LURA-2 2023

Slay, Yeoja-Boss!: The Misuse of AAVE in Modern K-Pop Culture

Anonymous — Tue, 25 Apr 2023 04:04:36 +0000

Slay, Yeoja-Boss!: The Misuse of AAVE in Modern K-Pop Culture Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 04/24/2023 - 22:04

Author: Phoebe Ham
Advisor: Prof. Kira Hall, TA Forest Stuart
Class: LING 1000: Language in US Society
Semester: Fall 2022
LURA 2023

In recent years, the popularity of Korean pop sensations such as BTS and BLACKPINK has blown up and expanded well past the continent from which they originated, taking over streaming services, award shows, and more. As more and more k-pop groups appeal to Western audiences and seek out global acknowledgment, foreign fans, especially in the United States, find themselves unable to ignore this versatile genre of music. However, a large number of newer fans and “locals”–people who are not proclaimed fans of said groups–are unaware of the racist past attributed to many Korean artists working within this genre of music.

K-pop idols such as Im Changkyun of Monsta X (known by his stage name I.M) and Jessi Ho (known as Jessi) are two examples of Korean American k-pop entertainers whose work I studied for this LING 1000 project, as pictured in the photographs below.

I.M was born in South Korea but moved to Boston, Massachusetts, where he spent most of his early life before moving back to South Korea. As one of the lyricists and producers for the group, he writes most of his own raps, many of which are littered with misused and out of place features of what linguists call AAVE (African American Vernacular English). It can be assumed that I.M includes AAVE phrases like “Fantastic, that’s me ‘cause I slay,” “Yo, I go loco… check my flow,” “... no cap, cap (no cap),” and “I ain’t got no limit” in the songs “FANTASIA” and “Rush Hour” to attempt to fit into African American hip hop culture. Many Korean rappers find inspiration in this genre, even going so far as to mimic their style as well as their language.

Although I.M is not viewed as an offender in the area of cultural appropriation, Jessi has been accused of blackfishing throughout her entire musical career. Jessi was born in New York City and raised in New Jersey, and in interviews with other Korean-American idols she retains a classic Jersey accent. It can be presumed that this is her natural way of speaking. For instance, in the pronunciation of certain words, such as “sauce,” she fully embraces said Jersey accent and accentuates the medial vowel sound so that the standard pronunciation /sɑs/ (in IPA transcription) sounds more like /sɔːs/. This is a common trait of New Jersey accents. However, in a video with the FO Squad, all of whom are African American, she speaks differently, with what some call a “blaccent.” She starts using AAVE terms more frequently, such as “bish” instead of “bitch” and “ya” instead of “you.” This is reminiscent of the vocabulary she uses in her songs, as heard in “Cold Blooded” and “ZOOM.” In these songs she frequently uses slang that originated in African American culture alongside syntactic features identified for AAVE, such as the double negative and zero copula. She also makes strong use of what sociolinguists call /aɪ/ monophthongization, common to both Southern and AAVE accents, so that words like “right” sound more like “raht.”

Interestingly enough, although I.M was born in Boston, he retains little to no signs of a classic Boston accent. According to Wolfram and Schilling, the unmistakable Boston accent was “established by emigrants” originally from Southeastern England (Wolfram and Schilling, 2016, pp. 28). A classic Boston accent includes certain pronunciations and elongation of vowels, as well as the elimination of consonants depending on the exact word. In an interview with Zach Sang from late 2021, Sang questions I.M on his unique accent, which surprisingly has no discernible nods to his childhood dialect. I.M lacks the dropping of the postvocalic [r] that originated from the initial rhotic British-English dialects, and instead sounds more ‘Australian,’ as stated by Sang. Interestingly enough, Boston is not particularly known for having a large African-American community, and AAVE features are not included in the classic Boston accent. This brings up the question of where he discovered AAVE: Why does I.M choose to use AAVE in his songs when he did not grow up in an AAVE-speaking community? To clarify, both I.M and Ho codeswitch between standard English and AAVE to an extent, depending on whether they’re on or off stage. However, while I.M’s speaking voice retains no hints of the frequent (mis)use of AAVE that he uses in his performing voice, Ho’s does the opposite. Ho uses terms that originated in AAVE in her every day speech, though it seems to heighten even more when she is around African American individuals, such as in the video with the Fo Squad.

Though I.M and Ho are not the only offenders of misusing AAVE in their music, they are two of the most obvious examples. Other idols that are fluent in English, such as Bang Chan of Stray Kids, Huh Yunjin of LE SSERAFIM, and Yoon Keeho of P1Harmony are also well-known in terms of their use of AAVE and cultural appropriation. Linguistically, it seems that multiple American English-speaking k-pop idols raised in the United States seem to be comfortable with the insensitivity that comes with cultural appropriation, much more than those who were born and raised in the non-English speaking country of Korea. However, this difference could also point towards the popularization of AAVE terms in Generation Z vocabulary, as younger idols of the newest k-pop generation are often seen as quirky and relatable because of their use of AAVE.

