March is a bit crueler if you ask me

Thanks for checking in faithfully. I'll be back shortly. I've just discovered that a whole mass of my data is useless because of a flaw in the questionnaire.

For a while I was looking for someone to blame. Then I remembered that I decided to work alone. So I'm stuck with the shame. Bleagh.

Hush hush I like Rush

Memorize it

One two one two
One two one two

Get ready to get knocked over

I have something to say
I'm not trying to play
Cut me a check for twenty-five K
You want to help the people in my state
great

'Cause I'm a Republican for goodness sake

Economy
The war
On issues that affect the poor

Go to the streets
That's really the- the-
The heat of the meat

Bet on black
You get it done
We got the black Republican
Grew up on 8th street in DC son

I've been a Republican since I was seventeen

I intend to run the RNC

Go back to my base
Gettin' up in their face

Democrats try to mix us up
and get us off track
OK whatever
That's whack

The Democrats have got the swagger right now
Swagger right now
Swagger swagger right now

Whatever

The Democrats represent
Deflation
Stagnation
Obfuscation
Taxation
Trifurcation

Reality check here
Rush Limbaugh is an entertainer
Oops, my bad
Hush hush I like Rush

You know
I'm focused on the cash flow
Create the wealth

That's not a stimulus bill
That's a bad bad bill
Drill baby drill

There was a Michael Steele Before there was a Barack Obama
I'm always open to everything
Like jo mama
Like like like jo mama

Ha ha
But seriously
Trying to force a massive spending bill
I say to that balony
These numbnuts on Capital Hill can blow me

He's definitely got the beat down
How you like me now?

Fun Food Terms!

Here's an odd little survey about food:

Do you know of the meal "haystacks"?
Are you a Seventh-day Adventist?

Please mark the appropriate answer in the poll above.

Please add any commentary to this post. Especially if you know the term but you aren't SDA. (And any controversial commentary on best/worst ingredients)

[Update:
Literalminded makes an excellent point in his comment. The poll question, as is, is unnecessarily cryptic.

In the Sevvie culture a haystack is just another name for a taco salad. Pretty much. But the question isn't if you know what a taco salad is. It's about the term haystack. Have you used it or heard it used in this way?

Here's how I make mine:

- A bed of corn chips (usually Tostitos or Doritos or Fritos or... whatever -- flavored or not. dun't matter.)

- Crush the chips by flattening them with your hand.

- Scoop on heated beans or chili.

- Grated cheese. (cheddar/mozzarella/colby/monteray jack...)

- Shredded lettuce.

- Tomato

- Onions

- Sour cream

- Salsa

They're best once the chips get soggy.

YMMV — if you hate something I've said here, speak up in the comments.
]

Seeing labels

The Child by Alex Gopher



There are a few interesting examples of how language is conventional and words can separate from meanings. The <lift> is moving down. The <subway> is elevated.

I'm not quite sure what to make of each individual person on the street being represented by the plural noun people, or the signs in other alphabets.

And hey– if this is in New York, why is it called a lift?

Grammar day post mortem

Some of Casey's recent comments bring up relevant issues that I'm happy to address. So…

He asks:

do I best serve my children (or my students) by not objecting to their use of the objective-as-subject-of-sentence form? Whether "Linguistics" likes it or not, there does seem to be a language of power...

Whether he serves his children/students best is not really a linguistic question. It's a parenting question if he's talking about his offspring. It's a pedagogical/teaching-philosophy question if he's talking about his pupils. The question of dative/accusative/nominative forms is linguistic. So a linguist can probably answer some of the basic questions he has about why his kids use one form here and another form there. Another linguist could give him an answer about whether there's any evidence that a parent objecting to a child's use really makes any difference. Not about whether it should make a difference, but whether it does. To that point: in short, correcting your children's grammar will have little effect on their speech. They're going to talk like their peers whether you like it or not.

You can probably tell them that they have misunderstood what a giraffe is, and you might stop them from saying 'giraffe' when looking at a zebra. And you'll probably be able to convince them that the past tense of eat is ate rather than eated. But only when they've heard enough other people backing up your story by example.

And by the time their language differs from yours due to dialectal differences they're pretty much done listening to your advice. This doesn't mean they're done learning. And it doesn't mean they're done shaping their habits of usage and their command of registers.

