talk in tongues</p>
<p>I chant at night</p>
</blockquote>
<p>My first permanent academic post was in the Department of Education at Brunel University London, where Benjamin was Professor of Creative Writing. Our offices were in the same building. I will never forget the time that he came to speak to my pre-service English teacher education group – mostly made up of students of colour from working-class backgrounds. </p>
<p>He showed up and simply said to the class: “What do you want to hear about?” “Linguistic justice,” came their reply. </p>
<p>For three hours, we sat, captivated, listening to his stories and wisdom about <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-black-children-in-englands-schools-are-made-to-feel-like-the-way-they-speak-is-wrong-198830">anti-Black linguistic racism in schools</a>, the criminalisation of Black youth in Britain and the colonial histories of standard English. He firmly rejected the mainstream narrative that speaking in standard English is the solution to granting marginalised children justice. </p>
<p>Those conversations inspired my students to engage in similar anti-racist efforts in their own teaching. I went on to <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/lit.12277">collaborate with one of my students</a>, drawing on Benjamin’s ideas. We facilitated workshops with young children where they critiqued ideologies of <a href="https://www.routledge.com/The-Routledge-Handbook-of-Linguistic-Prescriptivism/Beal-Lukac-Straaijer/p/book/9780367557843">linguistic prescriptivism</a> and how England’s education policies are linguistically oppressive.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Benjamin Zephaniah poses for a photo in a room with a group of trainee teachers." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/564582/original/file-20231208-23-szw8dy.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/564582/original/file-20231208-23-szw8dy.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564582/original/file-20231208-23-szw8dy.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564582/original/file-20231208-23-szw8dy.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564582/original/file-20231208-23-szw8dy.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564582/original/file-20231208-23-szw8dy.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564582/original/file-20231208-23-szw8dy.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Benjamin Zephaniah with a group of PGCE English students.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ian Cushing</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Years later, Benjamin agreed to collaborate on a research project I led on <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13613324.2023.2170435?src=recsys">language and race in schools</a>. Part of the project involved secondary school pupils in London reading his 2020 novel, <a href="https://www.booktrust.org.uk/book/w/windrush-child/">Windrush Child</a>. The teacher used the text as a springboard to encourage the children to examine how language, colonialism, race and discrimination intersect in Britain. </p>
<p>At one point, Benjamin’s protagonist in the book says:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>There are some white people who think that white is de best, de standard, and everyone else is coloured. And because they think they are the best, they think they have de right to rule over us. You know ‘bout slavery?’</p>
</blockquote>
<p>As part of the project, we interviewed Benjamin on camera and showed the videos to children in the classroom. They were enthralled. </p>
<p>They discussed how their own experiences of schooling have been shaped by whiteness, linguistic standards and colonial curricula. This experience reminded me of my own schooling in the 1990s – of hearing his poetry for the first time and of hearing my teachers talk about language, activism, and social injustice.</p>
<p>Benjamin had an incredible capacity to talk about complex issues with razor sharp clarity. He showed how linguistic hierarchies were a product of colonialism and slavery. </p>
<p>He rejected any theories of social justice which place the burden on marginalised communities to modify their language. He was an abolitionist and an anti-colonial activist through and through, <a href="https://theconversation.com/racism-colonialism-and-slavery-why-empire-needs-to-be-removed-from-the-uk-honours-system-129311">rejecting</a>, in 2013, an OBE because of its language of empire. </p>
<p>Despite his untimely passing, Bejamin’s words will continue to push back against the systems and structures of language policing which are so embedded within them. His work is needed more than ever before.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/219542/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ian Cushing receives funding from the Spencer Foundation, the British Educational Research Association, and the British Association of Applied Linguistics.</span></em></p>For many school children, Benjamin Zephaniah’s work will have been the first time they encountered published literature that talked about the things that mattered to them.Ian Cushing, Senior Lecturer in Critical Applied Linguistics, Manchester Metropolitan UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2159422023-12-07T13:26:48Z2023-12-07T13:26:48ZWhen research study materials don’t speak their participants’ language, data can get lost in translation<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/563460/original/file-20231204-23-ka52z2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C2032%2C1462&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Some approaches to translation are more true to the aims of the text than others.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/illustration/international-communication-translation-royalty-free-illustration/1150757275">arthobbit/iStock via Getty Images Plus</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Imagine your mother has cancer. You just heard about a promising new experimental treatment and want to enroll her in the study. However, your mother immigrated to the U.S. as an adult and speaks limited English. When you reach out to the research team, they tell you she is ineligible because they are recruiting only English speakers. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, this is an all too likely outcome of a scenario like this, because non-English speakers are frequently <a href="https://doi.org/10.5455/aim.2017.25.112-115">excluded from clinical trials</a> and research studies in the U.S.</p>
<p>Despite efforts to increase research participation, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1097/ACM.0b013e318208289a">racial and ethnic minorities remain underrepresented</a> in results. A review of 5,008 papers in three pediatric journals from 2012 to 2021 revealed that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1001/jamapediatrics.2022.3828">only 9% of these studies included non-English speaking</a> volunteers. </p>
<p>Language is a <a href="https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2013.301706">key barrier to participation</a>, as even those with some English proficiency are less likely to participate in studies when recruitment materials <a href="https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2013.301706">aren’t in their native language</a>. Language barriers also hinder a person’s ability to provide <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/eahr.500028">informed consent</a> <a href="https://doi.org/10.4103/0253-7176.70517">to participate</a>.</p>
<p>This problem is not likely to fade away. The number of people with limited English proficiency in the U.S. grew by 80% between 1990 and 2013, going from nearly <a href="https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/limited-english-proficient-population-united-states-2013">14 million to 25.1 million people</a>. As of 2022, this number rose to <a href="https://www.migrationpolicy.org/programs/data-hub/us-immigration-trends#lep">26.5 million people</a>. Excluding people with limited English proficiency is not only unethical, as these groups deserve the same access to experimental and evolving therapies as the English-speaking population, but also limits <a href="https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2013.301706">how applicable research findings are</a> to the general population.</p>
<p>One way to eliminate language barriers is by translating research documents. <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=NG1Yem8AAAAJ&hl=en">As a translation scholar</a>, I strive to discover ways to improve translation quality to benefit the research community and broader society. Translation in research, however, is not straightforward. Not only must the translated materials be accurate, they also have to serve their intended purpose.</p>
<p>The most commonly used method to evaluate translation quality in health research <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0163278716648191">is backtranslation</a> – translating the translated text into the original language and assessing how well it matches the original text. And yet, this method <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/135910457000100301">relies on outdated scholarship</a> from the 1970s, perpetuating serious misconceptions about how translation works.</p>
<h2>Understanding translation</h2>
<p>Translation involves much more than just transferring written words from one language to another. For many health researchers, the goal of translation is to <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/411434">transfer meaning</a> so it remains intact in a new language. Along these lines, the translator is meant to be a conduit of perfect linguistic equivalence. Yet, current work in the field of translation studies indicates this perfect match or meaning transfer is <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Translation-Studies/Bassnett/p/book/9780415506731">only an illusion</a>.</p>
<p>A translator is not a conduit of meaning, but both a reader of the original text and a writer of the translation. As such, translators <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781315678627-90/positioning-theo-hermans">have their own positioning</a> in the world that comes with a set of conscious or unconscious values and knowledge that bias how they read and write. Translation is a <a href="https://translation.utdallas.edu/what-is-translation-studies/translation-and-reading/">process of interpretation</a> regardless of how objective a translator aims to be.</p>
<p>Furthermore, languages do not match structurally or culturally. For instance, the English sentence “I arrived late” structurally corresponds to the Spanish “Yo llegué tarde” because the grammar lines up. But because Spanish expresses subject information through verb endings (“lleg-ué”), the “Yo” is normally interpreted as contrastive, meaning that “I” was the one who arrived late as opposed to someone else.</p>
<p>A perfect match in backtranslation often reflects a translation that is <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0163278716648191">too similar to the original</a>, such that it often contradicts the norms of the translated language. For instance, a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0163278705275342">health status questionnaire</a> translated “My thinking is clear” into Portuguese as “O meu pensamento é claro.” Despite good backtranslation results, patients in Brazil stated it was unclear. Changing it to “Consigo pensar claramente” (“I am able to think clearly”) communicated more effectively and naturally with the target population.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/563462/original/file-20231204-17-l9egxc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Health care professional holding clipboard while talking to a patient" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/563462/original/file-20231204-17-l9egxc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/563462/original/file-20231204-17-l9egxc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563462/original/file-20231204-17-l9egxc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563462/original/file-20231204-17-l9egxc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563462/original/file-20231204-17-l9egxc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563462/original/file-20231204-17-l9egxc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563462/original/file-20231204-17-l9egxc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Patients with limited English proficiency are less likely to participate in research studies if the materials aren’t in their primary language.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/female-mental-health-professional-talks-with-royalty-free-image/917744736">SDI Productions/E+ via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Translation scholars suggest that a more realistic, descriptive and explanatory approach to translation is one governed by <a href="https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315760506">what the commissioner wants to achieve</a> with the translation. Under this view, the translator makes decisions according to the type of text being translated and to the purpose of the translation.</p>
<p>How translators approach texts and what strategies they use to translate them varies with each document. Some texts require closer adherence to the words of the original than others. For instance, legal or regulatory considerations require translating the chemical ingredients list of a medication more closely to the structure of the source than a recruitment flyer that aims to convince readers to participate in a study. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0163278716648191">Translators of research documents</a> need to determine the needs of the specific text in collaboration with both the researchers and representatives of the population they’re studying.</p>
<h2>Translation affects research results</h2>
<p>Recent studies show that translation can affect data validity and reliability. An inadequate approach may result in translated materials that don’t work as intended. For instance, a survey may produce <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/eahr.500115">incomplete or incorrect data</a> if participants misunderstand or are unclear about the questions.</p>
<p>My team and I investigated how different translation approaches affected how readers responded to translated materials. We had bilingual participants review two versions of a survey measuring perceptions of stress. Each version was translated into Spanish in a different way. </p>
<p>One of the two translations was produced with a literal approach that aimed to be as equivalent as possible to the original, while the other followed a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0163278716648191">functionalist approach</a> that focused on achieving the purpose specified for the translation. In this case, the goal was to obtain data on how a Spanish-speaking population perceives daily stress.</p>
<p>We asked participants to review the two translated versions of the survey, then indicate any unclear sections and which version they preferred. We found that participants <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/eahr.500115">preferred the functionalist translation</a> and identified a higher number of problems in the translation focused on equivalence. Participants commented that the “equivalent” translation was more difficult to understand, too direct and seemed obviously translated.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/563463/original/file-20231204-25-uls439.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Close-up of the first page of the 'A' section of an English-Spanish dictionary" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/563463/original/file-20231204-25-uls439.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/563463/original/file-20231204-25-uls439.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563463/original/file-20231204-25-uls439.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563463/original/file-20231204-25-uls439.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563463/original/file-20231204-25-uls439.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563463/original/file-20231204-25-uls439.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563463/original/file-20231204-25-uls439.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">A literal translation may not best serve the aims of its commissioner.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/english-spanish-dictionary-royalty-free-image/483136313">parema/E+ via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>Other studies have shown that <a href="https://aclanthology.org/R15-1014">translated materials</a> <a href="https://doi.org/10.6035/MonTI.2018.10.2">are less accessible overall</a> compared with the original documents. Researchers have also found that some translation approaches increase reading complexity. One study found that a survey used to measure the health progress of patients translated with a functionalist approach <a href="https://doi.org/10.1044/2017_AJA-17-0018">had better readability</a> than published counterparts that used a more literal approach.</p>