The roots of linguistic cultural appropriation and disrespect in k-pop go all the way back to the beginnings of the music genre. Their hold on newer generations of k-pop idols has only deepened in recent years. Although it is debatable whether or not the linguistic choices of these idols is offensive, it is undeniable that the language practices identified in this blog perpetuate deep ties to stereotypes of African-American English, both within the genre and the k-pop industry itself.

Image credit

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQ0tR4RXMHY

References

Wolfram, W., & Schilling, N. (2016). Why Dialects? In American English: Dialects and
Variation (3rd ed., pp. 27–34). John Wiley and Sons, Inc.
Zach Sang Show. (2021, December 15). Monsta X Talks The Dreaming Album & Movie, Success, Recording In Different Languages & More! [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTw_nkADesg
Labov, W. (2006). 13. The Social Stratification of (r) in New York City Department Stores. In The Social Stratification of English in New York City (pp. 168–179). essay, Cambridge University Press.
Irwin, P., & Nagy, N. (2007, October). University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics. Penn Libraries. Retrieved December 5, 2022, from https://repository.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1009&context=pwpl
DIVE Studios / 다이브 스튜디오. (2020b, September 9). Catching Up: Jessi (제시) (FULL Episode) I KPDB Ep. #73[Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uB8Gzw9wSwg
Lippi-Green, R., Barrett, R., Cramer, J., & McGowan, K. B. (2023). English With An Accent: Language, Ideology and Discrimination in the United States. Routledge.

Korean pop sensations such as BTS and BLACKPINK are a global phenomenon, but are fans aware of the racist uses of language found in this beloved music genre?

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Konglish: The Art of Diversity

Anonymous — Tue, 25 Apr 2023 03:18:27 +0000

Konglish: The Art of Diversity Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 04/24/2023 - 21:18

Authors: Leah Shin and Paul Ro
Advisor: Prof. Kira Hall, TA Emma Bornheimer
Class: LING 1000: Language in US Society
Semester: Fall 2022
LURA 2023

Being a Korean American in a place where you’re considered an outcast is something that can take a big toll on your life. The act of having to speak another language at home with family and then using a different identity with friends can take a lot more effort than one can think. This effort can easily be turned into a community of people who take on the same challenges on a daily basis. Konglish is a form of mixed languages between Korean and English and is a blend of words itself. The use of Konglish allows people in a place where they can sometimes feel like they do not belong to find each other and establish a place to come together, a place of comfort and communication. This was the subject of our project for Ling 1000: Language in US Society.

Growing up in a country where your parents don’t speak the same language can be hard for you, and taking on the responsibility of translating through Konglish and communicating through Konglish can oftentimes be stressful. Yet, the struggle usually comes with a bright side, the ability to find people that have the same language and a community of fellow Konglish users.

Konglish actually has a wide usage and a lot of people seem to gain similar words intuitively throughout their life, especially growing up around other Korean-Americans. The value of relationships among the common speakers of not only Korean but Konglish come together and become united rather than feeling drowned by the mass use of another language in their environment. Other benefits of being able to communicate through Konglish is the ability to have a relationship with your parents. Within first generation families, we often see a disconnect between children who don’t speak the same native language as their parents. The middle ground of being able to speak with the mixed variation allows better communication between families. Complications would occur when there is no bridge to fill the gap of not just generations, but of language as well.

Diversity is such a large portion of the United States that now we have to acknowledge the wide variations of language. We often see the usage of Konglish in people who are well versed in both languages, depicting the intelligence and social awareness of an individual. The cognitive ability to code switch is a skill that one inherits from being bilingual. That skill is something that we, Korean-Americans, call Konglish.

Image Credit

https://www.istockphoto.com/photo/south-korea-and-united-states-two-flags-together-realations-textile-cloth-fabric-gm1089425072-292253218

References

Park, J. S.-Y. (2021). Konglish as Cultural Practice: Reconsidering the English Language in South Korea. International Journal of TESOL Studies, 3(3), 138+. https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A677981581/AONE?u=coloboulder&sid=googleScholar&xid=3d 965359
Bucholtz, M. (2012). Word Up: Social Meanings of Slang in California Youth Culture. In Interpersonal Communication: An Ethnographic Approach. UC Santa Barbara. Retrieved from https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0c7141bs
Wolfram W. & Schilling-Estes N. (2016). American english : dialects and variation (Third). Wiley-Blackwell. Retrieved December 6 2022 from https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&scope=site&db=nlebk&db=nlabk&AN=10 84381.
Hill, J. H. (1995, October 9). Mock Spanish: A site for the indexical reproduction of racism in American English. Language. Retrieved December 7, 2022.

How does the effect of having multiple cultures and languages being integrated into your daily life affect who you are as an individual?