The question of serving asks if needs are being met, but to answer that requires some agreement about what needs there are. What are you trying to give them? Honestly, the use of I and me and us and we isn't going to make much of a difference in their lives. Graduate students and professors all around me are constantly saying things like spoke to my brother and I and For my colleagues and I to consider. Those forms in speech aren't blocking many people from succeeding even in paths that claim to be picky about language.

A few people decided to jump on Barack Obama for his use of I in accusative and dative positions. What's the lesson there for an English teacher? Obama has succeeded while using registers as he does. He certainly knows that the forms that are overlooked in speech are not as easily overlooked in writing. So he avoids them in writing and uses them in speech. And even when they're not overlooked in speech, the people who pick on them are tiny little toothless pit-bulls. They'll grab on and hold on but they are no more than a nuisance. And by nuisance I don't even mean something that we should try to get rid of or something that causes any real problem. I simply mean that the anger is impotent. Don't worry about it. Really. Shrug and move on.

Should students know the mechanics of different writing styles? Yes. Teach them to know their audience. Teach them to choose a tone carefully. Teach them to use strategies for clear communication. And in my opinion you should do yourself the favour of separating writing from language. For that matter you should be careful to separate all edited and prepared expression from language. Teaching strategies for writing and reciting is a rhetorical business. That's fine. Linguists have nothing against such instruction. Most linguists are pretty good at it and many are happy to give it.

To Casey's next comment: Whether "Linguistics" likes it or not, there does seem to be a language of power...

Linguists know this. And study it. Descriptivism is about understanding the structure of language. We have faith that an honest and unbiased description will lead to the conclusion that the power is determined by social forces and not because of an inherent quality that one dialect has over another. And reaching that conclusion does not mean that a linguist will then be determined to influence that power. I believe that is the primary misconception regarding descriptivism.

Casey then argues:

grammarians are no more or less correct than teenagers who are always introducing new forms.

And I agree. That's true as far as the grammaticality of their sentences goes. The active voice, for instance, is no more or less grammatical than the passive voice. If I choose to pick on "grammarians" it's going to be because of their claims that they are more correct than those teenagers. Or because of the logic they use to argue in favor of a form. I have no problem with William Safire sharing his opinions. I criticize him when he makes an assertion that I know to be false. About the history of a word or about the current state of language or about the forces at work in language change. The irony is that if a grammarian was to flat out say 'I just prefer this form' or 'I just like it better because I had a crush on the teacher who taught it to me' or 'This form reminds me of the social circle of which I would like to be a part' or 'I like this pronunciation because I just like the sound of that diphthong' then I would have little criticism. Those are all pretty honest assessments of preferred forms as an arbitrary judgment.

It's when those grumblers accuse kids of having a novel disrespect for language and for endangering the future of 'good' English like no generation before them that linguists have reason to roll their eyes.

If we are sympathetic to the creative impulse it's because that's what all languages do and it's interesting to watch it happening. If we are tired of rigidity it's because a corpse can only tell you so much about the life it led. Autopsies are fine but they only entertain for so long.

"It's Nutty Future Man again"

It's Bob Newhart's Sir Walter Raleigh phone-bit for a new age.

(click image to enlarge)

hat tip: jeff

Quotation marks don't make it so

Conservative clackers are throwing around a quote and attributing it to Nancy Pelosi.

You don't need [G-d] anymore, you have us democrats.

A Google™ search for the full string of the quote brings up a few pages of results. The quote looks like it made the rounds in a list of quotations by "great orators" in politics. The joke sneers at the current democratic leaders by comparing them to the historical giants: Andrew Jackson, FDR, Truman and Kennedy. The new classics are in there. Bill Clinton's question about the definition of is. Barack Obama's 57 states. All the proof some people need that today's political party is made of fools.

The Pelosi quote is acting quite young. And perhaps apocryphal. All of the sources below attribute the quote along with the extra information said back in 2006 after Pelosi's name. Several include it in parentheses. This has cut-and-paste all over it.

The is the type of faithfulness that occurs when a line is sent around to a lot of people, probably in a forwarded email from your aunt. All your conservative cousins like the list, and nobody bothers to type it out, so the contents don't shift in transit.

A commenter here has done a little massaging of the line, writing that Pelosi said 'You don't need [G-d]; we're going to take care of you.'