<p>The translation process is complicated. Lack of awareness of its complexities can affect not only equitable participation in research but also the validity and reliability of its methodology and findings. But with the right approach, translation can increase a study’s reach, diversify its data and lead to new findings and ideas. Reaching out to a translation scholar before starting a project can help scholars prevent their data and research from getting lost in translation.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/215942/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sonia Colina works for the National Center for Interpretation at the University of Arizona. She has received funding from the National Institutes of Health</span></em></p>Translation involves more than just transferring words from one language to another. Better translations of study materials can improve both the diversity of study participants and research results.Sonia Colina, Professor of Spanish and Portuguese, University of ArizonaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2180342023-12-06T19:07:07Z2023-12-06T19:07:07ZNoam Chomsky turns 95: the social justice advocate paved the way for AI. Does it keep him up at night?<p>Noam Chomsky, the <a href="https://ricknabb.medium.com/happy-noam-chomsky-day-825a63deea4d">revered</a> and <a href="https://www.openculture.com/2011/01/william_f_buckley_threatens_to_smash_noam_chomsky_in_the_face_1969.html">reviled</a> genius once famously described as “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1979/02/25/archives/the-chomsky-problem-chomsky.html">the most important intellectual alive</a>”, turns 95 today. He is a monumental figure in <a href="https://linguistics.ucla.edu/undergraduate/what-is-linguistics/">modern linguistics</a>, and only a slightly lesser deity in psychology, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxvSQnmcYLo">philosophy</a> and political activism.</p>
<p>His work establishing <a href="https://cogsci.jhu.edu/about/">cognitive science</a> as a discipline is so fundamental to the rise of AI that it’s rarely acknowledged anymore.</p>
<p>Amid the ongoing <a href="https://theconversation.com/turmoil-at-openai-shows-we-must-address-whether-ai-developers-can-regulate-themselves-218759">alarm</a> that language-simulating machines could become a <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-year-of-chatgpt-5-ways-the-ai-marvel-has-changed-the-world-218805">net negative for humanity</a>, have we wandered too far from Chomsky’s vision of a science of the human mind?</p>
<h2>The root of Chomsky’s fame</h2>
<p>Chomsky burst onto the academic scene in 1957 with <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syntactic_Structures">Syntactic Structures</a>, a highly technical linguistics monograph that revolutionised the study of language.</p>
<p>His real stardom, however, came in 1959 with his <a href="https://chomsky.info/1967____/">legendary review</a> of B. F. Skinner’s <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verbal_Behavior">Verbal Behaviour</a>. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B._F._Skinner">Skinner</a>, a psychologist and behaviourist, was enjoying the limelight in psychology circles with his theory of “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6LEcM0E0io">operant conditioning</a>”.</p>
<p>It explains how <a href="https://pressbooks.online.ucf.edu/lumenpsychology/chapter/operant-conditioning/">reinforcement and punishment</a> can be used to create associations in people’s minds, which then encourage certain behaviours. For instance, a gold star awarded by a teacher for good behaviour will encourage more of it from students. </p>
<p>In Verbal Behaviour, Skinner tried to expand this idea into linguistics by breaking language down into components that are supposedly acquired via operant conditioning. </p>
<p>Chomsky completely disagreed. He tore Skinner’s theories apart, showing language couldn’t possibly be understood in this way. </p>
<p>For one thing, he pointed out, children don’t get enough exposure to language to learn every possible sentence. For another, language is creative: we frequently utter sentences that have never been heard before, meaning they can’t have been acquired through a simple process of <a href="https://www.psychologistworld.com/behavior/stimulus-response-theory">reward and punishment</a>.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/will-ai-kill-our-creativity-it-could-if-we-dont-start-to-value-and-protect-the-traits-that-make-us-human-214149">Will AI kill our creativity? It could – if we don’t start to value and protect the traits that make us human</a>
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<h2>The cognitive revolution and AI</h2>
<p>Chomsky’s scathing review did more than shut behaviourism <a href="https://doi.org/10.1075/hl.17.1-2.12and">out of linguistics</a>. </p>
<p>He showed how useful it could be to examine the mind instead of just behaviour in language-related areas like <a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cognitive_Science_Hexagon.svg">anthropology, psychology and neuroscience</a>. This helped set the <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books/about/The_Mind_s_New_Science.html?id=K0pkNQ3iusYC&redir_esc=y">cognitive revolution</a> in motion, eventually giving rise to <a href="https://research.qut.edu.au/cognitivescience/">the field</a> of cognitive science.</p>
<p>A core idea Chomsky pioneered, together with other cognitive scientists, is that human cognition (thinking, memory, learning, language, perception and decision-making) can be understood in terms of <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/computational-mind/">computational processes</a>. While there were already <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_psychology">various theories</a> to explain different aspects of cognition, none offered the seductive framework of the computer metaphor: our brains are the hardware, cognition is the software, and our thoughts and feelings are the outputs.</p>
<p>Chomsky’s approach is a thread that has connected generations of AI researchers, arguably beginning with his MIT colleague and AI pioneer <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/au/blog/keeping-those-words-in-mind/202206/how-cognitive-science-and-artificial-intelligence-are">Marvin Minsky</a> – one of the organisers of the 1956 <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/dartmouth-ai-workshop">Dartmouth research workshop</a> that kicked off AI research. </p>
<p>In those early days of AI, Chomsky’s theories about language paved the way to expand <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing">Alan Turing’s ideas</a> about <a href="https://www.nature.com/natmachintell/">machine intelligence</a> into <a href="https://www.ibm.com/topics/natural-language-processing">language processing</a>.</p>
<h2>Generative and deep</h2>
<p>Specifically, two key concepts popularised by Chomsky are still embedded in AI today.</p>
<p>The first is “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generative_grammar">generative grammar</a>”. This is the idea that there is a specific set of rules that determines what makes a sentence grammatically correct (or incorrect) in any given language.</p>
<p>The second idea is that of “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_structure_and_surface_structure">deep structure</a>”. Chomsky said linguists were paying too much attention to the traditional grammar, or “surface structure”, of particular languages. This refers to the various components (such as words, syllables and phrases) that comprise a spoken sentence.</p>
<p>Instead, Chomsky wanted to work out the “deep structure” of all language, of which we are largely unconscious. This deep structure is what determines the semantic component of a sentence – that is, its underlying meaning.</p>
<p>It’s not hard to see how Chomsky’s ideas of generative grammar and deep structure jibe with today’s <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generative_artificial_intelligence">generative AI</a> and <a href="https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/introduction-deep-learning/">deep learning</a>.</p>
<p>Chomsky set the basic challenge for this entire effort: work out the deep rules that generate language. Without this, experts couldn’t have delved so deeply into neural networks. They wouldn’t have understood language well enough to even begin.</p>
<h2>Chomsky’s thoughts on AI</h2>
<p>Sixty years later, models such as <a href="https://chat.openai.com/">ChatGPT</a> have caught up with Chomsky.</p>
<p>While some linguists believe the success of large language models (LLMs) <a href="https://lingbuzz.net/lingbuzz/007180">invalidates Chomsky’s approach</a> to language, he argues the models simply <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/turing-test/">imitate</a> rather than truly “learn”. According to Chomsky, the knowledge of the deep rules of language they contain is a statistical mess, not a meaningful analysis. </p>
<p>In a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/08/opinion/noam-chomsky-chatgpt-ai.html">New York Times guest essay</a> with Ian Roberts and Jeffrey Watumull titled The False Promise of ChatGPT, Chomsky says it is “comic and tragic” that “so much money and attention should be concentrated on so little a thing”.</p>
<p>His main complaint is that such systems are a dead end in the search for true <a href="https://openai.com/blog/planning-for-agi-and-beyond">artificial general intelligence</a> (AGI). Rather, he views them as a souped-up <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autocomplete">autocomplete</a> – useful for creating computer code or <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-study-buddy-that-raises-serious-questions-how-uni-students-approached-ai-in-their-first-semester-with-chatgpt-207915">cheating on essays</a>, but not much else. </p>
<p>He worries their popularity will delay the exploration of other AI architectures that don’t rely on the brute-force statistical crunching of data. Above all, he doesn’t believe <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkRft71_JrY">neural networks</a> (the basis of much of today’s AI) are the <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/11/noam-chomsky-on-where-artificial-intelligence-went-wrong/261637/?single_page=true">correct architecture</a> for replicating human intelligence.</p>
<p>Despite being unimpressed by ChatGPT, Chomsky does see potential for AI to play the monster in a grim future. In the essay, he wrote ChatGPT’s responses can exude “the banality of evil: plagiarism and apathy and obviation”. </p>
<p>Still, he seems to regard AI as a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0LwhVGZKac">secondary worry</a> compared with <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books/about/Climate_Crisis_and_the_Global_Green_New.html?id=PlT5DwAAQBAJ&redir_esc=y">climate change</a>.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/is-it-time-to-reconsider-the-idea-of-the-banality-of-evil-216737">Is it time to reconsider the idea of 'the banality of evil'?</a>
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<h2>Commercial AI: the revenge of behaviourists?</h2>
<p>There’s an important difference between Chomsky’s <a href="https://ethics.org.au/big-thinker-noam-chomsky/">ethical</a> and <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/158840-optimism-is-a-strategy-for-making-a-better-future-because">optimistic</a> work in cognitive science and what’s currently going on in the AI industry.</p>
<p>Advances in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_model">modelling cognition</a> are no longer happening mainly at universities. Instead, huge firms such as Google, Microsoft and OpenAI are hoarding resources.</p>
<p>Some researchers are now <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/05/llm-ai-chatgpt-neuroscience/674216/">turning to AI models</a> for clues about <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-chatgpt-isnt-conscious-but-future-ai-systems-might-be-212860">human thinking</a>. If you agree with Chomsky <a href="https://theconversation.com/were-told-ai-neural-networks-learn-the-way-humans-do-a-neuroscientist-explains-why-thats-not-the-case-183993">and others</a> this is unlikely to yield much insight. But that’s not the point of these models, is it?</p>
<p>Their purpose is to <a href="https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/big-tech-revenue-profit-by-company/">make money</a>. Users <a href="https://theconversation.com/prompt-engineering-is-being-an-ai-whisperer-the-job-of-the-future-or-a-short-lived-fad-211833">prompt</a> them with a stimulus and get a <a href="https://www.gartner.com/en/marketing/glossary/direct-response-marketing">response</a>. If it’s useful, they’ll prompt again. Over time, the model will learn which <a href="https://www.marketingstudyguide.com/stimulus-response-theory-in-marketing/">stimulus and response</a> patterns work, and will use this knowledge to become more addictive and influential – reinforcing our <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinforcement">use of them</a> and potentially even <a href="https://theconversation.com/ai-can-now-learn-to-manipulate-human-behaviour-155031">changing our behaviours</a>.</p>
<p>Stimulus, response, reinforcement and behaviour. Sound familiar? </p>
<p>Chomsky fought hard to keep behaviourism out of linguistics and contributed greatly to our understanding of how language may be linked with processes in the mind. Ironically, it seems these contributions have driven us into the perfect arena for <a href="https://www.thecollector.com/behaviorism-experiments/">behaviourist experimentation</a> facilitated by AI.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/218034/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Cameron Shackell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Could Chomsky have foreseen where his contributions would lead us?Cameron Shackell, Sessional Academic and Visitor, School of Information Systems, Queensland University of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2171712023-11-28T13:41:05Z2023-11-28T13:41:05ZMerriam-Webster’s word of the year – authentic – reflects growing concerns over AI’s ability to deceive and dehumanize<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561970/original/file-20231127-24-mzbshd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=306%2C721%2C5664%2C4221&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">According to the publisher’s editor-at-large, 2023 represented 'a kind of crisis of authenticity.'</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/analog-collage-with-female-portrait-and-her-mirror-royalty-free-image/1304922773?adppopup=true">lambada/E+ via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When <a href="https://apnews.com/article/merriam-webster-word-of-year-2023-a9fea610cb32ed913bc15533acab71cc">Merriam-Webster announced</a> that its word of the year for 2023 was “authentic,” it did so with over a month to go in the calendar year. </p>
<p>Even then, the dictionary publisher was late to the game.</p>
<p>In a lexicographic form of <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/words-were-watching-christmas-creep-slang-definition">Christmas creep</a>, Collins English Dictionary announced <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/nov/01/ai-named-most-notable-word-of-2023-by-collins-dictionary">its 2023 word of the year</a>, “AI,” on Oct. 31. Cambridge University Press <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/nov/15/hallucinate-cambridge-dictionary-word-of-the-year">followed suit</a> on Nov. 15 with “hallucinate,” a word used to refer to incorrect or misleading information provided by generative AI programs. </p>
<p>At any rate, terms related to artificial intelligence appear to rule the roost, with “authentic” also falling under that umbrella.</p>
<h2>AI and the authenticity crisis</h2>