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Perspectives on Language and Gender in HBO's Succession

Anonymous — Sun, 23 Apr 2023 05:23:40 +0000

Perspectives on Language and Gender in HBO's Succession Anonymous (not verified) Sat, 04/22/2023 - 23:23

Author: Lucy Bowling
Advisor: Prof. Kira Hall, TA Rebecca Lee
Class: LING 2400: Language, Gender, & Sexuality
Semester: Fall 2022
LURA 2023

[video:https://youtu.be/xztr3BpYcwk]

Jesse Armstrong’s hit HBO drama Succession is, at its core, a show about a family business. It is also a show about the business of being a family, and all of the battles that go on behind the scenes when there are multiple powerful people under one roof. The patriarch, Logan Roy, grapples with some complex and delicate relationships with his children, one of whom, supposedly, will be Logan’s successor and take over as CEO of Waystar-Royco. He has to ask himself many questions that a father normally doesn’t: How will the PR response be if I send my son to rehab? How do I emotionally manipulate my youngest to side with me on this acquisition deal? Will my daughter be able to sweep this sexual harassment case under the rug for me? How do I prevent my idiodic son from running for president as an independent?

The Roy family is full of dysfunctional relationships and even more dysfunctional language. Tom Wambsgans, wife of Logan’s only daughter Siobhan (Shiv) Roy, sums up the show’s use of language quite nicely when discussing Shiv’s potential deal with her dad:

“It’s like you and your dad have finally admitted how much you’re into each other, you know? And now you can...you know... not this, but now you can bang.”

The words “bang,” “fuck,” “fight,” and “kill” are used interchangeably to describe business deals, and with Logan Roy as an almost omnipotent power in the show, incestual sentences like this are uttered many, many times. This is not done purely for the sake of comedy, but for creating an atmosphere of aggressive corporate life which is only intensified by jarring language use.

Armstrong and his team of writers have a foul mouth: in Episode 5, the word “fuck” is uttered a whopping 99 times. But this use of profanity isn’t senseless: it is simultaneously deliberately stylized and a real attempt at commenting on masculinity in the business world. The stylization of language in the show, which often ends up being overtly masculine, aggressive, and unprofessional is what attracted me to the thought of making a video essay about the show. In the course LING 2400: Language, Gender, and Sexuality, we discussed at length how different cultural subgroups develop and utilize their own language, often indexing more complex social hierarchies and norms. While language within the show is to a degree played for laughs, it is also used to expertly comment on gender and create characters whose vocabulary is indicative of important parts of their character.

Oftentimes, the show creates an atmosphere of locker-room banter to the nth degree, with phallic metaphors being a staple in most of the men’s vocabulary. But the show also subverts the audience’s expectations in several ways. Women like Siobhan Roy use the same foul language as her brothers, while her nervous, new-to-corporate life cousin Greg Hirsch speaks about as submissively as he can.

We can better understand these complex uses of language by applying early theories of language and gender proposed by Deborah Tannen (1990) and Robin Lakoff (1975) about how language and gender inform one another. While Lakoff focuses on the concept of “women’s language,” Tannen divides language into a “two-cultures” model, namely rapport talk (associated with women) vs. report talk (associated with men). In addition, we can apply concepts from O’Barr and Atkins’s (1980) paper on powerless language as well as Scott Kiesling’s (2004) essay “Dude” on masculine language.

Is the masculine language used by men on the show an assertion of traditional gender roles? Or do the writers for Succession subvert our expectations of language? In a way, Succession highlights the complexities and nuances of gendered language, showing that while gender does impact one’s use of language, “men’s” vs. “women’s” language is far, far too simple for the Roys.

Image Credit

https://www.slashfilm.com/894977/the-most-difficult-part-of-filming-tom-and-gregs-succession-scenes-according-to-matthew-macfadyen/

Selected References

Succession, Jesse Armstrong, HBO 2018.
Kiesling, Scott F. “Dude.” American Speech, vol. 79, no. 3, Jan. 2004, pp. 281–305.
Lakoff, Robin. Language and Woman’s Place. Harper & Row, 1975.
Tannen, Deborah. You Just Don’t Understand : Women and Men in Conversation. Morrow, 1990.
O’Barr, William M., and Bowman K Atkins. “‘Women’s language’ or ‘powerless language’?” Women and Language in Literature and Society, edited by Sally McConnell-Ginet, Ruth Borker, and Nelly Furman. Praeger, , 1980, pp. 93-110

“Is there a thing where we like…talk to each other…normally?”

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The Inhibiting Jargon of Destiny 2

Anonymous — Thu, 20 Apr 2023 04:54:01 +0000

The Inhibiting Jargon of Destiny 2 Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 04/19/2023 - 22:54

Author: Connor Marshall
Advisor: Prof. Kira Hall, TA Forest Stuart
Class: LING 1000: Language in US Society
Semester: Fall 2022
LURA 2023

[video:https://youtu.be/Ub3QCVX_r_0]

Since I was 13, Destiny 2 has been one of my favorite games I’ve ever played. Destiny 2 is a massively multiplayer online game, meaning that all players play together simultaneously and become stronger “Guardians” of the last city on Earth. As someone who has played the game for so many years, I have always been fascinated by the way that Destiny jargon would change. By jargon, I mean the specialized terminology used by players to describe specific aspects of the game. For this project, I decided to look deeper into those changes, and specifically how those jargon changes affected players starting their Destiny journey as well as players returning after an extended break.