Here in a February 24 2009 post.

Here in a February 10 2009 comment.

Here in a December 30 2008 post.

Here in a November 13 2008 comment.

Here in an October 29 2008 comment.

Here in an October 22 2008 post.

Here in a Sept 10 2008 forum post.

Here in an October 10 2007 forum post.

The October 2007 post looks like an early appearance but it seems an unlikely original source. It's also not an identical result. The line ends with "you have the Democrats" and no year is given.

This Free Republic post by Kimmers indeed claims an email as the source. An interesting detail: one commenter notes that the Pelosi quote is unfamiliar.

A little searching for the favored title of the piece and we find the history of these drafts:

This March 18 2004 post by David Flanagan is titled Great Orators of the Democratic Party and it starts off with the four quotes from Jackson FDR Truman and JFK. The current fool in 2004 was Kerry.

Four months later in this post Evilwhiteguy throws in a new Kerry quote.

By 2005 in this post Learning Richard has moved on to Howard Dean.

A search for <"great orators" democratic party> shows that this goes back a while. And it looks like Pelosi was thrown in sometime last year. At least in the online versions. Well that would make sense if she said it in 2006.

So I'm still looking for the source of the attribution, but I have found so little evidence of its veracity that I'll go out on a limb and guess that it's a complete fake. Even with a wider net we get very few hits. Just the first half of the quote alongside the search term 'pelosi' brings up only a handful of pages.*

It's also a good idea to check the Google™ News results. The full string search yields not a single hit. The first half of the line: nothing. the first half without quotes alongside the name Pelosi: 35 unrelated results.

This precious little nugget of mockable wisdom looks to be the product of some snide alchemy.

---

*Initial results promise 700+ hits, but that estimate gets whittled down quickly.

Heh, heh...they said "whore"

David Harrison and Greg Anderson spoke with Scott Simon about their work with endangered languages. Or at least I'm sure that's what they expected.

I think I can understand what Simon means when he says that with each language death "a subtle way of thinking vanishes too." It isn't ridiculous to accept a weak or soft Sapir-Whorfian view that language and thought interact. So as long as subtle means really really subtle, then we're cool. But it gets into the realm of obvious claims. Every day for all sorts of reasons, a subtle way of thinking ends. Meh.

Harrison does give a nice explanation of what that can mean:

Well all the languages we've studied are— the local people that we work with— they're experts in their environment that they live in. So whether we're in the middle of Siberia or in the— the Bolivian Andes, those people know more about their local environment—the ecosystem the plants and animals—than science typically knows about it.

And it's not just a list of things they know. But it's a hierarchy of knowledge. So they might understand how animals fit together into a hierarchy or a—a taxonomy. So the way that that knowledge is packaged in the language is also unique. And it doesn't usually survive the translation into other languages.

Note it well that he said the packaging doesn't survive translation. Where people often spin out of control is in thinking that extralinguistic knowledge can't survive translation.

Eric Baković reports that he was a bit disappointed with the interview. And yeah. It falls flat. The questions lead into gimmicky topics that insist on looking at language as a parlor trick. And Simon's way too tickled with the phrase bilabial fricative. It's not nearly as funny or dirty sounding as he seems to think it is. I expect the documentary (playing on PBS this Thursday) to benefit greatly from Simon's absence.

Confessional

I think my bank account must have some impact on my linguistic judgment. So I'll blame my unfair impressions on my low funds. I have pennies envy.

Because I'm a linguist I feel guilty having a negative opinion about some lexical terms. I'm constantly telling my class that usage doesn't necessarily betray an attitude beyond those that are part of the truth conditions of an utterance. Accents don't necessarily indicate an attitude. Even hoity-toity ones. And terminology is conventional and often determined by community. Jargon isn't always a way of excluding others or bragging about being a part of an elite group.

And yet…

I recently read a short line from someone lamenting that their car was damaged. That's fine. But the writer of this little chirping complaint included the fact that it was his 7 series that was damaged. My first thought: well then I don't care.

Grice's maxim of quantity states that the speaker will give as much information as possible but no more than necessary. By telling me that it it was a 7 series I must assume that he thinks it's necessary information.

Something I own was scratched by a piece of metal.

Yeah. Not enough information. Not really newsworthy. I need more.