<p>For the past 20 years, Merriam-Webster, the oldest dictionary publisher in the U.S., has chosen a word of the year – a term that encapsulates, in one form or another, the zeitgeist of that past year. In 2020, the word was “pandemic.” The next year’s winner? “Vaccine.”</p>
<p>“Authentic” is, at first glance, a little less obvious.</p>
<p>According to the publisher’s editor-at-large, <a href="https://www.wbbjtv.com/2023/11/27/whats-merriam-websters-word-of-the-year-for-2023-hint-be-true-to-yourself/">Peter Sokolowski</a>, 2023 represented “a kind of crisis of authenticity.” He added that the choice was also informed by the number of online users who looked up the word’s meaning throughout the year.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561966/original/file-20231127-27-1x4zx1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Print ad with a drawing of a thick book accompanied by the text, 'The One Great Standard Authority.'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561966/original/file-20231127-27-1x4zx1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561966/original/file-20231127-27-1x4zx1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561966/original/file-20231127-27-1x4zx1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561966/original/file-20231127-27-1x4zx1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561966/original/file-20231127-27-1x4zx1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1154&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561966/original/file-20231127-27-1x4zx1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1154&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561966/original/file-20231127-27-1x4zx1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1154&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">A 1906 print ad for Webster’s International Dictionary advertised itself an an authoritative clearinghouse for all things English – an authentic, reliable source.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/advertisement-for-websters-international-dictionary-by-g-news-photo/478181481?adppopup=true">Jay Paull/Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>The word “authentic,” in the sense of something that is accurate or authoritative, has its roots in French and Latin. The Oxford English Dictionary has identified its usage in English as early as the <a href="https://www.oed.com/dictionary/authentic_adj?tab=meaning_and_use#33027938">late 14th century</a>.</p>
<p>And yet the concept – particularly as it applies to human creations and human behavior – <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-the-new-science-of-authenticity-says-about-discovering-your-true-self-175314">is slippery</a>.</p>
<p>Is a photograph made from film more authentic than one made from a digital camera? Does an authentic scotch have to be made at a small-batch distillery in Scotland? When socializing, are you being authentic – or just plain rude – when you skirt niceties and small talk? Does being your authentic self mean pursuing something that feels natural, even at the expense of cultural or legal constraints?</p>
<p>The more you think about it, the more it seems like an ever-elusive ideal – one further complicated by advances in artificial intelligence.</p>
<h2>How much human touch?</h2>
<p>Intelligence of the artificial variety – as in nonhuman, inauthentic, computer-generated intelligence – was the technology story of the past year.</p>
<p>At the end of 2022, OpenAI publicly released <a href="https://openai.com/blog/chatgpt">ChatGPT 3.5</a>, a chatbot derived from so-called large language models. It was widely seen as a breakthrough in artificial intelligence, but its rapid adoption led to questions about the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/06/technology/chatbots-hallucination-rates.html?smid=tw-share">accuracy of its answers</a>.</p>
<p>The chatbot also became popular among students, which compelled teachers <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/chatgpt-schools-plagiarism-lesson-plans/">to grapple with how to ensure</a> their assignments weren’t being completed by ChatGPT. </p>
<p>Issues of authenticity have arisen in other areas as well. In November 2023, a track described as the “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/02/arts/music/beatles-now-and-then-last-song.html#:%7E:text=It%27s%20a%20wistful%20postscript.,after%20the%20Beatles%20broke%20up.">last Beatles song</a>” was released. “Now and Then” is a compilation of music originally written and performed by John Lennon in the 1970s, with additional music recorded by the other band members in the 1990s. A machine learning algorithm was recently employed to separate Lennon’s vocals from his piano accompaniment, and this allowed a final version to be released. </p>
<p>But is it an authentic “Beatles” song? <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/21/magazine/the-beatles-now-and-then.html">Not everyone is convinced</a>.</p>
<p>Advances in technology have also allowed the manipulation of audio and video recordings. Referred to as “<a href="https://theconversation.com/events-that-never-happened-could-influence-the-2024-presidential-election-a-cybersecurity-researcher-explains-situation-deepfakes-206034">deepfakes</a>,” such transformations can make it appear that a celebrity or a politician said something that they did not – a <a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/07/30/1190970436/how-real-is-the-threat-of-ai-deepfakes-in-the-2024-election">troubling prospect</a> as the U.S. heads into what is sure to be a contentious 2024 election season. </p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/generative-ai-is-forcing-people-to-rethink-what-it-means-to-be-authentic-204347">Writing for The Conversation in May 2023</a>, education scholar Victor R. Lee explored the AI-fueled authenticity crisis.</p>
<p>Our judgments of authenticity are knee-jerk, he explained, honed over years of experience. Sure, occasionally we’re fooled, but our antennae are generally reliable. Generative AI short-circuits this cognitive framework.</p>
<p>“That’s because back when it took a lot of time to produce original new content, there was a general assumption … that it only could have been made by skilled individuals putting in a lot of effort and acting with the best of intentions,” he wrote.</p>
<p>“These are not safe assumptions anymore,” he added. “If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, everyone will need to consider that it may not have actually hatched from an egg.”</p>
<p>Though there seems to be a general understanding that human minds and human hands must play some role in creating something authentic or being authentic, authenticity has always been a difficult concept to define.</p>
<p>So it’s somewhat fitting that as our collective handle on reality has become ever more tenuous, an elusive word for an abstract ideal is Merriam-Webster’s word of the year.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/217171/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Roger J. Kreuz does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Innovations in AI seem to be spurring interest in what is or isn’t real, accurate and human.Roger J. Kreuz, Associate Dean and Professor of Psychology, University of MemphisLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2006352023-11-08T06:45:09Z2023-11-08T06:45:09ZThe words that helped wrongly convict Kathleen Folbigg<blockquote>
<p><strong>Prosecutor:</strong> Are you able to say whether or not Caleb died from a catastrophic asphyxiating event of unknown causes? </p>
<p><strong>Pathologist:</strong> I believe that is likely. […]</p>
<p><strong>Prosecutor:</strong> In relation to Laura […] her cause of death was consistent with smothering? </p>
<p><strong>Pathologist:</strong> Yes.</p>
<p><strong>Prosecutor:</strong> Including deliberate smothering?</p>
<p><strong>Pathologist:</strong> Yes.</p>
<p><strong>Prosecutor:</strong> And that she probably died from an acute catastrophic asphyxiating event of unknown causes?</p>
<p><strong>Pathologist:</strong> Yes. – (<a href="https://www.folbigginquiry.justice.nsw.gov.au/Documents/Amended%20Exhibit%20F.pdf">Transcript pp. 746-48</a>)</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The above exchange occurred during the seven-week trial leading to Kathleen Folbigg’s conviction for the deaths of her four infant children (Caleb, Patrick, Sarah and Laura) between 1989 and 1999. During the trial, the word “asphyxia” in its various forms (-ate; -ation; -ating) was used 208 times; “smother” (-ing; -ed) 221 times; and “consistent with” 233 times. </p>
<p>The pathologists and doctors concurred that the absence of external injuries was “consistent with” Caleb dying of a “catastrophic asphyxiating event”. This was repeated for each of the four children by each of the doctors, with strangling or smothering likely to be uppermost in the minds of the jurors. </p>
<p>Of course, Folbigg’s wrongful conviction had <a href="https://johnmenadue.com/the-wrongful-conviction-of-kathleen-folbigg-why-did-it-happen-and-what-must-be-done-to-stop-it-from-happening-again/">numerous factors</a>. We have no way of knowing why the jury decided as it did. </p>
<p>But there are good reasons for forensic medicine practitioners and advocates to rethink their understanding – and use – of these words. </p>
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<h2>The semantic journey of asphyxia</h2>
<p>“Asphyxia” first appeared <a href="https://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=eebo2;idno=B22610.0001.001">in print</a> in 1699 defined as “without any Pulse, or sign of Life”. Predictably, this meaning “stoppage of pulse” then sprouted the meaning “stoppage of respiration” – a lack of breath is a salient sign of lifelessness. </p>
<p>Subsequently, the path has been rocky, and it is now understood variously by forensic doctors around the world. What is agreed, however, is that “asphyxia” is not a diagnosis; it is not a condition that can be pointed at or diagnosed. </p>
<p>As far as lay understandings go, things get murkier. Modern dictionaries list many senses but privilege “respiratory failure”, with “suffocation” usually given as a synonym; this in turn is defined as the interruption of breathing, including some means by which it’s brought about (for example, smothering, throttling). </p>
<p>The Urban Dictionary’s definition for “asphyxiation” is “death by strangulation; ergo blockage in air passage”. This dictionary has its problems, but like other collaboratively constructed dictionaries, it is useful for tracking contemporary social meanings of expressions not yet in more mainstream dictionaries.</p>
<h2>More murkiness</h2>
<p>In the trial, confused senses of “asphyxia” were combined with the misleading phrase “consistent with”. As used by experts, this is synonymous with “may or may not mean”. </p>
<p><a href="https://repository.uclawsf.edu/hastings_law_journal/vol59/iss5/7/">Research</a> shows, however, that people without expert knowledge hear the phrase as strong confirmation of the proposed connection.</p>
<p>In the <a href="http://netk.net.au/Canada/Morin10.asp">1998 Canadian inquiry</a> into the (wrongful) conviction of Canadian man Guy Paul Morin, Commissioner Kaufman was scathing in his criticism of the use of “consistent with”. He regarded it as demonstrably misleading language, variably being used to mean:</p>
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<p>‘could have come, or cannot be excluded as coming, from the accused’; ‘not inconsistent with’; ‘more than a possibility but less than a probability’; ‘perfect or near identity of two items’.</p>
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<p>The <a href="https://www.oed.com/dictionary/consistent_adj?tab=meaning_and_use">historical thesaurus</a> of the Oxford English Dictionary suggests this last sense “perfect or near identity of two items” has been around since the 1600s. Clearly, we can’t assume people today would automatically understand “consistent with” as simply a way of saying what is proposed is possible.</p>
<h2>Bad meanings drive out good</h2>
<p>The meanings we carry around in our heads seem so natural we fail to realise other people can have quite different understandings. </p>
<p>As linguist <a href="https://oxford.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198709831.001.0001/acprof-9780198709831">Nick Enfield</a> describes, we hypothesise what others mean by the words they use. And the more unusual a word is, the more its meanings will vary because we aren’t given the same opportunities to refine our hypotheses. </p>
<p>For example, what part of the foot do you understand as the “instep” – the upper surface between toes and ankle, the underneath part, or perhaps both the top and underneath? All three meanings are out there, and different dictionaries favour different ones. </p>
<p>Does this really matter? In a highly circumstantial murder trial, it does.</p>
<p>Words are <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/forbidden-words/E7E4C037E8F1A91DE2ECA05CD70A3078">far more likely</a> to take on negative overtones than favourable ones. The linguistic evidence is compelling – negative senses come to dominate and eventually quash all other senses. This transformation has a name: Gresham’s Law of Semantic Change.</p>
<p>It comes as no surprise that crowdsourced online dictionaries show the homicidal senses of “asphyxia” (and its derived forms) as winning out.</p>
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<h2>Asphyxia permeated Kathleen Folbigg’s trial</h2>
<p>Importantly, it was agreed by all involved none of the babies showed any injuries. (Two pinpoint scratches on Sarah’s lower lip were agreed to be of no significance).<br>
As the prosecutor said: </p>
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<p>All they [the doctors] can say is that there was some form of obstruction that caused oxygen not to be able to get into the lungs and that’s what caused these babies to die […] all they can say is that it was induced asphyxiation from an external cause […]“ (<a href="https://www.folbigginquiry.justice.nsw.gov.au/Documents/Amended%20Exhibit%20F.pdf">Transcript p. 66</a>)_</p>
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<p>It was repeatedly asserted the presence of no injuries in any of the Folbigg children "was consistent with the occurrence of an acute catastrophic asphyxiating event” or “smothering”. This was probably heard by the jury as indicating no injuries meant an “asphyxial event” had occurred – in other words, the children had been strangled or smothered. </p>
<p>There was also repeated reference to the absence of natural explanations for four sudden and unexplained deaths in one family – with the unstated inference that the only reasonable explanation was homicide. Known as Meadows Law, this inference stalked Kathleen Folbigg’s trial and her subsequent appeals relentlessly. Meadows Law falls at the first hurdle: how likely is it there would be four murders – where there are no injuries – masquerading as natural deaths? </p>
<p>In <a href="https://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdoc/au/cases/nsw/NSWSC/2003/895.html?context=1;query=R%20v%20Folbigg;mask_path=au/cases/nsw/NSWSC">his sentencing remarks</a>, the judge stated:</p>
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<p>No (expert) witness was prepared to say that the signs pointed only to smothering but the medical evidence generally was that the result of each event was consistent with having been caused by acute asphyxiation. The jury accepted that evidence.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>That summary encompasses the following linguistic storm: the doctors might say they thought the prosecutor was talking about asphyxia as meaning hypoxia/anoxia (low oxygen levels) due to any one of a myriad of causes.</p>
<p>The prosecutor believed he was asking whether, and the doctors were telling him that, the babies died from induced airways obstruction from external causes. And the jury thought they were being told the babies were smothered, or even strangled.<br>
All of this is medically incoherent and incapable of establishing anything of significance – but probably had a powerful effect on the jury. </p>
<h2>'The wisdom of the crowd’</h2>
<p>Since its first appearance in English in the 1600s, the term “asphyxia” has caused confusion. </p>
<p>In forensic pathology, it encompasses a number of concepts and is used variously by pathologists – and these uses are out of alignment with common lay usage. Combined with different understandings of “consistent with”, this confusion was very much to Folbigg’s disadvantage. </p>