Whenever I would return to Destiny after some time away, I realized that I had a slew of new jargon terms to learn. More interestingly, however, there was a barrier between older and new or returning players that I would need to overcome. Older players typically saw themselves as superior to new players, especially when it came to the jargon they used. A lack of familiarity with new jargon indexed incompetence as a Destiny player whether that was true or not. This perception from other players led me to question whether there was a relationship between the amount of jargon a Destiny player used and how successful they were in an activity.

After defining a few key Destiny jargon and explaining their word formation processes, I began my experiment. The most difficult activity to complete within Destiny 2 is called a “raid.” Raids are six-person activities consisting of typically four or more separate sequential objectives that usually take around two hours to complete. I assembled three separate raid teams and tracked the amount of jargon used by the team during each full raid completion. Along with this, I tracked the time it took to complete the raid as well as a one-to-ten score reflecting how difficult the raid was to complete. I won’t spoil my results shown in my video essay, embedded above, but they were fascinating.

Overall, this was an incredibly fun project to complete, and I’m so grateful for the recognition it has received. I want to specifically thank my extremely helpful TA, Forest Stuart, for their support, as well as Professor Hall for a fantastic semester.

Image Credit

https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fnews.xbox.com%2Fen-us%2F2020%2F09%2F22%2Fdestiny-2-forsaken-and-shadowkeep-xbox-game-pass%2F&psig=AOvVaw3_cWEMC_fmOz7nG9GWGRgI&ust=1679544565596000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CA8QjRxqFwoTCMDJy6fV7v0CFQAAAAAdAAAAABAD

References

Wolfram-Schilling 2016, American English Dialects and Variation, 64
Wolfram-Schilling 2016, American English Dialects and Variation, 65
Wolfram-Schilling 2016, American English Dialects and Variation, 61
Bucholtz 2012, “Word Up: Social Meanings of Slang in California Youth Culture, 283-284 Lippi Green et al 2022, English with an Accent, 112

How does the jargon of a video game community affect the players’ performance?

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Contesting and Constructing Qualifications for Trump’s Attorney General Through Reference Forms: The Case of Jeffrey Clark

Anonymous — Wed, 12 Apr 2023 08:50:28 +0000

Contesting and Constructing Qualifications for Trump’s Attorney General Through Reference Forms: The Case of Jeffrey Clark Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 04/12/2023 - 02:50

Author: Elijah Geltman
Advisor: GTPI Katherine Arnold-Murray
Class: LING 1000: Language in US Society
Semester: Summer 2022
LURA 2023

“You're an environmental lawyer. How about you go back to your office, and we’ll call you when there’s an oil spill.” – Richard Donoghue, President Trump’s Acting Deputy Attorney General (2020-2021)

“I don’t get to be fired by someone who works for me.” – Jeffery Rosen, President Trump’s Acting Attorney General (2020-2021)

These contentious remarks provide compelling examples of normative political language. They were said in a meeting held three days before January 6 th , 2021, in which President Donald Trump sought to appoint a Department of Justice environmental lawyer named Jeffrey Clark to the position of Attorney General. The Attorney General is the highest-ranking position in the United States Department of Justice (DOJ), and the “chief law enforcement officer of the Federal Government” (DOJ Office of AG). Trump sought to install Clark in this role because Clark supported his baseless claims of election fraud in the 2020 election and was willing to “wield the powers of the DOJ to overturn the results of the 2020 election” (Sprunt, 2022). If appointed to the position of Attorney General, Clark promised to issue official statements recommending that states won by Joe Biden report Donald Trump as the winner because of [non-existent] election fraud (Quinn, 2022). Should Clark have been appointed Attorney General, states might have been influenced to baselessly select Trump as the winner of the election.

However, Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue and Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen raised objections about Clark’s ability to be Attorney General. The language used to express dissent in this important moment in US political history provides insight into the study of normative and subordinating language.

I analyze this discussion using the concepts of categories and reference forms. Simply put, a reference form is a name we use to describe something in the world. Reference forms are generated by categories with social significance, such as gender and occupation. For example, given these categories, Clark can be called a man, a lawyer, or an environmental lawyer. Often, reference forms invoke normative qualities relating to categories. I apply Raymond’s (2019) understanding of categories and reference forms as providing “insight into participants' own practical, commonsense reasoning about the invoked categories – especially with regard to what constitutes normative, expected conduct for the [category] in question” (Raymond, 2019, p. 590). Reference forms highlight the relevance of specific categories by which form is chosen, and make and support argumentative claims about which societal categories are relevant to a discussion.

Donoghue: I made the point that Jeff Clark is not even competent to serve as the Attorney
General. He's never been a criminal attorney. He's never conducted a criminal
investigation in his life. He's never been in front of a grand jury, much less a trial
jury. And he kind of retorted by saying, "Well, I've done a lot of very complicated
appeals and civil litigation, environmental litigation, and things like that." And I
said, “That's right. You're an environmental lawyer. How about you go back to
your office, and we'll call you when there's an oil spill." (Source: House Select Committee, p. 126).

