Archive for the ‘Social life’ Category
May 21, 2019
A facebook exchange back on the 6th, between Andrew Carnie (professor of linguistics and dean of the Graduate College at the Univ. of Arizona) and Karen Chung (associate professor at National Taiwan University, teaching courses on linguistics and English).
Andrew: [Student], who only came to class less than 50% of the time, and turned in a bunch of assignments (really) late: These homeworks are way. too. hard. It’s unfair.
Karen: “Homework” as a countable noun? Is he/she a native speaker of English?
Academics will recognize Andrew’s note as the plangent lament of a professor facing the grading tasks at the end of a term, confronted with a self-entitled student who believes they are really smart, so preparation outside of class shouldn’t take much work (and they should be able to ace the final without much studying).
But what Karen picks up on is the use the noun homework as a C(ount) noun, clearly so because it occurs in the plural form homeworks here; for the M(ass) noun homework, the usage would be: This homework is way. too. hard. Or else: These homework assignments are way. too. hard.
Much as I sympathize deeply with Andrew’s lament — having had nearly 50 years of similar experiences (fortunately far outweighed by students who were a delight to teach) — what this posting is about is the C/M thing. There’s a fair amount to get clear about first, and then I’ll have some analysis, some data, and some reflections on larger matters (language use in particular communities of practice, the tension between brevity and clarity as factors in language use).
(more…)
Posted in Ambiguity, Beheading, Brevity vs. Clarity, Count & mass, Lexical semantics, Semantics, Social life, Usage | Leave a Comment »
May 1, 2019
Yesterday, the flowers of the season were still yellow — les jaunes d’Avril — but today they are white — les muguets pour le premier Mai — also (on the plus side) delicately pretty and highly scented but (on the minus side) both poisonous and rampant, while conveying beginnings, affectionate respect, and the power of unions marching in the streets. Hey, they’re just colors, and just plants — It’s Just Stuff, as I say every so often — each capable of symbolizing pretty much anything, in some sociocultural context or another.
(more…)
Posted in Art, Books, Color, Dance, Holidays, It's Just Stuff, Language and plants, Language and politics, Signs and symbols, Social life | 10 Comments »
March 24, 2019
This week’s inspiring words on the social progress front, from Gloria Ladson-Billings, circulated on Facebook by H. Sami Alim on the 22nd:
I know that I am 4 generations out of chattel slavery, 3 generations out of sharecropping, 2 out of legalized apartheid, and I’m an endowed university professor. Not because I’m great, but because people kept on pushing the boulder up the hill.
(more…)
Posted in Compounds, Euphemism, Language and the body, Language play, Race and ethnicity, Slang, Social life | 4 Comments »
March 7, 2019
(A version of things I posted on Facebook earlier today about my life, with glancing allusions to various phenomena of social life. Posted here to have a more permanent and accessible record, on WordPress. There will be a little bit of linguistics.)
(#1) (Not an accurate portrayal of Xfinity/Comcast staff)
(more…)
Posted in Homosexuality, Hypallage, Movies and tv, My life, Social class, Social interactions, Social life, Taboo language and slurs | 2 Comments »
November 3, 2018
(Discussions of men’s bodies and mansex in plain language, so not for kids or the sexually modest.)
On AZBlogX today (this material is XXX-rated), “In costume for Halloween 2018”, with this year’s TitanMen Halloween sale ad (#1 there); a posting on The Sword site on gay Halloween (illustration from the posting in #2 there); and a note on gay vampires in porn (two DVD covers in #3 there).
(more…)
Posted in Catchphrases, Facial expressions, Formulaic language, Gay porn, Gender and sexuality, Holidays, Homosexuality, Language play, Movies and tv, Social life | Leave a Comment »
October 2, 2018
Tomorrow at Stanford, John Rickford is doing a dry run for his plenary address at the NWAV (New Ways of Analyzing Variation) conference later this month:
Class and Race in the Analysis of Language Variation and the Struggle for Social Justice: Sankofa
John R. Rickford, Stanford University
Abstract for NWAV-47 plenary, NYU, 10/20/18
(more…)
Posted in Announcements, Language and class, Language and race, Linguists, Social life, Sociolinguistics, Stanford | Leave a Comment »
June 6, 2018
(Underwear and race / ethnicity / nationality / religion among gay men.)