<p>The jury system relies on “the wisdom of the crowd”. Forensic doctors, advocates and judges must recognise that, despite what they think and dictionaries say, the crowd can understand words very differently, and this can have consequences. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/brekkies-barbies-mozzies-why-do-aussies-shorten-so-many-words-192616">Brekkies, barbies, mozzies: why do Aussies shorten so many words?</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/200635/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Professor Cordner was an expert witness at both Commissions of Inquiry into the convictions of Kathleen Folbigg. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kate Burridge does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The meanings we carry around in our heads seem so natural and inborn that we fail to realise other people can have quite different understandings.Kate Burridge, Professor of Linguistics, Monash UniversityStephen Cordner, Senior Consultant/Professor Emeritus, Dept of Forensic Medicine, Monash University, Victorian Institute of Forensic MedicineLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2127512023-11-07T13:38:06Z2023-11-07T13:38:06ZYour mental dictionary is part of what makes you unique − here’s how your brain stores and retrieves words<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557506/original/file-20231103-15-cq6i0x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C2060%2C1452&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Your brain processes letters, words, sounds, semantics and grammar at breakneck speed.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/illustration/discovery-studying-and-learning-concept-royalty-free-illustration/1313637285">StudioM1/iStock via Getty Images Plus</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The days of having a dictionary on your bookshelf are numbered. But that’s OK, because everyone already walks around with a dictionary – not the one on your phone, but the one in your head.</p>
<p>Just like a physical dictionary, your <a href="https://dictionary.apa.org/mental-lexicon">mental dictionary</a> contains information about words. This includes the letters, sounds and meaning, or semantics, of words, as well as information about parts of speech and how you can fit words together to form grammatical sentences. Your mental dictionary is also like a thesaurus. It can help you connect words and see how they might be similar in meaning, sound or spelling. </p>
<p>As a <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=2cPhM-gAAAAJ&hl=en">researcher who studies word retrieval</a>, or how you quickly and accurately pull words out of your memory to communicate, I’m intrigued by how words are organized in our mental dictionaries. Everyone’s mental dictionary is a little bit different. And I’m even more intrigued by how we can restore the content of our mental dictionaries or improve our use of them, particularly for those who have language disorders. </p>
<p>Language is part of <a href="https://theconversation.com/when-was-talking-invented-a-language-scientist-explains-how-this-unique-feature-of-human-beings-may-have-evolved-186877">what makes humans special</a>, and I believe everyone deserves the chance to use their words with others. </p>
<h2>Your mental dictionary</h2>
<p>While a physical dictionary is helpful for shared knowledge, your personal mental dictionary is customized based on your individual experiences. What words are in my mental dictionary might overlap with the mental dictionary of someone else who also speaks the same language, but there will also be a lot of differences between the content of our dictionaries. </p>
<p>You add words to your mental dictionary through your educational, occupational, cultural and other life experiences. This customization also means that the size of mental dictionaries is a little bit different from person to person and varies by age. Researchers found that the <a href="https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01116">average 20-year-old American English speaker</a> knows about 42,000 unique words, and this number grows to about 48,000 by age 60. Some people will have even larger vocabularies.</p>
<p>By now, you might be envisioning your mental dictionary as a book with pages of words in alphabetical order you can flip through as needed. While this visual analogy is helpful, there is a lot of debate about how mental dictionaries are organized. Many scholars agree that it’s probably not like an alphabetized book.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Scientists created an interactive map of which brain areas respond to hearing different words.</span></figcaption>
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<p>One widely rejected theory, the <a href="https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/8029.003.0031">grandmother cell theory</a>, suggests that each concept is encoded by a single neuron. This implies that you would have a neuron for every word that you know, including “grandmother.” </p>
<p>While not accepted as accurate, the aspect of the grandmother cell theory suggesting that certain parts of the brain are more important for some types of information than others is likely true. For example, the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1523%2FJNEUROSCI.0559-06.2006">left temporal lobe</a> on the side of your brain has many regions that are important for language processing, including word retrieval and production. Rather than a single neuron responsible for processing a concept, a model called <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn1076">parallel distributed processing</a> proposes that large networks of neurons across the brain work together to bring about word knowledge when they fire together.</p>
<p>For example, when I say the word “dog,” there are lots of different aspects of the word that your brain is retrieving, even if unconsciously. You might be thinking about what a dog smells like after being out in the rain, what a dog sounds like when it barks, or what a dog feels like when you pet it. You might be thinking about a specific dog you grew up with, or you might have a variety of emotions about dogs based on your past experiences with them. All of these different features of “dog” are processed in slightly different parts of your brain.</p>
<h2>Using your mental dictionary</h2>
<p>One reason why your mental dictionary can’t be like a physical dictionary is that it is <a href="https://doi.org/10.3389/frai.2022.1027392">dynamic and quickly accessed</a>. </p>
<p>Your brain’s ability to retrieve a word is very fast. In one study, researchers mapped the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0908921106">time course of word retrieval</a> among 24 college students by recording their brain activity while they named pictures. They found evidence that participants selected words within 200 milliseconds of seeing the image. After word selection, their brain continued to process information about that word, like what sounds are needed to say that chosen word and ignoring related words. This is why you can retrieve words with such speed in real-time conversations, often so quickly that you give little conscious attention to that process.</p>
<p>Until … you have a breakdown in word retrieval. One common failure in word retrieval is called the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/0749-596X(91)90026-G">tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon</a>. It’s the feeling when you know what word you want to use but are unable to find it in that moment. You might even know specific details about the word you want, like other words with similar meaning or maybe the first letter or sound of that word. With enough time, the word you wanted might pop into your mind.</p>
<p>These tip-of-the-tongue experiences are a normal part of human language experience across the life span, and they increase as you grow older. One proposed reason for this increase is that they’re due to an <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/geronb/gbw074">age-related disruption</a> in the ability to turn on the right sounds needed to say the selected word. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557488/original/file-20231103-29-ovw7xx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Speech therapist showing young patient how to roll tongue in forming a word" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557488/original/file-20231103-29-ovw7xx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557488/original/file-20231103-29-ovw7xx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557488/original/file-20231103-29-ovw7xx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557488/original/file-20231103-29-ovw7xx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557488/original/file-20231103-29-ovw7xx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557488/original/file-20231103-29-ovw7xx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557488/original/file-20231103-29-ovw7xx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Speech-language pathologists help patients improve on their word retrieval abilities and speech.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/female-professional-help-small-kid-with-speech-royalty-free-image/1213336945">fizkes/iStock via Getty Images Plus</a></span>
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<p>For some people, though, tip-of-the-tongue experiences and other speech errors can be quite impairing. This is commonly seen in <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-aphasia-an-expert-explains-the-condition-forcing-bruce-willis-to-retire-from-acting-180385">aphasia, a language disorder</a> that often occurs after injury to the language centers of the brain, such as stroke, or neurodegeneration, such as dementia. People with aphasia often have difficulty with word retrieval. </p>
<p>Fortunately, there are <a href="https://www.aphasia.org/">treatments available</a> that can help someone improve their word retrieval abilities. For example, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1310/tsr1706-411">semantic feature analysis</a> focuses on strengthening the semantic relationships between words. There are also treatments like <a href="https://doi.org/10.1044/2015_JSLHR-L-14-0131">phonomotor treatment</a> that focus on strengthening the selection and production of speech sounds needed for word production. There are even <a href="https://www.aphasia.org/aphasia-resources/aphasia-apps/">apps that remotely provide</a> word retrieval therapy on phones or computers. </p>
<p>The next time you have a conversation with someone, take a moment to reflect on why you chose the specific words you did. Remember that the words you use and the mental dictionary you have are part of what make you and your voice unique.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/212751/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nichol Castro does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Most people can draw from tens of thousands of words in their memory within milliseconds. Studying this process can improve language disorder treatment and appreciation of the gift of communication.Nichol Castro, Assistant Professor of Communicative Disorders and Sciences, University at BuffaloLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2159222023-11-02T19:11:51Z2023-11-02T19:11:51ZUnderstanding all kinds of English accent can improve empathy and learning – and even be a matter of life and death<p>In a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGRcJQ9tMbY">2019 sketch</a> from the US late-night comedy show Saturday Night Live (SNL), the actor James McAvoy plays a Scottish air traffic controller attempting to help a US brand integration manager (Mikey Day) land a plane in distress, because the pilot has been knocked unconscious. The fact that Day’s character is not a pilot only partly explains why the mayday call is not a success. McAvoy lays on thick Glaswegian, in both accent and vocab, and none of the Americans on board understand a word he says. </p>
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<p>Airline safety is just one area of work where hazards in miscommunication are important to recognise. Research has long shown that communication issues are a chief cause of <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/329921857_Miscommunication_in_Pilot-controller_Interaction">airline crashes</a>. The SNL sketch neatly illustrates the potential problems that can arise when people don’t understand each other’s accents. </p>
<p>Such a lack of understanding can often lead to what linguists term <a href="https://theconversation.com/accentism-is-alive-and-well-and-it-doesnt-only-affect-the-north-of-england-148825">“accentism”</a>, or accent-based <a href="https://theconversation.com/posh-spice-sounds-posher-but-changing-your-working-class-accent-isnt-a-ticket-out-of-discrimination-189401">prejudice</a>. This typically sees the listener who doesn’t understand effectively blame the speaker for their accent. </p>
<p>But my research <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/weng.12561">shows</a> there is no accent, whether used by a native speaker of English or a non-native speaker, that is inherently easy or difficult to comprehend. Rather, it is <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/41124557_The_challenge_of_regional_accents_for_aviation_English_language_proficiency_standards_A_study_of_difficulties_in_understanding_in_air_traffic_control-pilot_communications">the lack of exposure</a> people have to a variety of accents that can cause communication difficulties. This is relevant wherever safety, but also empathy and learning, are central. </p>
<h2>Miscommunications in the air</h2>
<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_English">Aviation English</a> refers to the variety of English used between those flying the plane and those on the ground: air traffic control. Given its status as the global language, pilots are required to maintain a certain level of English to fly planes. </p>
<p>According to <a href="https://skybrary.aero/">SKYbrary</a>, a website dedicated to providing information on air safety, 80% of airline incidents and accidents are caused by pilots and air traffic controllers not understanding each other. </p>
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<img alt="A group of people in a meeting." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557272/original/file-20231102-23-qi2ydl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557272/original/file-20231102-23-qi2ydl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557272/original/file-20231102-23-qi2ydl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557272/original/file-20231102-23-qi2ydl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557272/original/file-20231102-23-qi2ydl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557272/original/file-20231102-23-qi2ydl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557272/original/file-20231102-23-qi2ydl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Communication problems stem from a lack of familiarity with accents different to one’s own.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://unsplash.com/photos/people-meeting-in-room-cw-cj_nFa14">Antenna|Unsplash</a></span>
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<p>The International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) requires aviation personnel to “use an accent which is intelligible to the aeronautical community”. This implies that accents which are more familiar to people, such as <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Received-Pronunciation">Received Pronunciation</a> (RP), are broadly understood, whereas accents tied to Liverpool or Glasgow, for example, <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/357912873_Attitudes_toward_regional_British_accents_in_EFL_teaching_Student_and_teacher_perspectives_R">are less so</a>. </p>
<p>But I have shown that no combination of vowel and consonant sounds is inherently difficult to understand. Rather, the degree to which someone is familiar with an accent will dictate how much they understand. It is a matter of accent exposure.</p>
<p>Within aviation, there are specific guidelines that actually contravene the idea that pilots and air traffic controllers should use familiar accents such as RP. According to the <a href="https://aviation-english.com/accents.htm">Aviation Accents</a> training programme, which specialises in exposing airline personnel to audio clips of a vast array of accents, English contains sounds that do not exist in many other languages or that speakers of many other languages often find difficult. </p>