In the transcript above, Donoghue says, “He’s never been a criminal attorney. He’s never conducted a criminal investigation in his life. He’s never been in front of a grand jury, much less a trial jury.” By using these reference forms, Donoghue claims that the category of being unqualified to practice criminal law is relevant. Clark refers to categories that counter this claim. He refers to himself as someone who has “done a lot of very complicated appeals and civil litigation, environmental litigation, and things like that.” This language invokes categories that imply that Clark is qualified (i.e., that he is experienced with overall legal proceedings), disputing the relevance of Donoghue’s reference forms.

The idea of categories can help us evaluate the argumentative strength of Clark’s language. For example, Clark argues that the category of experience in civil law is relevant, and Donoghue claims that the category of experience in criminal law is relevant. But Clark’s choice of relevance is weaker because Donoghue selects categories that are incompatible with his claim not being valid. Having done “complicated appeals and civil litigation” can be true, while it can also be true that Clark is not in the category of ‘qualified to be Attorney General.’ Conversely, a reference form generated by the category ‘unqualified to practice criminal law’ is incompatible with the category ‘qualified to be Attorney General’ because the Attorney General is the highest-ranking criminal lawyer in the country. Thus, Donoghue’s language strengthens his argument more than Clark’s.

When Donoghue responds by saying, “You’re an environmental lawyer. How about you go back to your office, and we’ll call you when there’s an oil spill,” he is invoking what is expected of a person who works in the domain of environmental law. It is not expected that someone whose relevant experience is cleaning up oil spills is qualified to be Attorney General. Similarly, Rosen told Clark during the meeting, “You went behind your boss’s back, and you’re proposing things that are outside your domain and you don’t know what you’re talking about,” as well as, “I don’t get to be fired by someone who works for me.”

These reference forms invoke Clark’s actions. For example, Clark’s attempt to have his boss Jeffrey Rosen fired and working outside his domain are actions that reinforce Rosen and Donoghue’s claims about categories. This aligns with Raymond’s (2019) argument that categories are “consistently produced and reproduced in and through the conduct of social actors” (p. 586). Action generates both the normative categories themselves and the use of their reference forms. Thus, it makes sense that we switch between reference forms and categories when we “use variation in language to construct ourselves as social beings, to signal who we are, and who we are not and do not want to be” (Lippi-Green, 2012).

By analyzing this discussion, I examine how social categories and their reference forms impact the strength of political arguments. Similarly, I examine how reference forms impact the use of normative and subordinating language.

Image Credit

Source (left): Susan Walsh/Pool/AFP via Getty Images Source (right): Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images

References

Lippi-Green, Rosina. (2012). English with an accent: Language, ideology, and discrimination in the United States. (Chapter 5: Language Subordination (Pg.66)) New York: Routledge.
Quinn, Melissa. Who Is Jeffrey Clark? Ex-DOJ Official Emerged as Central Player in Trump's Election Scheme. CBS News, CBS Interactive, 20 Dec. 2022, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/jeffrey-clark-justice-department-trump-overturn-2020-election-january-6-select-committee/.
Raymond, C. (2019). Category accounts: Identity and normativity in sequences of action. Language in Society, 48(4), 585-606. doi:10.1017/S0047404519000368
Sprunt, Barbara. Former DOJ Officials Detail Threatening to Resign En Masse in Meeting with Trump. NPR, NPR, 24 June 2022, https://www.npr.org/2022/06/23/1107217243/former-doj-officials-detail-threatening-resign-en-masse-trump-meeting.
Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol, Interview Of: Richard Peter Donoghue. 1 October 2021, https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-J6-TRANSCRIPT-CTRL0000034600/pdf/GPO-J6-T RANSCRIPT-CTRL0000034600.pdf

How can we understand the use of normative political language?

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Destigmatizing Neurodiversity through the Lens of English Language Teaching

Anonymous — Tue, 11 Apr 2023 04:46:32 +0000

Destigmatizing Neurodiversity through the Lens of English Language Teaching Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 04/10/2023 - 22:46

Author: Katherine Bowes, Gina Pitts, and Olivia Walt
Advisor: Prof. Raichle Farrelly
Class: LING 4620: Teaching L2 Oral Skills
Semester: Fall 2022
LURA

Neurodiversity is an umbrella term referencing neurological conditions that naturally lead to differences in thinking and behavior. These include conditions such as autism, dyslexia, ADHD, and many more. It is estimated that millions of students in the K-12 system are neurodiverse; the number of children with ADHD alone reaches approximately six million (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2022). However, it is rare that students are directly informed about the ways in which they and their classmates differ. This absence of knowledge leaves misinformation and stigma to run rampant through the student body, negatively impacting many neurodiverse students who may already be struggling to adhere to traditional classroom norms and expectations.