Something I own that will cost a lot of money to fix was scratched by a piece of metal.

OK. Worth telling me about but conspicuous in it's vagueness. Why not tell me what it was.

My car was scratched by a piece of metal. This I understand. I need no more information. If my car was scratched by a piece of metal, I'd be upset. No matter what make of car. But if you tell me that your 7 series was scratched… well you just lost my sympathy. I'm willing to invoke the Grice defense. Your violation of the maxim of quantity leads me to assume that there are other implications. Implications of you being an ass. Sorry. I'm just playing the odds.

But then I catch myself rolling my eyes when I hear someone referring to their car as a beemer — even when I don't sense a violation of Grice's maxim of quantity.

Let's imagine a conversation about an Oscar party.

-What time does it start?
-The party starts around Seven. I think I'll just walk because I live so close. How are you getting there?
-I'll be taking the BMW.

Violation. I didn't need to know what kind of car. It's not relevant. You're bragging. I can tell.

However:

-What time does it start?
-The party starts around Seven. I think I'll just walk because I live so close. How are you getting there?
-I'll be taking my car.
-What do you drive?
-A BMW.

No violation. No problem. BMW is a relevant answer.

So obviously I'd judge the following as a violation:

-What time does it start?
-The party starts around Seven. I think I'll just walk because I live so close. How are you getting there?
-I'm taking the Beemer.

But then I feel guilty judging you in the following exchange:

-What time does it start?
-The party starts around Seven. I think I'll just walk because I live so close. How are you getting there?
-I'll be taking my car.
-What do you drive?
-A beemer.

I should be able to accept that beemer is simply the word that you use to refer to your car and I have no reason to think that your term indicates anything about your attitude. I know this in my mind. But my heart tells me not to trust you. Tread softly.

Satire, and my scanted out ear

A full page ad trying to make the case for homophobia goes all out crazy. America Forever took out an ad in The Salt Lake Tribune, offering up this warning:

The Homosexual Declaration of War, read in the US House of Representatives on July 27 1987, read, "we will sodomize your children. All churches who condemn us will be closed. The family unit eliminated. Any man contaminated with heterosexual lust, wil be automatically barred from any position of influence."

(bold in original)

According to this page, where you can read Michael Swift's satirical manifesto, Gay Community News ran the original piece in February 1987. Other than the anti-gay organization's website, I haven't been able to find much evidence that this was read into the congressional record by William Dannemeyer of California (nor have I really looked). The story has been used as proof that this is a real agenda.

Point 1
Maybe the ad writer realized that Swift's threat was a satirical wail. Maybe not. The group's web page provides the opening remark

This essay is an outré, madness, a tragic, cruel fantasy, an eruption of inner rage, on how the oppressed desperately dream of being the oppressor.

But still we're left unsure of whether the choice to present it as a serious agenda is dishonest or ignorant. Either way it's paranoid.

Point 2
Gail Turpin, in a letter to the Tribune makes a point of explaining the intention of the declaration, and a commenter responds:

I'm among those who did research this hateful ad further, Gail. The website address in the ad, as you note, takes one only so far as the rightwing California congressman's 1987 submission of it into the Congressional Record, which leaves you wondering who "Michael Swift" was, and where the so-called "Declaration" had been originally published. Thank you for the edification!

Edification? Edification does of course allow the sense of moral and intellectual betterment. So why doesn't that sense fit here for me? As I'm used to thinking of it, edification refers to the improvement in character that comes from instruction and guidance. This could be from the view of instruction as moral guidance that leads to moral growth. It could also be from the view that general learning makes a person better.

It's a subtle difference. And to my ear the above use doesn't really capture either of them. This is about a specific fact. A bit of information relevant to the topic, but not really the type of information that adds anything to character or contributes to moral stature. That's one possible reason the use sounds odd to me. Granted, the issue being discussed has very obvious relevance to questions of citizenship and civility.

Another possibility is that I'm hearing is the intrusive effect of a possible blend. I would expect to hear a phrase like thanks for the clarification or …elucidation or …illumination or even …education. So maybe I'm just stuck on the thought that this could be a blend of education and clarification. That possibility might be keeping me from hearing and connecting to a perfectly fine use of edification.

So I'm not fully trusting my judgement on this one.