<p>The ICAO therefore recommends pilots say “tree” instead of “three”, for example, because the English “th” sound does not exist in many other languages and can be difficult to pronounce. Similarly, people whose native languages do not differentiate between “l” and “r” sounds can have difficulty pronouncing English words such as “runway”. </p>
<h2>Exposure to accents in the wider world of work</h2>
<p>This potential for miscommunication has been shown to be <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/edit/10.4324/9781315595641/misunderstandings-atc-communication-immanuel-barshi-candace-farris">just as clear</a> among native English speakers too. The words “hot” and “hat” said in a strong Chicago accent sound, to a British-English ear, like “hat” and “he-yut”, respectively. But if a British person spends a good amount of time in Chicago, they won’t find this confusing. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Students in a classroom with a teacher." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557276/original/file-20231102-21-cm6pv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557276/original/file-20231102-21-cm6pv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=373&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557276/original/file-20231102-21-cm6pv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=373&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557276/original/file-20231102-21-cm6pv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=373&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557276/original/file-20231102-21-cm6pv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=469&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557276/original/file-20231102-21-cm6pv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=469&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557276/original/file-20231102-21-cm6pv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=469&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Professionals at large would benefit from having greater exposure to all kinds of accents.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://unsplash.com/photos/man-and-woman-sitting-on-chairs-zFSo6bnZJTw">Kenny Eliason|Unsplash</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>RP and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_American_English">General American</a> have long been perceived as “traditonal” accents. Historically – <a href="https://theconversation.com/code-switching-the-pressure-on-people-to-change-how-they-speak-194302">and still today</a> – this kind of perception has led native English speakers to <a href="https://www.suttontrust.com/our-research/speaking-up-accents-social-mobility/">change their accents</a> to improve their social mobility. </p>
<p>As a result, there is ample evidence that accent discrimination remains rife within the fields of teaching, banking, publishing and more. People are <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/320320024_Accent_and_Linguistic_Prejudice_within_British_Teacher_Training">judged</a> as not being “right” for the job.</p>
<p>However, <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17532315/">research increasingly shows</a> that, with greater exposure to other accents, people’s perception can adapt. This in turn can lead to better understanding. </p>
<p>In professions where not only safety but empathy are central, native English speakers will benefit from widening their own linguistic nets and becoming more proficient with the <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/04/25/989765565/tower-of-babble-non-native-speakers-navigate-the-world-of-good-and-bad-english">vast array</a> of non-standard English <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/societal-codification-of-korean-english-9781350188556/">accents</a> out there. A global language, after all, will have global accents.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/215922/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alexander Baratta does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Accents are not inherently easy or difficult to comprehend. Rather, the lack of exposure people have to a variety of accents causes communication difficulties.Alexander Baratta, Senior lecturer in English Language, University of ManchesterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2148322023-10-31T12:40:34Z2023-10-31T12:40:34ZLanguage induces an identity crisis for the children and grandchildren of Latino immigrants<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555349/original/file-20231023-16-6w6a7l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=68%2C319%2C5682%2C3509&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Many second- and third-generation Latinos feel insecure about their Spanish-speaking abilities.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/yvonne-mendoza-lies-on-her-couch-at-home-yvonne-is-a-first-news-photo/626450154?adppopup=true">Shaul Schwarz, Verbatim/Getty Images for Be Vocal</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://theconversation.com/el-idioma-provoca-una-crisis-de-identidad-en-los-hijos-y-nietos-de-inmigrantes-latinos-217166"><em>Leer en español.</em></a> </p>
<p>A young Latina mother I was interviewing once laughed uncomfortably as she described her sons’ embarrassment when put on the spot by older Latinos. </p>
<p>They would speak to her sons in Spanish, before quickly adding in the same language, “How awful! You don’t understand me in Spanish?” Her sons would then sheepishly reply – in Spanish – “Yes, I understand. But I don’t speak it.”</p>
<p>Despite our different backgrounds, her story hit close to home. </p>
<p>I grew up in Arizona as the child of Chinese immigrants, learning to navigate the language and cultural currents that surrounded me inside and outside of the home. Reclaiming my Chinese language and understanding its role in my life has been a lifelong journey. At the same time, I was also immersed in the bilingualism of the U.S.-Mexico border, where Spanish and English are both used but the power and politics of language always linger in the background.</p>
<p>I’ve also witnessed these dynamics in my extended family, where my husband’s Latin American roots bring with them the expectation of Spanish fluency. While he is fluent, many children of Latino immigrants are not. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.american.edu/cas/faculty/tseng.cfm">I’ve studied these issues</a> for many years as a linguist, and I’m currently exploring them in my current book project on how language helps shape Latino identity in Washington, D.C. </p>
<p>What I’ve learned upends assumptions that heritage languages are “lost” from one generation to the next because of a simple lack of motivation or children rejecting their roots. My research paints a more complex picture that delves into how we understand – or misunderstand – the bilingualism of heritage speakers.</p>
<h2>Assimilation nation</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.cal.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/HeritageBriefWhoisaHeritageLanguageLearner.pdf">Heritage speakers</a> are people who, although they may have learned their parents’ native language at home, no longer speak it in the same way as a traditional native speaker because of growing up in a bilingual environment.</p>
<p>Their language abilities are often misunderstood both within their cultural communities and by outsiders. That’s what happened with Celia’s sons: Other community members assumed they couldn’t speak Spanish, even though they could understand and respond in the language.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555384/original/file-20231023-19-7996xo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Cleveland Board of Education poster from 1917 that reads 'Cleveland: Many Peoples, One Language.'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555384/original/file-20231023-19-7996xo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555384/original/file-20231023-19-7996xo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=897&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555384/original/file-20231023-19-7996xo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=897&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555384/original/file-20231023-19-7996xo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=897&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555384/original/file-20231023-19-7996xo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1127&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555384/original/file-20231023-19-7996xo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1127&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555384/original/file-20231023-19-7996xo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1127&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A 1917 poster printed by the Cleveland Board of Education and the Cleveland Americanization Committee advertises English language learning to European immigrants.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/poster-issued-by-the-americanization-committee-of-the-news-photo/96740207?adppopup=true">Fotosearch/Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>Heritage speakers face a unique set of circumstances. The U.S. has a long history as a multilingual society, <a href="https://www.multilingual-matters.com/page/detail/Bilingual-Education/?k=9781853599071">and an equally long history</a> of oppressing minority groups and their languages and cultures.</p>
<p>Many U.S. families descended from Europe lost their heritage languages because of pressures to assimilate. Policies promoting English as part of broader “Americanization” efforts <a href="https://www.colorincolorado.org/article/immigrant-era-focus-assimilation">were enacted through school policies and legislation</a> in the late 19th century and early 20th century. Most heritage languages in the U.S., such as German and Polish, <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Handbook-of-Heritage-Community-and-Native-American-Languages-in-the-United/Wiley-Peyton-Christian-Moore-Liu/p/book/9780415520676">were no longer spoken in families after three generations</a>.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Native American groups are still fighting to revitalize languages <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/analysis-how-indigenous-languages-can-be-preserved-and-why-those-efforts-help-revitalize-culture">weakened by targeted cultural eradication</a>. Within living memory, <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2023/09/23/latinos-spanish-language-fade-hope-future-generations/70903045007/">Latinos were punished for speaking Spanish at school</a>. I will never forget when a middle-aged Latina in my bilingual education class shared her humiliation and fear when her kindergarten teacher physically punished her for speaking Spanish – the language of her home and her family, and the only language she spoke at that time. Decades later, the memory was still raw.</p>
<p>Heritage speakers <a href="https://www.multilingual-matters.com/page/detail/Bilingualism-for-All/?k=9781800410039">still face discrimination in school</a>, and examples of linguistic prejudice – people being attacked for speaking languages other than English – <a href="https://doi.org/10.1057/s41276-018-00171-x">are rampant on the internet</a>.</p>
<h2>Straddling two worlds</h2>
<p>Under these circumstances, support for heritage languages in the home and within the community is key. Speaking Spanish is certainly an important value for many Latino parents. But they can be quick to criticize their children’s Spanish acumen, which can inadvertently undermine these efforts.</p>
<p>In my research, I discovered that elders’ negative judgments of the Spanish abilities of younger Latinos <a href="https://academic.oup.com/applij/article-abstract/42/1/113/5748305?redirectedFrom=fulltext">created insecurity and language avoidance</a>. Youth were held to unrealistic standards that did not reflect their bilingual realities. When younger Latinos <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/9781405166256.ch13">code-switched</a>, understood more than they could say, had a non-native accent in Spanish or spoke English among themselves, older community members often saw this as evidence that they didn’t really speak Spanish. </p>
<p>In reality, these are normal behaviors for the children of immigrants all over the world. But parents’ comparison of their children to monolingual norms – the speech of native speakers who speak only one language – meant that they often inadvertently disparaged their kids’ bilingualism instead of celebrating it.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.npr.org/2021/06/01/1000922653/a-daughters-journey-to-reclaim-her-heritage-language">The relationship between language and identity is intensely personal</a>. Since language is intimately linked to identity, it is often used as a gatekeeper, with young Latinos being shamed for being “Americanized” or seen as rejecting the home culture.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Family poses wearing red and blue outfits in the style of the Puerto Rican flag." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555350/original/file-20231023-15-f48ze2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555350/original/file-20231023-15-f48ze2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555350/original/file-20231023-15-f48ze2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555350/original/file-20231023-15-f48ze2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555350/original/file-20231023-15-f48ze2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555350/original/file-20231023-15-f48ze2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555350/original/file-20231023-15-f48ze2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Within families, language is intimately linked to identity and culture.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/family-posing-at-the-annual-street-festival-in-calle-ocho-news-photo/916125654?adppopup=true">Jeffrey Greenberg/Universal Images Group via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>Many of the children and grandchildren of immigrants whom I spoke with told me they felt insecure about their ability to speak Spanish. Even if they were quite fluent, they felt that it was never good enough. As one U.S.-born Latino commented, “I speak Spanish, you know, people down the street can hear me and be like, ‘This guy’s a gringo.’”</p>
<p>Criticizing the way they speak, even with good intentions, can cause <a href="https://one.npr.org/?sharedMediaId=528816293:531824445">them to question their identity and feel insecure</a>, discouraging them from speaking Spanish – the exact opposite of the desired result.</p>
<h2>Never enough</h2>
<p>While their Spanish comes under attack, Latinos also weather doubts and assumptions about their English. Even Latinos who speak only English <a href="https://theracecardproject.com/assume-dont-speak-english/">get stereotyped as not speaking it</a> based on their ethnicity. People often mistakenly assume that Latino English – a native dialect – <a href="https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230510012">is “broken” English</a>, or criticize it as “nonstandard” due to its historic Spanish influence. </p>
<p>Latino English can also experience another layer of prejudice since it is often influenced by <a href="https://www.linguisticsociety.org/content/what-ebonics-african-american-english">African American language</a>, as I found while researching <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/15348458.2023.2263568">how Latino children acquire their peers’ African American English</a> as a second language.</p>
<p>The heritage-speaker dilemma encapsulates some of the contradictions that Latino youth must navigate: Their parents see them as not Latino enough, while many others view them as not American enough. This dynamic can make them doubt themselves and give others ammunition to question their identities.</p>