To address this social justice issue, we spent the fall 2022 semester creating an English Language Teaching (ELT) curriculum which, through the medium of English oral skill development, focuses on informing students about neurodiversity. We hope that this curriculum will help raise awareness and promote unity in classrooms for the lived experiences of neurodiverse students.

Designed primarily for English language learners at an advanced level, our curriculum is divided into three units, each which focuses on a specific oral skill (listening, speaking, and pronunciation).

Unit 1: “What is Neurodiversity?” – Listening Focus

Our first unit's aim is to introduce students to the concept of neurodiversity via listening exercises. To contextualize the primary listening task, students would engage in a brief class discussion that requires them to reflect on what they already know and what they want to know about neurodiversity. Following this, they would watch a brief introductory video about the topic. The students would watch it several times, each time focusing on a slightly different listening task (e.g., listening for gist and nuance, then filling-in-the-blanks of a partial transcript of the video). In addition to emphasizing how to effectively listen depending on the context, this lesson would also provide an informative introduction/continuation of students’ awareness of neurodiversity. Furthermore, the lesson would provide students with some basic vocabulary that would be useful for the next lesson, which focuses on speaking.

Unit 2: “Neurodiverse Conditions and Stigmas” – Speaking Focus

The objective of our second unit is to further students’ existing understanding and debunk the myths associated with neurodiversity. In the lesson, students would better familiarize themselves with specific neurodiverse conditions through videos, worksheets, and Socratic discussions. More specifically, students would work on activities that improve critical thinking in order to make connections to the school setting and understand the consequences of stigmatization towards neurally diverse people beyond the classroom. We would present a Mythbusters clip with an accompanying worksheet to help students conceptualize the idea of “myths” and formalize related dialogues in the classroom. Students would then learn how to explain myths connected to stigma, identify and debunk those stigmas, and orally justify their reasoning. Our hope is that by the end of this lesson, students would begin to understand how to be allies to the people around them and promote empathy and compassion.

Unit 3: “Raising Awareness” – Pronunciation Focus

Our final lesson encourages students to summarize their knowledge and fully employ the skills they have honed during the previous units. In the form of a public service announcement (PSA) video, students would present about one or two specific conditions that fall under the neurodiversity umbrella. The students would begin the lesson by reviewing videos of professional PSAs, focusing on how speakers “chunk” their thoughts to make their speech flow smoothly. They would then create a PSA with the intention of sharing the specific information they have learned with their peers. Learning about a topic in order to teach it to others is an incredibly effective way to consolidate knowledge and deepen understanding. In addition, we believe that PSAs are an impactful medium for spreading vital information and emphasizing the importance of clear communication, not only for the student presenting, but also for the students listening.

Overall, this series of units offers a thorough demonstration of how English language learning can be used to communicate issues of great social importance, such as (but not limited to) neurodiversity.

For our full lesson plans and additional materials, feel free to visit our webpage! https://sites.google.com/colorado.edu/teaching-l2-oral-skills/thematic-units/destigmatizing-neurodivergence?authuser=0

Image Credit

MissLunaRose12, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

References

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2022, August 9). Data and statistics about ADHD. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Retrieved March 15, 2023, from https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/adhd/data.htm

How can English Language Teachers design their curricula to help celebrate and spread awareness about neurodiverse conditions?

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The Language of Conflict Coverage

Anonymous — Tue, 11 Apr 2023 04:29:38 +0000

The Language of Conflict Coverage Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 04/10/2023 - 22:29

Author: Conner Moses
Advisor: Prof. Bhuvana Narasimhan
Class: LING 4220: Language and Mind
Semester: Fall 2022
LURA 2023

The purpose of the media’s reporting on world events is to inform and educate the public. What might not be expected or recognized is to what degree subtle linguistic cues can influence our perception and evaluation. As Boroditsky and Fausey (2009) describe in the context of legal cases and news articles, these cues can have a significant impact on people’s understanding and association of blame.

The research question of my paper looked at the example of how the American media has primed readers and viewers for certain narratives or viewpoints in the Russian invasion of Ukraine. I was prompted to consider this topic and question after reading The Media and the Gulf War: Framing, Priming, and the Spiral of Silence (Allen et. al, 1994). Allen et al. found, in the lead-up to the 1990 Gulf War, that media coverage was significantly more supportive of the U.S. government’s claims and actions than the general public was at the time. This had the effect of creating a narrative in the general discourse that was openly accepted by authority figures despite being not entirely true. Throughout the conflict, government spokespeople, as well as much of the mass media, employed language that “sanitized” the U.S.’s actions, emphasizing the precision that American technology brought to weaponry, with the erroneous implication that only intended targets would be hit, and that no innocent lives would be lost.

When considering linguistic cues in spoken or written media reporting, we can break them down into three categories. What I refer to as “emphasis” is largely a factor of message delivery — a media platform may choose to omit mention of the story or of particular facts, or it may bury the story on the back page, on the one extreme, or elect to run the story non-stop as front-page news on the other extreme.

