A role for media influence in sound change?

One of the most common topics that non-linguists raise with linguists, especially if the subject is language change or dialects, is the effect of mass media: Surely dialects are dying out because of TV, etc.

In response linguists point out on a regular basis is that such influence seems to be heavily restricted: We definitely see the very rapid spread of words (cromulent), turns of phrase (too many to start on, see here) and even interjections (d'oh!) ... to pull examples just from the Simpsons, long a source of serious scholarly attention (and yes, I do mean especially HeiDeas). That kind of pretty superficial stuff aside, leading sociolinguists (like Chambers and Labov, for example) have argued that TV does not have real impact on the basic ways we talk … structural things, like pronunciation.

I had heard a few times about work going on in the UK that examines the issue very systematically and finally got around to looking it. I'm talking about a project from Glasgow, led by Jane Stuart-Smith, described in detail here. This is a quick take and I hope folks will speak up if I've missed key points …

Every good piece of research on language change reveals great new levels of complication and this looks to be no different. Glasgow adolescents who are really engaged with London-based television shows aren't picking up southern accents generally and can't imitate them. But Stuart-Smith and colleagues' …

large-scale, multifactorial statistical analysis reveals robust significant correlations between features of consonant pronunciation ([f] [v] for /θ/ /ð/ and l-vocalization) and opportunities for contact with speakers of Southern English English, specific social practices, and engaging with the popular television show, EastEnders.

They characterize what's going on as ‘linguistic appropriation from the media’, and reasonably conclude that "In fact, it emerges that very little is known about how speakers learn about the accents from speech presented in the media". I'm very curious to see how this progresses … but things are getting more complicated and I like that.

Israeli slang from the Forward

I've been enjoying working my way through the Forward's set of posts about Hebrew slang in Israel. Judith Shulevitz, a journalist (among other things), guest edited their op-ed page for a week and solicited a set of pieces on the topic, collected here. Pretty cool topic, given the rich sociolinguistic situation that contemporary Israel provides, and the articles cover a wide range of material. This piece notes something that looks a little like medieval peevology, and this one covers the story of an English loanword.

HT to SR.

Pirate linguists: Chickens on Thanksgiving

It's an oldie-but-a-goodie I guess, but one of our contributors passed this along from a student yesterday ...

How to get rich as a linguist?

Linguist Bob Kennedy from UC-Santa Barbara is on Jeopardy and won a ton yesterday already, as reported here.

"Gate rape"

I've been actively avoiding paying any attention to the uproar over airport security and I find the term "gate rape" pretty over the top. But if you check UrbanDictionary, where it was the Urban Word of the Day on November 19, it turns out there's an entry for a completely different meaning from a year ago ...

When a person entering a gated community follows a car through the gate because they didn't know the code to get in.

I don't think I have been into a gated community before, so don't know the situation.

Image from here.

The ball came out but the whistle blew

As Wisconsin's football team is pummeling Michigan right now (sorry, Ann Arbor friends, colleagues and alums who care), the announcers have I think (at least) twice used a construction that is just impossible for me in the relevant situations: A player carrying the ball has had his forward progress stopped, an official blows the whistle to end the play and after that the ball comes loose. The comment:

The ball came out but the whistle blew.

I can only understand that statement as describing a significantly different situation, namely that the ball was fumbled and after that the whistle blew. In fact, the sentence is just odd, since if the ball came out, something else would have to happen to to trigger the whistle: it's a live ball.

To describe what actually happened, I would have to say:

The ball came out but the whistle had blown.

Do other people get the same reading? I didn't expect any variability here … I would expect this to be pretty stable.

What hath God wrought? Mr. Verb on Twitter

Yes, if DARE jumped off a cliff, we would too.

http://twitter.com/MisterVerb

I've filed it under 'blogal', because 'twitteral' will take getting used to.

Let's see how this goes ...

Out sound bitten

Wow. On Olbermann's Countdown just now, I came into the room to hear E.J. Dionne (I think it was him anyway) say that the Democrats got "out sound bitten" in the recent elections.

My brain is spinning. Even new formations on strong verbs are normally weak -- you flew to Denver but flied out to right field. But 'soundbite' is so firmly established that I couldn't imagine that it'd yield a strong verb.

I feel pretty bitten, but maybe not so sound out bitten. Wait ...

The humanities still have a pulse ...

As I read this piece in today's NYT, all I could think was, wow, maybe I could be connected to the humanities in some way. The key quote:

The next big idea in language, history and the arts? Data.

A bunch of UW grad students doing linguistics have taken as their motto, "data's nice".