<p>These beliefs are so entrenched that even powerful Latinos cannot escape them. U.S. Rep. <a href="https://www.oprahdaily.com/entertainment/a33636539/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-spanish-language-fluency/">Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s bilingualism is constantly under scrutiny</a>. She has been mocked <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/latina-thing-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-s-name-latest-culture-war-n985916">for pronouncing her name in Spanish</a>, as if the English pronunciation were more correct. She’s also been accused <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11966927/Shes-total-fraud-Squad-member-AOC-slammed-video-emerges-using-accent.html">of faking her accent</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Young woman wearing pink jacket gestures during press conference in front of large white building." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556660/original/file-20231030-25-m5bnui.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556660/original/file-20231030-25-m5bnui.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556660/original/file-20231030-25-m5bnui.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556660/original/file-20231030-25-m5bnui.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556660/original/file-20231030-25-m5bnui.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556660/original/file-20231030-25-m5bnui.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556660/original/file-20231030-25-m5bnui.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has found her bilingualism to be a source of scrutiny.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/rep-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-speaks-during-a-news-news-photo/1246564047?adppopup=true">Drew Angerer/Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>Criticism of heritage speakers lies in the mistaken belief that there is only one “pure” way to speak a language and that this lines up neatly with culture and identity. But language always evolves, and culture is always changing. Fluid forms, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.013.808">such as Spanglish</a>, play an important role in identity for many young Latinos.</p>
<p>Increasingly, heritage speakers are sharing their experiences and realizing that wherever they are in their language journeys, <a href="https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/2022/05/10971837/no-sabo-kid-meaning-new-definition">it’s good enough</a>.</p>
<p>Their language and culture is not “less than” or inauthentic – just different. It’s based on the experience of growing up in a diaspora. Ultimately, many people can identify with their experiences, regardless of their different backgrounds. Learning how to integrate different aspects of yourself into a whole while not losing your roots is a quintessentially American – and, ultimately, human – experience.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/214832/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Amelia Tseng does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Young Latinos in the US often navigate a contradictory landscape: Their parents see them as not Latino enough, while teachers and peers view them as not American enough.Amelia Tseng, Assistant Professor in Spanish and Linguistics, American UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2154782023-10-27T14:17:27Z2023-10-27T14:17:27ZCockney and Queen’s English have all but disappeared among young people – here’s what’s replaced them<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556220/original/file-20231026-27-8jym8f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C10%2C7241%2C4885&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/friends-hipster-teenager-buddies-concept-522299716">Rawpixel.com/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Cockney and received pronunciation (Queen’s English) were once spoken by people of all ages, but they are no longer commonly spoken among young people in the south-east of England. </p>
<p>In new <a href="https://www.jbe-platform.com/content/journals/10.1075/eww.22054.col">research</a>, colleagues and I recorded the voices of 193 people between the ages of 18 and 33 from across south-east England and London. We then built a computer algorithm which “listened” to how they spoke and grouped them by how similarly they pronounced vowels in different words. </p>
<p>We identified three main accents:<a href="https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-04357-5">standard southern British English</a>, <a href="https://www.york.ac.uk/language/research/projects/mle/">multicultural London English</a> and <a href="https://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/estuary/home.htm">estuary English</a>. </p>
<h2>What defines these accents?</h2>
<p>Around 26% of our participants spoke estuary English, which has similarities with Cockney but is more muted and closer to received pronunciation. The people in our sample who spoke estuary English would pronounce words like “house” a bit like “hahs”, but not as extreme as you would find in Cockney. Estuary English is spoken across the south-east, particularly in <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-cockney-dialect-is-not-dead-its-just-called-essex-now-196447">parts of Essex</a>, and is similar to how Stacey Dooley, Olly Murs, Adele or Jay Blades speak. </p>
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<p>Standard southern British English – which many perceive as a prestigious, “standard” or “neutral” sounding accent – is a modern, updated version of received pronunciation. SSBE speakers, who made up 49% of our sample, tended to say words like “goose” with the tongue further forward in the mouth (sounding a bit more like “geese”) than what we would expect in received pronunciation.</p>
<p>This change even happened in the <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/35050160">accent of Queen Elizabeth II</a> over her lifetime. We could probably consider Ellie Goulding, Josh Widdicombe and maybe even Prince Harry to speak with this accent.</p>
<p>We found that speakers of standard southern British English and estuary English generally tended to be white British, and women were more likely than men to speak the former. It’s not surprising to find that women speak in a more socially prestigious way, as much <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/9780470756591.ch17">previous research</a> suggests – women are often more chastised for speaking with regional accents than men.</p>
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<p>Notably, standard southern British English and estuary English are not as different from each other as Cockney and received pronunciation. This could be evidence of what’s known as dialect levelling – where young people from different parts of the region now speak more similarly to each other than their parents or grandparents did. </p>
<p>This occurs as a result of the increased movement of people resulting in greater contact between dialects, the growth of universal education and literacy, and people buying into the idea that there is a “correct” or “standard” way of speaking. </p>
<p>This is not to say that there are no new or innovative ways of speaking today. One example is an accent which linguists call multicultural London English, first noted in recent decades in the speech of young east Londoners. This accent has similarities with Cockney and other south-eastern accents, but also has influences from other languages and dialects of English. </p>
<p>The young people with a multicultural London English accent (around 25% in our sample) said the vowels in words like bate and boat with the tongue starting at a point higher up in the mouth compared to standard southern British English so that they might sound a little bit more like “beht” and “boht”. </p>
<p>They tended to be Asian British or Black British and many were from London, but there were also people from across the south-east who spoke with elements of a multicultural London English accent. Bukayo Saka, Little Simz and Stormzy could be examples of people who speak with these features.</p>
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<h2>Accents change – does that matter?</h2>
<p>Cockney, the working-class, London accent of Barbara Windsor or <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFoWTBZAGME">Michael Caine</a>, and received pronunciation, which some call Queen’s English (or perhaps now King’s English), did not appear in our analysis. That’s not to say that there aren’t any young people in our sample who might have spoken these accents, but if so, they were too few and far between for the algorithm to identify. </p>
<p>For decades, some educators, politicians and commentators have expressed concern that received pronunciation is being replaced by estuary English, allegedly representing a decline in standards. In 1995, the then education secretary, Gillian Shephard, <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/gotter-stop-them-glottal-stops-awight-1587001.html">vowed</a> to combat the growth of slang among schoolchildren and the spread of estuary English. </p>
<p>In 2014, facing criticism for airing different regional accents, the BBC <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/voices/yourvoice/accent2.shtml">stated</a> that they do “not aspire to be a ‘guardian’” of received pronunciation – also sometimes called BBC English. </p>
<p>Estuary English and multicultural London English are both often criticised and devalued. <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01434632.2019.1666856">Research</a> has shown that Londoners who don’t speak MLE think of it as a form of “broken language”, “language decay” or “fake language”. </p>
<p>Linguists have ardently <a href="https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783110346831.427/html?lang=en">pushed back</a> against unfounded claims that multicultural London English has “pushed out” Cockney, that it represents a dumbing-down of language or that it is inauthentic. </p>
<p>There is no scientific or logical argument to support the idea that these accents are inferior, less articulate or less grammatically rich than any other accent. They simply reflect where a person is from and their background and experiences. </p>
<p>The way accents are described feeds directly into how the people who speak with these accents are <a href="https://theconversation.com/working-class-and-ethnic-minority-accents-in-south-east-england-judged-as-less-intelligent-new-research-162886">judged</a>. </p>
<p>Attempting to prevent accents from changing is like sweeping back an incoming tide with a broom – fruitless and defying nature. Instead, we should embrace linguistic diversity, work to combat <a href="https://accentism.org/">accentism</a> (discrimination based on a person’s accent), and accept that accents will always continue to change.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/215478/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Amanda Cole does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Accents are constantly changing.Amanda Cole, Lecturer in Department of Language and Linguistics, University of EssexLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2106082023-10-11T12:29:20Z2023-10-11T12:29:20ZListen up, ladies and gentlemen, guys and dudes: Terms of address can be a minefield, especially as their meanings change<p>A male colleague could be <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2018/08/guys-gender-neutral/568231/">forgiven for not knowing</a> if using “guys” to refer to female co-workers is acceptable in the modern workplace. But should he <a href="https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/04/06/business/superintendent-ladies-email-microaggression-experts/">address them as “ladies</a>,” he risks a trip to HR, or at the very least being labeled a condescending creep.</p>
<p>So what in the name of <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/">Messrs Merriam and Webster</a> is going on with what us linguists call “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118786093.iela0005">address terms</a>” – that is, the words we use to address individuals – and their gender? All languages have such terms, with the most common being “you,” or <a href="https://www.thesaurus.com/e/grammar/second-person-pronouns/">the second-person pronoun</a>. </p>
<p>But we have a host of alternative address terms commonly in use in the English language: “you guys,” “bro,” “dude,” “<a href="https://theconversation.com/yall-that-most-southern-of-southernisms-is-going-mainstream-and-its-about-time-193265">y'all</a>” and “mate” – depending on the variety of English you are speaking – are among the most common. And then there are those that signal intimacy, such as “babe” and “honey.” Each comes with a degree of social signaling – that is, each one signals what the speaker believes, or hopes, their relationship to be with the person they are talking to.</p>
<p>But why are some terms that were once accepted, like “ladies,” now <a href="https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2023/04/18/ladies-workplace-language">seen as offensive</a> by members of the gender they reference, while others <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/07/07/guys-defense-gendered-etymology/">once dismissed as gender exclusive</a>, like “guys,” are now deemed by many to be OK?</p>
<p>As a <a href="https://www.linguistics.pitt.edu/people/scott-f-kiesling">sociolinguist</a>, I have the answer: Over time, the meanings of words change – especially address terms.</p>
<h2>Dude, where’s my meaning?</h2>
<p>Let’s start with meaning. Address terms are special words, as they identify the actual person you are talking to. “You” in English is the most generic and comes in handy if you don’t know the addressee – think, “Hey you!” In other languages, one must choose between more or less formal terms. In French, for example, there is the <a href="https://www.talkinfrench.com/french-guide-to-tu-and-vous/">informal “tu” and formal “vous</a>.” </p>
<p>But even in English, when addressing someone in, say, an email, you can choose between the formal, informal or very informal. In correspondence I have been addressed as “Dr. Kiesling,” “Scott” or “Scotty.”</p>
<p>Linguists call these contextually related meaning “<a href="https://www.thoughtco.com/indexicality-language-term-1691055">indexicalities</a>,” but here I’ll just call them meaning.</p>
<p>Words change their meanings over time, and meanings especially change as the use of an address term expands.</p>
<p>Let’s look at “dude,” a term I have studied for many years and which has changed significantly over its lifetime. </p>
<p>This term <a href="https://theweek.com/articles/457871/where-did-word-dude-come-from">originally comes</a> from the “doodle” part of “Yankee Doodle Dandy,” and at first it meant literally a dandy – a man who dresses especially well.</p>
<p>It was applied as a derogatory term for gangs in the U.S. West and Southwest known as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoot_suit">Pachucos, or zoot-suiters</a>, since they dressed in a flamboyant style. These gangs started calling each other “dude” as a way to both resist the insult and to signal solidarity among fellow zoot-suiters. So the zoot-suiters added a new meaning of solidarity to “dude.”</p>
<p>From there, “dude” spread to the jazz, beat and surfing communities in the West, and in the 1980s it exploded nationwide. But at that point, it mostly retained a masculine meaning.</p>
<p>“Dude” eventually evolved in such a way that it could be used without reference to anyone at all, and now can express a stance or emotion, as demonstrated with humor in an early 2000s <a href="https://youtu.be/dyMSSe7cOvA">Bud Light commercial</a> in which “dude” – the only word spoken in the entire commercial – is used to mean everything from exasperation to joy.</p>
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<p>Address terms like “dude” expand their usage constantly, and new ones are constantly invented. The most recent examples include <a href="https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/bro-brah-bruv-bruh-and-breh-meanings-explained">variants of “bro” and “bruh</a>” – which actually have slightly different meanings according to initial data from a recent poll I conducted. As best we can tell, “bro” was limited to being used only between men, but is now <a href="https://medium.com/illumination/has-bro-become-the-universal-slang-51a6292fba5b">used by women as well</a>, and “bruh” is used to express some sort of negative emotion or exasperation – by any gender – and doesn’t even need to be addressed to anyone.</p>
<h2>Showing ‘ladies’ the exit</h2>
<p>Although American-English writing styles have moved away from treating all humans as generically masculine, terms with masculine roots such as “dude,” “bro,” “bruh,” “you guys,” “chap” and “mate” have expanded to be able to refer to any human of any gender.</p>
<p>Address terms that lose their gender tend to have one thing in common: They start out as masculine referring terms, become address terms, and then expand. </p>