The second category, which I’m calling “agency,” refers to the use of active or passive voice. Sentence structure using active voice can attribute blame or responsibility, while the use of passive voice can avoid any association, involvement or accountability. A sentence such as “The Russian army bombed the apartment building.” carries greater weight and assignment of responsibility than a sentence like “The building was hit with heavy bombardment.” Even more weight of responsibility can be achieved by attributing the action to a single person, such as, “Putin attacks over a dozen Ukrainian cities in ‘retaliation’ for bridge explosion.” (Yahoo News, 2022)

A third linguistic cue, which I refer to as “emotion,” is the use of language that is emotionally charged at one end of the spectrum or desensitized at the other. This is similar to a behavior noted by Loftus and Palmer (1974), where test subjects would watch films of automobile crashes and were more likely to remember higher speeds and more damage when questions were posed using words like “crashed” instead of “bumped.” Verbs like “slaughtered” carry much more emotional weight than “killed” or “lost”. In some cases, the suffering or loss of life may be glossed over or omitted with a verb like “fought”. Some justification of the violent action may be included with verbs like “responded.” The same military action can be characterized as “overthrowing,” connoting aggression and illegitimacy, or “freeing the country,” connoting justification. Adjectives and adverbs may be included to indicate culpability, such as “brutally,” “savagely,” or “unprovoked.” When reporting on the violent actions of the supported side in the conflict, the news report may resort to military terms that can minimize emotional response, such as referring to injury or loss of life as “casualties.”

In my research paper, I suggested two ways in which the impact of these three types of linguistic cues might be assessed. My suggestions were (a) the use of polling data and (b) priming experiments. Polling data would be gathered and compared to media coverage categorized by support for aspects of the war. (Example polling data below.) The comparison would show if public opinion seems to follow the frequency and types of the above-mentioned linguistic cues that are employed in media coverage. The correlation would have to be assumed, which is a downside of this approach.

The second suggested approach was priming experiments. Participants with varying knowledge on the subject would be shown media coverage on the war that vary in the frequency and types of linguistic cues used (agency, emphasis, emotion). Their views on the war would be gathered before and after they read the coverage in order to see if the coverage may have influenced them. While I did not gather any data on these approaches, I propose that the suggested methodological approaches will yield valuable insights into the impact of language on the public’s perception of, and attitudes toward, war.

I believe it is in the public’s best interest to be able to identify these linguistic cues in media coverage and assess in what ways and to what degrees they affect our understanding of world events and our support of government actions. If we are aware of the effect that charged language can have, we are better able to decide for ourselves as to whether we agree with the positions subtly conveyed by the media.

Image Credit

REUTERS/Maksim Levin (found on: https://www.cfr.org/global-conflict-tracker/conflict/conflict-ukraine)

References

Allen, B., et al. “The Media and the Gulf War: Framing, Priming, and the Spiral of Silence.” Polity, vol. 27, no. 2, Dec. 1994, pp. 255–84. EBSCOhost, https://doi.org/10.2307/3235175.
Boroditsky, L., Fausey, C., & Long, B. (2009). “The role of language in eye-witness memory: Remembering who did it in English and Japanese.” Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, 31. Retrieved from https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4k31500t.
Loftus, E. & Palmer J., “Reconstruction of automobile destruction: An example of the interaction between language and memory”, Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, Volume 13, Issue 5, 1974, Pages 585-589, ISSN 0022-5371, https://doi.org/10.1016/S0022-5371(74)80011-3.
“Putin Attacks over a Dozen Ukrainian Cities in ‘Retaliation’ for Bridge Explosion.” news.yahoo.com, news.yahoo.com/putin-attacks-over-dozen-ukrainian-231103555.html. Accessed 7 Dec. 2022.
Nadeem, R. (2022, April 1). Public expresses mixed views of U.S. response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.Pew Research Center - U.S. Politics & Policy. Retrieved December 1, 2022, from https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2022/03/15/public-expresses-mixed-views-of-u-s-response-to-russias-invasion-of-ukraine/
Daniller, A., & Cerda, A. (2022, September 22). As war in Ukraine continues, Americans' concerns about it have lessened. Pew Research Center. Retrieved December 1, 2022, from https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/09/22/as-war-in-ukraine-continues-americans-concerns-about-it-have-lessened/

How can the use of subtle linguistic cues affect perception of a conflict? How much are we influenced, not only by what information we receive, but by the way that information is conveyed?

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Hollywood's Jewish American Accent

Anonymous — Sun, 09 Apr 2023 04:34:14 +0000

Hollywood's Jewish American Accent Anonymous (not verified) Sat, 04/08/2023 - 22:34

Author: Regina (Gigi) Saad
Advisor: Prof. Kira Hall, TA Ayden Parish
Class: LING 1000: Language in US Society
Semester: Fall 2022
LURA 2023

Why are many Jewish characters in film and television portrayed with thick New York accents? Linguistically, the Jewish people are usually represented in film and television according to a predictable blueprint: A thick New York accent incomplete without exclamations and excitable inflections. TV shows such as Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm exemplify this inherently New York Jewish American accent. In my research project for the course Language in US Society (Ling 1000), I addressed the accuracy of these representations by considering how the low symbolic capital of a New York accent can connote negative stereotypes about the Jewish people as a whole due to William Labov’s (1966) findings regarding the social stratification of /r/.

