LING 111 Final Exam notes Week 8 American Tongues Southerners and Northerners define themselves by not being the other South viewed negatively because Poor Associated with rurality looked down upon by urban people Socially acceptable way of asserting a dislike of poor people Strategies of Condescension When an empowered individual who speaks the socially legitimate language appropriates a subordinated language in order to gain somehow Stereotypes of the southerner Ignorance Reproduced in society in the media Language Subordination The process by which a language variety comes to be valued less relative to another A subordinated variety is seen as illegitimate for public use Successful Speakers of the subordinated variety recognize the subordination and see their variety as being of less value or negative Impacts They are assumed to be stupid for growing up in an area that talks a certain way Finding a job with a southern accent can be tough Korean Standard Korean based on variety spoken in Seoul Gyeongsang dialect is perceived as the least standard and negative Language of subordination is complete in Gyeongsang Jeolla people have positive view Different linguistic varieties are given different values and associated with different features based on perceived characteristics and stereotypes of that variety s speakers Bad English is spoken by people who are perceived as bad These stereotypes are circulated by the media Week 9 Email First sent in 1971 182 9 billion sent a day Only 15 of Americans do not use internet Ways emails are understood Letters by phone like a letter sent electronically Speech by other means spoken language that s written Mix and match combines elements of speech and writing E style neither speech nor writing has own characteristics Contact system email is developing like pidgin identifiable grammar much variation Decline of Public face Baron perceive us Public face outward appearance we construct based on how we want other to Decline after WWII 1 reduced emphasis on social stratification attention to upward mobility 2 disassociation of education from financial success 3 emphasis on youth culture Transformation in American Education Baron Reforms 1 Transformation of English composition 2 Dewey s work on progressive education 3 Emergence of student centered curriculum Major Attributes of Email Informality of language style Assumption that the medium is ephemeral temporary High level of candor Features with Face to face communication Shared informal fast response time intended for a limited audience seems Not shared often no acknowledgement can be forwarded without knowledge not ephemeral unedited actually ephemeral Texting First sent 1992 2011 41 5 a day Relatively new medium of communication Competes with programs like whatsapp and Facebook messenger Text messaging is not destroying our language Baron says it is Frequency of abbreviation Baron study of 11 718 words in instant messages The ease of typing without abbreviation will lead to less abbreviation being used 3 were online lingo 8 were acronyms For text messages 3 abbreviated words Rolling with the proliferation of electronic media grammar is the big loser Minor shifts in speech Baron 1 Incorporation of few acronyms in everyday language Brb lol asap rsvp awol Abbreviations go back for a very long time Roman Praenomen abbreviations the senate and people of rome tanakh Ampersand form et from peso euro and pound from lb from at 2 Decreased certainty about when a string of words is a compound a hyphenated word or one word News paper news paper newspaper 3 Diminished concern over spelling and punctuation Spell check has made learning spelling irrelevant Apostrophes are occurring less often 4 Attitudinal changes due to digital media People care less about standards than they did before People aren t content with following English rules Shift 1 whatever Shift 2 Control Social networks allow you to control how others see you Technology enhance our ability to manipulate our communication with others Baron s two lessons Lesson 1 formativeness in language goes through cycles In some periods there s more of a push for standardization in others there s less of one Lesson 2 Regardless of the swings that language goes through there is room for individual schools or teachers to set their own standards Social Media 2009 Twitter Are applications that facilitate the communication or sharing of info between people in virtual communities or networks Geocities in 1994 then Myspace in 2003 Facebook in 2004 twitter in 2006 Sina Weibo in 2006 1 billion registered users 241mil active 300 bil sent 500 mil daily 29 of millennial use twitter Getting data from twitter Tracking on ground sentiment in Arab spring Massive amount of data Real time info on demographics and trending of messages Mapping use of regional slang Study language change over time Shows how words fall in and out of popularity Vitality of minority languages Helps understand how bilinguals use language Ties certain demographic features to certain variables in language use Criticism of Twitter studies Sentiment analysis is over simplistic and assumes that the use of certain words correlated to emotional status Lack of knowledge about certain demographic features we have such large amounts of data we must be careful with our analysis of Being limited to only 140 words means that you re limited to only simplistic it so as not to be too superficial Chomsky s critique discussion of the issues Criticism of Twitter Fault of truncated sentenced sound bites and twitter Twitter means that we now use less words that are long English is being eroded Data doesn t support these claims Twitter is not shortening languages Story of hashtag First use was in 2007 2009 twitter started using it 2013 Facebook used them Used to connect similar tweets together Foregrounding salient information to contextualize a given message Passing a message along or connecting with some social or cultural movement A way of indicating sarcasm or humor Facebook Created in 204 Initially for Harvard then Ivy League then universities then in 2006 for everyone 1 31 billion active users 757 mil access daily 71 of American adults are facebook users Available in 70 languages Competitors VK Vkontakte Russian 100mil active 228 registered Sina Weibo 503 mil registered in CHINA Cloob popular in IRAN with 1 mil users LINE japan 300 mil users 50 mil in japan LOOK AT READING Doge Shiba inu similar to LOLCats Grammar