<p>This is rare for feminine terms. “Sister” or “girl” are similarly terms that have expanded their meanings – they don’t necessarily have to mean one’s biological sister, or a female child. But few would agree that those terms could be used to address a group of mixed-gender individuals without insulting the men in the group, or without humor.</p>
<p>Why this asymmetry? A likely answer is that masculine identities are seen as powerful. For this reason, <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/01/tomboy/512258/">referring to a woman as a “tomboy</a>” has traditionally been less of an insult than referring to a man as a “sissy.” </p>
<p>In this way, the initial move to calling women “dude” was not perceived as insulting, and then it becomes used more and more widely. On the other hand, saying something like “hey girl” to a man might be insulting, although such use is common in LGBTQ+ communities.</p>
<p>But why is it that women can also take offense when addressed as “ladies”?</p>
<p>The issue came up this past spring when a <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/21/us/easthampton-massachusetts-school-district-superintendent-email/index.html">male candidate for a school superintendent position used “ladies</a>” in an email to address two women, including a committee member. The term, he was told, was a “microaggression” and “disrespectful”; his job offer was rescinded.</p>
<p>The use of “gentlemen” – should the two recipients have been men – would have unlikely made headlines.</p>
<p>The reason is the power asymmetry between “ladies” and “gentlemen.” Just think of the stereotypical image of the lady and the gentleman: The latter is generally strong and powerful, and the former is frivolous and weak, unless modified by an adjective, such as “Iron Lady” or “Strong Lady” – modifications that seem odd and almost redundant to use with “gentleman.” </p>
<h2>The nonobjectionable ‘all’</h2>
<p>Linguist <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/language-and-womans-place-9780195167573?cc=us&lang=en&">Robin Lakoff argued</a> in the early 1970s that the word “lady” was a actually a kind of euphemism, a more “polite” way of referring to a woman, and that “lady” reduces the power of the person referred to as a lady. “Gentleman” has none of that euphemistic and powerless connotation.</p>
<p>This could have factored in to the school board controversy. Many people today have only encountered the term “ladies” when it’s used in a way that focuses attention on the femininity of the person addressed – especially when the gender is irrelevant for other meaning purposes. </p>
<p>Of course “girls” could have been seen as even worse, since it implies immaturity as well.</p>
<p>If you’re afraid to use any address term at this point, you’re not alone. There are, however, ways around this. And if you’re worried about offending a group by using an inappropriate reference term, there’s always a somewhat bland – but largely inoffensive – workaround: “all.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/210608/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Scott F. Kiesling has received funding from the National Science Foundation. </span></em></p>Gendered words can be offensive in certain contexts – it’s all in what’s being signaled, according to a sociolinguistScott F. Kiesling, Professor of Linguistics, University of PittsburghLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2117452023-09-11T03:21:22Z2023-09-11T03:21:22ZPhilologists, pedants and obsessives: how crowd-sourcing created the Oxford English Dictionary<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/546617/original/file-20230906-23-eh0y8c.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=5%2C5%2C3988%2C2988&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">James Henry Augustus Murray in his Scriptorium.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:James-Murray.jpg">Public domain</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/the-dictionary-people-9781784744946">The Dictionary People: The Unsung Heroes who Created the Oxford English Dictionary</a> is a celebration of words and word-people: authors, editors, publishers, linguists, lexicographers, philologists, obsessives, pedants. Its author, Sarah Ogilvie, was formerly an Oxford English Dictionary editor and wrote the 2013 book <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/au/universitypress/subjects/languages-linguistics/applied-linguistics-and-second-language-acquisition/words-world-global-history-oxford-english-dictionary">Words of the World: A Global History of the Oxford English Dictionary</a>.</p>
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<p><em>Review: The Dictionary People: The Unsung Heroes who Created the Oxford English Dictionary (Chatto & Windus)</em></p>
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<p>Ogilvie’s focus in The Dictionary People is on editor <a href="https://www.oxforddnb.com/display/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-35163">James Augustus Henry Murray</a> (1837-1915), who orchestrated a collective, pre-digital mode of crowd-sourcing to produce the first edition of the dictionary.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/546083/original/file-20230903-23-zk0046.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/546083/original/file-20230903-23-zk0046.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/546083/original/file-20230903-23-zk0046.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=910&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546083/original/file-20230903-23-zk0046.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=910&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546083/original/file-20230903-23-zk0046.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=910&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546083/original/file-20230903-23-zk0046.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1144&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546083/original/file-20230903-23-zk0046.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1144&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546083/original/file-20230903-23-zk0046.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1144&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>An unlikely lexical prodigy, Murray had left school at 14. He had worked on a dairy farm, then as a teacher and a bank clerk. In between those and other jobs, he developed a broad knowledge of foreign languages – including Tongan and classical Greek – and became a serious student of etymology and philology. On that basis he was enlisted to help with the dictionary.</p>
<p>For his work, Murray built a large iron shed in his garden that was called, grandly, “the Scriptorium”. On cold days, which were many, Murray’s editorial assistants would wrap their legs in newspaper to stay warm.</p>
<p>Lacking a university education, Murray was alert to status and perceptions. He gifted himself the names “Augustus” and “Henry” to impart gravity and distinction to his otherwise humble-sounding name. After he was awarded an honorary degree from the University of Edinburgh in 1874, he wore his scholar’s cap every day.</p>
<p>Murray’s OED was to be much more than a list of words and their definitions. It would also be a philological document, providing examples of how words had appeared in books and newspapers. That goal was well beyond the capacity of an editor and a small team of shivering assistants. Hence the crowd-sourcing. A vast network of people would join the project, sending in paper slips showing examples of English words in context.</p>
<p>There were so many contributors sending so many slips that the Royal Mail installed a red pillar box outside Murray’s home. Many of the contributors (nearly 500) were women, and some of those were among the OED’s super-contributors, sending in thousands of slips over many years.</p>
<p>When it was finally published in 1928 after Murray’s death, his edition of the OED contained 414,825 entries, with 1.8 million illustrative quotations.</p>
<h2>Allusions and anecdotes</h2>
<p>The catalyst for The Dictionary People was Ogilvie’s rediscovery of Murray’s ribbon-tied address books in a “dusty box” in the basement archive of Oxford University Press.</p>
<p>The address books revealed an extraordinary collection of contributors, including Virginia Woolf’s father <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Leslie-Stephen">Leslie Stephen</a>, Karl Marx’s daughter <a href="https://www.wcml.org.uk/our-collections/activists/eleanor-marx/">Eleanor</a>, the American army surgeon <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Chester_Minor">William Chester Minor</a>, and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Richardson_(naturalist)">Sir John Richardson</a>, surgeon and naturalist on John Franklin’s first voyage in search of the Northwest Passage.</p>
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<span class="caption">William Chester Minor (1834-1920).</span>
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<p>Like Murray’s OED, The Dictionary People is a collective exercise. In addition to other supporters and sources, Ogilvie has assembled the book with the assistance of ten student researchers at Stanford University, with an eye for fascinating allusions and anecdotes. </p>
<p>We learn from The Dictionary People that Jane Austen was the first to write the word “outsider” and that a cousin of Eleanor Marx hallucinated that she had written Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women. </p>
<p>We also learn that the OED entry for ruffle – “to rumple, to destroy the smoothness or evenness of something” – took an illustrative quotation from Eleanor’s 1886 translation of Madame Bovary, and that, at the age of 27, a not-yet-famous J.R.R. Tolkien worked on the OED as an editorial assistant with the lexicographer <a href="https://www.oxforddnb.com/display/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-35316">Charles Onions</a>, whose family referred to Tolkien as “Jirt”, short for J.R.R.T.</p>
<p>Yet another delightful detail: 18 words from the science-fiction novella <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/201">Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions</a> (1884), including “dimensionable” and “nondimensionable”, made it in to the dictionary. Written by mathematician and theologian Edwin Abbott Abbott under the pseudonym “A. Square”, Flatland is the story of a square who visits Pointland, Lineland and Spaceland “to explore the possibility of other dimensions”. </p>
<p>A book with Austen, Woolf, Tolkien and sci-fi? The Dictionary People is irresistible.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/youse-wouldnt-believe-it-a-new-book-charts-the-11-year-making-of-a-peoples-dictionary-for-australia-155366">Youse wouldn't believe it: a new book charts the 11-year making of a 'people's dictionary' for Australia</a>
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<h2>Gonzoesque</h2>
<p>The Dictionary People is a good example of a newish genre of gonzoesque bibliographic history. Other examples include Denis Duncan’s equally excellent <a href="https://wwnorton.com/books/9781324002543">Index: A History of the</a> (2022), Emma Smith’s <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/portable-magic-9780141991931">Portable Magic</a> (2022) and my book <a href="https://www.textpublishing.com.au/books/the-library-a-catalogue-of-wonders">The Library: A Catalogue of Wonders</a> (2017).</p>
<p>This genre aims to tackle potentially dry, bookish topics in an engaging way. It analyses serious subjects diligently but informally, blending high and low culture, respectable and disreputable content. </p>
<p>Compared to Duncan, Ogilvie is more relaxed with the informality and the edgy terrain. The Dictionary People lacks rock’n’roll, but there is plenty of sex and drugs. Ogilvie devotes a chapter to the erotomaniac Henry Spencer Ashbee, whom Duncan left out of his book, despite the lurid splendour of the index to Ashbee’s anonymously published erotic memoir <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Secret_Life_(memoir)">My Secret Life</a> (1888).</p>
<p>Some parts of The Dictionary People are possibly too gonzoesque, even for me – such as when William Minor takes a paper-knife and a tourniquet and cuts off his own penis.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/546618/original/file-20230906-15-8q4djc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/546618/original/file-20230906-15-8q4djc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/546618/original/file-20230906-15-8q4djc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=840&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546618/original/file-20230906-15-8q4djc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=840&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546618/original/file-20230906-15-8q4djc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=840&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546618/original/file-20230906-15-8q4djc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1056&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546618/original/file-20230906-15-8q4djc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1056&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546618/original/file-20230906-15-8q4djc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1056&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Eleanor Marx, daughter of Karl Marx (1913)</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mrs_Eleanor_Marx_Aveling,_daughter_of_Karl_Marx.jpg">Public domain</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the midst of this symphony of words and colour, there are inevitably some wrong notes. To bring Murray’s list of contributors to life, Ogilvie has assembled a series of biographical portraits. These provide the book with its structure and narrative drama, but some of the biographical entries are stronger than others.</p>
<p>Towards the start of The Dictionary People, Ogilvie confesses to being “thrilled” that the list of OED contributors includes “not one but three murderers, a pornography collector [and] a cocaine addict found dead in a railway station lavatory”. </p>
<p>The addict is Eustace Frederick Bright, the focus of Chapter J. Unfortunately, it is one of the weaker chapters in The Dictionary People. Parts of it read like a Tinder profile, or perhaps the formulaic obituary of the died-young Oxbridge scholar. “Bright by name and bright by nature”, Eustace was </p>
<blockquote>
<p>a top student […] passing all his examinations with flying colours […] A good-looking young man, he had an engaging and outgoing personality, and many friends.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>There are some unhelpful speculations, such as “if heroin had existed in Bright’s day […] he probably would have tried it”. We learn that Bright died after drinking a phial of liquid cocaine, then taking several tablets, along with morphine. “He began to vomit, then collapsed and, lying on the toilet floor, he died.” </p>
<p>Ogilvie speculates about Murray’s reaction to Bright’s death:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Murray, as a teetotaller, would have been shocked and saddened by the demise of one of his most promising students and volunteers. News of Bright’s overdose came at a difficult time for him. Life in the Scriptorium was particularly stressful […] because of the successful publication [in America] of the Century Dictionary and the generously funded progress of […] Funk and Wagnall’s Standard Dictionary of the English Language.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The chapter towards the end on Chris Collier, however, is one of the strongest: a highlight of the book. Collier was a naturist from Brisbane who, like Murray, left school at 14. He began contributing to the OED in the 1970s, sending 100,000 slips over a period of 35 years.</p>
<p>For his contributions, Collier pulled numerous quotes from the Courier Mail. He sent bundles of slips “eccentrically wrapped in old Corn Flakes packets with pieces of cereal and dog hair stuck to them”. As a result, Brisbane’s main newspaper is proportionally over-represented in the OED.</p>