Why is there such a tie between New York accents and Jewish people? Aside from Israel, the New York metropolitan area has the largest Jewish population in the world standing at 1.5 million in 2011 (Wolfram and Schilling, 2016). Aside from this correlation, Yiddish, a blend of German and Hebrew, also contributes to their likeness. Many Jews incorporate Yiddish phrases into their everyday speech, regardless of fluency; however, Yiddish has also undergone indexical bleaching when traveling across different communities. Words like “bubbe” for “grandmother” may maintain inherent Jewishness, while “schlep” indexes New Yorkness. Other Yiddish phrases such as “glitch” have been completely bleached so they maintain no indexical association (Barrett et al., 2022). If certain Yiddish words maintain a New York flavor and many Jewish individuals incorporate Yiddish into their everyday speech, then this explains Jewish associations with New York and the New York accent as well.

Sociolinguists Walt Wolfram and Natalie Schilling (2016) also emphasize conversational differences amongst Jewish American English. Discourse analyst Deborah Tannen (2001) found that Jewish American English involves more overlap between turns than some other varieties of English. This overlap is either interpreted positively as high involvement or negatively as interruption (Wolfram and Schilling, 2016). This aggressive perception regarding New York speech bleeds into the assumption that every Jewish person speaks like a New Yorker. Therefore, if New Yorkers speak aggressively and Jewish people sound like New Yorkers, then this correlation implies Jewish people must be aggressive. One device defined by Tannen, a Jewish Woman from the East Coast, is what she calls “exaggerated paralinguistics.” Exaggerated paralinguistics involves the other in conversation following in a mutually escalating or symmetrical way (Tannen, 1981). In certain Seinfeld clips, two Jewish characters grow more and more excitable, building off one anothers’ enthusiasm, thus exhibiting exaggerated paralinguistics. While there is some truth to this representation, a rather one-sided, repetitive representation can have negative implications, especially if perceived as obnoxious or unfavorable.

According to Labov’s (1966) findings, the utilization or lack of the postvocalic /r/ can connote one’s social class and/or socioeconomic status. The utilization of postvocalic /r/ is widely understood as standard English with high social capital. A non-rhotic English, where /r/ is not pronounced after vowels, may cause linguistic insecurity due to negative implications, including a lack of sophistication. There are many theories why the shift to a rhotic US English occurred, one being the presence of antisemitism and the association of non-rhotic varieties with New York City, which historically has had a strong Jewish population. So, if most Jewish representations exhibit an exaggerated non-rhotic New York accent that is found to be unrefined, and reflects conversational styles that many find abrasive, are Jewish people really being portrayed in a positive light? If someone’s only exposure to Jewish people are these very specific representations, then I fear for the assumptions that will be made.

Can these representations be considered mock language? Although there may be an exaggeration of the Jewish American accent and negative implications may occur, it is entirely different from Jane H. Hill’s (1993) findings regarding Mock Spanish. According to Hill’s findings, Mock Spanish is used primarily by Anglo speakers of English addressed to fellow Anglos. In contrast, instances of Jewish American English are often portrayed by Jewish actors: Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld both identify as Jewish. In fact, Larry David was an executive producer of Seinfeld. The dynamic would be completely different if these Jewish characters were not played by Jewish actors. Furthermore, the portrayal of the Jewish American accent and Jewish conversational styles encompasses the character’s speech as a whole, rather than being limited to the incorporation of certain words, as Mock Spanish is. One may argue that there is a presence of Mock Yiddish in these portrayals as well; however, the representation of the New York Jewish American accent rightfully incorporates Yiddish words because the characters are Jewish.

Regardless of accuracy, like any other culture or ethnicity there is variety amongst Jewish American speech. I am a Jew from Southern California and do not speak like a New Yorker, but there are many Jewish individuals who do. I want to stress the importance of diverse Jewish representation, whether racially, culturally, or linguistically. This New York Jewish accent is valid - until it becomes the exclusive Jewish representation. We need more Jewish characters who are proud to be Jewish without the presence of this accent in order to demonstrate Jewish diversity and not further negative predispositions or stereotypes.

Image Credit

https://www.tvinsider.com/1040140/larry-david-reveals-curb-your-enthusiasm-will-return-for-season-12/

References

Barrett, R., Cramer, J., & McGowan, K. B. (2022). English with an Accent (3rd ed.). Routledge.
Hill, J. H. (1993). Hasta La Vista, Baby. Critique of Anthropology, 13(2), 145–176. https://doi.org/10.1177/0308275x9301300203
Tannen, D. (1981). New York Jewish Conversational Style. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 1981(30). https://doi.org/10.1515/ijsl.1981.30.133
Wolfram, W., & Schilling, N. (2016). American English: Dialects and Variation. Wiley-Blackwell.

Why are many Jewish characters in film and television portrayed with thick New York accents?

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