News from Daily Jocks: a birthday for the Australian premium men’s underwear firms 2eros and Supawear (brothers in sexwear):
(#1) 2eros
(#2) Supawear
Notably, Asian models for the birthday celebration. Most sexunderwear firms are very light on black models, Latino models, Asian models (of all ethnicities and nationalities), and, for that matter, identifiably Jewish models. Andrew Christian is, on the whole, a stunning exception: his advertising reflects the use of “exotic” models in the fashion industry rather than the custom in the premium men’s underwear industry of relying on models whose looks are pumped-up mirrors of their customers’. The customers are mostly SAE-D — standard average European-descended — men (“standard average European” here is a little linguist’s joke, making reference to Standard Average European (SAE) languages, in Benjamin Lee Whorf’s terminology); the products either flatter their self-images or feed their fantasies of exotic men (for certain values of exotic).
(more…)
Posted in Ambiguity, Books, Gender and sexuality, Homosexuality, Movies and tv, Race and ethnicity, Social interactions, Social life, Spelling, Truncation, Underwear | 1 Comment »
May 21, 2018
It started with a candid photo of people at a social gathering, with one person making a V hand gesture behind the head of the person next to them, much as in this photo of pro tennis players:
(#1) Swiss jock jokery: Stan Wawrinka doing the ‘bunny ears’ gesture behind Roger Federer
Bunny-earing someone is a prank (NOAD on the noun prank: ‘a practical joke or mischievous act’), pranks being a very culture-specific form of play + humor that deserve analytic attention that I’m not able to provide, but will just take as a cultural given here.
To come: a bit of the history of bunny-earing; senses of the expression bunny ears (illustrating (mostly metaphorical) sense developments in many directions); and uses of the V hand gesture (illustrating symbolic functions of many different kinds; the gesture itself is “just stuff”, without intrinsic meaning, which can be exploited for many different symbolic purposes). The act, the meanings of the linguistic expression for the act, the cultural significances (or “social meanings”) of the act.
(more…)
Posted in Art, Gender and sexuality, Gesture, Language and ethnicity, Language and plants, Language and religion, Metaphor, Music, Play, Pranks, Signs and symbols, Social life, Words and things | Leave a Comment »
May 18, 2018
… and, oh yes, women.
In the Stanford Report (the daily faculty-staff news release) yesterday, a bulletin (by Kate Lewis) from the School of Humanities and Sciences, “Carolyn Bertozzi elected to Royal Society: Carolyn Bertozzi, the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences, has been elected as one of this year’s ten new Foreign Members to the Royal Society for her pioneering work in the field of bioorthogonal chemistry”:
(Photo: Linda A. Cicero / Stanford News Service)
Bertozzi’s current research focus is in the field of glycoscience, the study of sugars on cell surfaces. As a self-described “glycoscience-lifer,” Bertozzi said she hopes that the “integration of all my contributions somehow elevates the visibility of the glycoscience field, which can have real benefits to human health,” including understanding the role sugars play in the development of cancer and inflammation.
(more…)
Posted in Gender and sexuality, Science news, Social life, Stanford | Leave a Comment »
May 16, 2018
I had this affliction, for about three months. It involved myalgia — that’s the name of the symptom, muscle pain — that limited my movements, produced frequent nasty cramps in several parts of my body, made me miserable and depressed. Among the affected muscles were those in my fingers, which cramped up painfully without warning. Especially my ring finger (third finger, left hand).
Eventually, it was seen to be a side effect of the very powerful statin drug I was taking (for blood pressure and cholesterol control), generic atorvastatin, trade name Lipitor, a very powerful statin prescribed at maximum dose. Which was breaking down muscle fibers. Essentially, I was being poisoned by one of my medicines.
That’s now over — I went off the Lipitor three months ago and recently started small doses of the steroid prednisone for symptomatic relief — and I feel very much better, but an odd effect remains. My ring finger occasionally gets stuck in a bent position. No pain, no swelling or anything, just stuck, as here:
(#1) Stuck bent finger (workdesk spathiphyllum plant as background)
I can push it back with my other hand, and it makes a little pop! as it resumes its normal working position.
It’s called trigger finger, fancy name tenosynovitis. And it has nothing to do with the Lipitor poisoning.
(more…)
Posted in Gender and sexuality, Language and the body, Language of medicine, Metaphor, My life, Social life, Technical and ordinary language | 3 Comments »