<p>Ogilvie describes meeting Collier in a Brisbane park in 2006, when Collier was around 70 years old. Dressed Don Dunstan-style in a t-shirt and “very short shorts”, he was reading – of course – the Courier Mail.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/546097/original/file-20230904-19-tdklny.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=22%2C3%2C2473%2C1841&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/546097/original/file-20230904-19-tdklny.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=22%2C3%2C2473%2C1841&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/546097/original/file-20230904-19-tdklny.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546097/original/file-20230904-19-tdklny.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546097/original/file-20230904-19-tdklny.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546097/original/file-20230904-19-tdklny.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=558&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546097/original/file-20230904-19-tdklny.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=558&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546097/original/file-20230904-19-tdklny.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=558&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">James Murray’s edition of the OED contained 414,825 entries and 1.8 million illustrative quotations.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Ogilvie refers regularly to “word nerds”. She is a natural connoisseur, who delights in words such as fritillaria (a type of flowering plant), eweleaze (an upland pasture for feeding sheep), absquatulate (to leave abruptly), apheliotropic and apogeotropic (botanical terms for plants that, respectively, turn away from the sun and bend away from the earth), agamogenetic (asexual reproduction), zoopraxiscope and zoogyroscope (two early forms of movie projector), aophiolaters (people who worship snakes), and cephaleonomancy (“divination by placing a donkey’s head on coals, and watching the jaws move at the name of a guilty person”).</p>
<p>But Ogilvie (or her editor) is not a textbook word nerd. She suggests, for example, that the New Zealand katipo and the Australian redback are the same species of spider; though related, they are not. And do we really need to be told that “non-conformably” means “in a manner that is not conformable”? </p>
<p>Writing about Eustace Bright, Ogilvie remarks that the word junkie “seems the closest adjective beginning with j to describe Murray’s former student”. Rather than “adjective” here, a more punctilious word nerd would have said “word” or “noun”.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/giving-back-to-english-how-nigerian-words-made-it-into-the-oxford-english-dictionary-131312">Giving back to English: how Nigerian words made it into the Oxford English Dictionary</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>The bigger picture</h2>
<p>The overarching claim of The Dictionary People is that it shines a light on the “unacknowledged” and “unsung heroes” of the OED. The claim is made in the subtitle and repeated throughout the book. Ogilvie states that she has “uncovered lives that have not necessarily been written about in the history books”. </p>
<p>I’m not sure what Ogilvie means by “necessarily” here, but the claim of unsungness is doubtful. Other works have covered similar ground. Quite a few of the people profiled in the book have been written about extensively. Simon Winchester’s bestselling <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/the-surgeon-of-crowthorne-9780140271287">The Surgeon of Crowthorne</a> (1998), for example, focused on William Chester Minor and was turned into a (not very successful) Hollywood film with Mel Gibson and Sean Penn.</p>
<p>Many books have been written on the search for the Northwest Passage and John Franklin. There are numerous biographies of Leslie Stephen, J.R.R. Tolkien and the Marxes. OED contributor <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Sugden_(Methodist)">Edward Sugden</a> was profiled in a book by his daughter, as well as in the Australian Dictionary of Biography and the centenary history of Melbourne University Publishing. Henry Spencer Ashbee is the subject of Ian Gibson’s book <a href="https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/book/Ian-Gibson-Erotomaniac-9780571209040">The Erotomaniac</a> (2001). Ogilvie’s previous book covers some of the same ground as The Dictionary People (it contains the Jirt anecdote, for example) and she wrote about Chris Collier for the Australian Book Review in June 2012.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/546619/original/file-20230906-27-8n2qol.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/546619/original/file-20230906-27-8n2qol.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/546619/original/file-20230906-27-8n2qol.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=860&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546619/original/file-20230906-27-8n2qol.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=860&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546619/original/file-20230906-27-8n2qol.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=860&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546619/original/file-20230906-27-8n2qol.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1081&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546619/original/file-20230906-27-8n2qol.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1081&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546619/original/file-20230906-27-8n2qol.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1081&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Henry Spencer Ashbee (1834-1900).</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Henry_Spencer_Ashbee.jpg">Public domain</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>I think Ogilvie would agree that the “unsung” claim is in many instances an unnecessary overstatement. Her main contribution with The Dictionary People is to put all the biographical portraits together to reveal a new and bigger picture. </p>
<p>What does this bigger picture reveal? In a compelling way, Ogilvie’s mosaic of contributors disrupts the assumptions we make when we see a copy of the OED. She tends to write from a British perspective, but she highlights that other countries and cultures have strong stakes in the OED. She describes how the dictionary was an English project and a British project, but also an empire project and a global project.</p>
<p>The OED was not solely an English enterprise in another sense, too. In the field of dictionary production, as Ogilvie shows, continental Europeans had the jump on England, producing dictionaries with similar methods and ambitions. Murray and other OED editors took a lot from European (and American) precedents and competitors.</p>
<p>What else can we see anew by grouping the contributors together? Murray’s OED was ostensibly a conservative academic project, but it was also a radical and democratic one. It contains countless neologisms. It drew input from people of all genders and classes. Many of the contributors lived far outside the academy, on the margins and fringes of Victorian and Edwardian society. A significant proportion were probably neurodiverse, and a large number were politically, socially and sexually diverse.</p>
<p>This is a cliché of course, but the OED took strength from this diversity. The power and richness of the dictionary depended on reaching into distant places and fields, including literature, commerce, medicine and science. The OED transcended disciplines and it transcended, literally, the walls of institutions such as prisons and asylums. William Minor, the fourth most prolific contributor to the dictionary, worked from the Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum.</p>
<p>Ogilvie’s bigger picture reveals that the English language is not owned by a club or a committee or a university or by people from a particular social class or place. It is a global language in its sources, its reach and its ownership. The language, and the literary and scholarly traditions that were built with it, belong to all of us.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/211745/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stuart Kells does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>An irresistible history of the OED reveals that English is a global language in its sources, its reach and its ownership.Stuart Kells, Adjunct Professor, College of Arts, Social Sciences and Commerce, La Trobe UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2125872023-09-06T14:07:43Z2023-09-06T14:07:43ZHow linguists are unlocking the meanings of Shakespeare’s words using numbers<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/545592/original/file-20230830-29-o2i3fd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=6%2C33%2C4486%2C2492&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/sydney-nsw-australia-may-25-2020-1944065131">Rose Marinelli/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Today it would seem odd to describe a flower with the word “bastard” – why apply a term of personal abuse to a flower? But in Shakespeare’s time, “bastard” was a technical term describing certain plants. </p>
<p>Similarly, associating the word “bad” with success and talking of a “bad success” would be decidedly odd today. But it was not unusual then, when success meant outcome, which could be good or bad.</p>
<p><a href="http://corpora.lancs.ac.uk/clmtp/main-1.php">Corpus linguistics</a> is a branch of linguistics which uses computers to explore the use of words in huge collections of language. It can spot nuances that might be overlooked by linguists working manually, or large patterns that a lifetime of studying may not reveal. And numbers, counts of words and keeping track of where the words are occurring, are key.</p>
<p>In my experience at conferences and the like, talk of numbers is not unanimously well received in the world of literary studies. Numbers are sometimes perceived as being reductive, or inappropriate when discussing creative works, or only accessible to specialists.</p>
<p>Yet, describing any pattern involves numbers. In the first paragraph above, I used the words “normal”, “odd” and “unusual” as soft ways of describing frequencies – the numbers of occurrences (think also of, for example, “unique”, “rare”, “common”). </p>
<p>Even talking about “associations” involves numbers. Often associations evolve from an unusually high number of encounters amongst two or more things. And numbers help us to see things.</p>
<h2>Changing meanings</h2>
<p>Along with my team at Lancaster University, I have used computers to examine some 20,000 words gleaned from a million-word corpus (a collection of written texts) of Shakespeare’s plays, resulting in a new kind of <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/arden-encyclopedia-of-shakespeares-language-9781350017955/#:%7E:text=The%20volume%20establishes%20in%20detail,fish%20as%20opposed%20to%20beef.">dictionary</a>.</p>
<p>People have created Shakespeare dictionaries before, but this is the first to use the full armoury of corpus techniques and the first to be comparative. It not only looks at words inside Shakespeare’s plays, but also compares them with a matching million-word corpus of contemporary early modern plays, along with huge corpus of 320 million words of various writings of the period.</p>
<p>Of course, words in early modern England had lives outside Shakespeare. “Bastard” was generally a term for a hybrid plant, occurring in technical texts on horticulture. </p>
<p>It could be, and very occasionally was, used for personal abuse, as in King Lear, where Edmund is referred to as a “bastard”. But this is no general term of abuse, let alone banter, as you might see it used today. It is a pointed attack on him being of illegitimate parentage, genetically hybrid, suspect at his core.</p>
<p>The word “bad” is not now associated with the word “success”, yet 400 years ago it was, as were other negative words, including “disastrous”, “unfortunate”, “ill”, “unhappy” and “unlucky”. </p>
<p>We can tap into a word’s associations by examining its collocates, that is, words with which it tends to occur (rather like we make judgements about people partly on the basis of the company they keep). In this way we can see that the meaning of “success” was “outcome” and that outcome, given its collocates, could be good or bad.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A statue of Hamlet with Yorrick's skull." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/545593/original/file-20230830-29-o6v9g1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/545593/original/file-20230830-29-o6v9g1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/545593/original/file-20230830-29-o6v9g1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/545593/original/file-20230830-29-o6v9g1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/545593/original/file-20230830-29-o6v9g1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/545593/original/file-20230830-29-o6v9g1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/545593/original/file-20230830-29-o6v9g1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A statue of Hamlet in Stratford-upon-Avon.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/statue-hamlet-stratforduponavon-warwickshire-england-united-257161972">givi585/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Highly frequent words</h2>
<p>We can use intuition to guess some word patterns. It’s no surprise that in early modern English, the word “wicked” occurred very frequently in religious texts of the time. But less intuitively, so did “ourselves”, a word associated with sermons and plays, both of which have in common a habit of making statements about people on earth.</p>
<p>Highly frequent words, so often excluded by historical dictionaries and reference works, are often short words that seem insignificant. They have a wood-for-trees problem. </p>
<p>Yet corpus techniques highlight the interesting patterns. It turns out that a frequent sense of the humble preposition “by” is religious: to reinforce the sincerity of a statement by invoking the divine (for example, “by God”).</p>
<p>Numbers can also reveal what is happening inside Shakespeare’s works. Frequent words such as “alas” or “ah” are revealed to be heavily used by Shakespeare’s female characters, showing that they do the emotional work of lamentation in the plays, especially his histories.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/G-epojal7nE?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Riz Ahmed as Edmund in King Lear performing the line: ‘Now, gods, stand up for bastards.’</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Infrequent words</h2>
<p>What of the infrequent? Words that occur only once in Shakespeare – so-called <em>hapax legomena</em> – are nuggets of interest. The single case of “bone-ache” in Troilus and Cressida evokes the horrifying torture that syphilis, which it applies to, would have been. In contrast, “ear-kissing” in King Lear is Shakespeare’s rather more pleasant and creative metaphor for whispering (interestingly, other writers used it for the notion of flattering).</p>
<p>Another group of interesting infrequent words concerns words that seem to have their earliest occurrence in Shakespeare. Corpus techniques allowed us to navigate the troubled waters of spelling variation. Before spelling standardisation, searching for the word “sweet”, for instance, would miss cases spelt “sweete”, “swete” or “svveet”. </p>
<p>In this way, we can better establish whether a word written by a writer really is the earliest instance. Shakespearean firsts include the rather boring “branchless” (Antony and Cleopatra), a word probably not coined by Shakespeare but merely first recorded in his text. But there is also the more creative “ear-piercing” (Othello) and the distinctly modern-sounding “self-harming” (The Comedy of Errors and Richard II).</p>
<p>Why are these advances in historical corpus linguistics happening now? Much of the technology to produce these findings was not in place until relatively recently. </p>
<p>Programs to deal with spelling variation (such as <a href="https://ucrel.lancs.ac.uk/vard/about/">Vard</a>) or to analyse vast collections of electronic texts in sophisticated ways (such as <a href="https://cqpweb.lancs.ac.uk/">CQPweb</a>), to say nothing of the vast quantities of computer-readable early modern language data (such as <a href="https://textcreationpartnership.org/tcp-texts/eebo-tcp-early-english-books-online/">EEBO-TCP</a>), have only been widely used in the last ten or so years. We are therefore on the cusp of a significant increase in our understanding and appreciation of major writers such as Shakespeare.</p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jonathan Culpeper receives funding from the AHRC and the BA. </span></em></p>Corpus linguistics – using computers to analyse texts – can spot patterns and nuances that might otherwise go unnoticed.Jonathan Culpeper, Chair professor in English Language and Linguistics, Lancaster UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.