PS:Forget about singular versus plural 'data': 'humanities has' or 'humanities have'?

tweets from DARE

Hey, DARE is on twitter. Try it.

The etymology of cheesehead

Basically since the first Mr. Verb started this blog back in the 1840s or whenever that was, there have been good intentions about posting on the origins and history of the word cheesehead, specifically referring to people fro Wisconsin. And that makes it all the worse that we've gotten a pretty steady stream of requests over the years (yup, we're an old blog) to address the topic and haven't yet done so.

Here goes, but you should consider this a discussion-starter and placeholder rather than a serious treatment.

Consulting with the Dictionary of American Regional English, the usual starting point for American dialect words, you find little, just the old meaning 'stupid or awkward person'. This is seriously outdated, especially here in Wisconsin, where people are bursting with cheesehead pride. Seriously.

Even asking the DARE brain-trust turned up little by their high standards, but provided the guts of the post below. (Multiple HTs to JH and LvS, of course.) They call attention to a discussion in the famous Jim Leary's Wisconsin Folklore (1998, 13):

"Cheesehead" is … double-edged. Wisconsin cheese is known throughout the country. Billboards across Wisconsin, and particularly along the southern border with Illinois, tout the cheese, which tourists purchase from specialty shops. In the mid-1980s, when designs were submitted to replace the state's butter-colored license plates, then governor Tony Earle parodied New Hampshire's "Live Free or Die" motto to suggest that Wisconsin's might be "Eat Cheese or Die." Meanwhile, diehard fans of the Green Bay Packers and Milwaukee Brewers began appearing at games wearing on their heads cardboard triangles that were painted to resemble wedges of Swiss cheese. . . . Such regalia sparked a goofy pride in Wisconsin's chief export and its agrarian tradition. But the wedges have also exposed cheeseheads to taunts that they are rubes with brains of curdled milk. . . . Chicagoans seek respite in the slower, rural rhythms of Wisconsin. Perhaps a few mistake their neighbors' style as a sign of stupidity.

In the same spirit, DARE staff report the story that "this term was developed by a White Sox (or Cubs) fan/commentator as an insult directed at the Milwaukee team originally."

One story from the DARE files suggests that the actual Packers cheesehead (go here for the original item — it's also the source of the image below) led to the term, but the chronology is presumably the other way around.


The term surely has roots in Europe, where terms like Dutch kaaskop and German Käsekopf are well-known and often negative. UrbanDictionary, in fact, has this:

Slang(can also be used offensively) for a Dutch person. "Kaaskop" means "cheesehead" in Dutch. Because the Netherlands is very well known for its cheese.

Various people report no particular national/ethnic association in German, by the way. But how do we get to Wisconsin? I'm guessing multiple sources push toward making the term a plausible nickname. The large Dutch and German populations here would have brought the term over and the constant topic of 'nationality' in popular Wisconsin culture would have kept that going. The actual cheese production in the state certainly would have encouraged the term — and note that the diary industry here is not a German import, while we're at it.

More to follow, I hope. In the meantime, eat cheese or die, I guess.

Top image from here.

How bad is it in Wisconsin?

This bad:

Gov.-elect Scott Walker has asked Gov. Jim Doyle's administration to immediately stop many of its top initiatives.

In a letter to Department of Administration Secretary Daniel Schooff, Walker urged the current administration to freeze implementation of the federal health care law and suspend contract negotiations with state employees. He also requested it stop making any permanent hires, transform Charter Street Power Plant into a natural gas boiler (instead of the planned biofuel boiler) and delay any new administrative rules until after he takes office on Jan. 3.

"I am confident we can find common ground on my five requests and continue to work towards an orderly transition," Walker wrote.

Whoa.

International peevology: Spanish edition

Last month, I had a chance to go to an amazing conference in Barcelona. It was great to hear a bunch of Catalan and see a new bilingual setting. Flying over, the Iberia Airlines magazine had something remarkable ... a great piece of Spanish-language peevology. I didn't even know about the existence of Fundéu!

Linguistics and music

As recently as a couple of weeks ago, I've heard people repeating the old chestnut about how being good at linguistics correlates closely with being good at math and music. This weekend, passed through various hands (virtually speaking), this photo came to me (I think the actual HT goes to TG here, if I understand the chain of transmission):

So, who the heck is listed as Friedrich Nietzsche here?

Election footnote

It took days, but somebody finally managed to show me a real silver lining from the elections: Tim James was not elected governor of Alabama. If you need some cheering up, go to YouTube and watch some of the parodies of his ads about English in Alabama. Here's one ...



HTs to bf and jb.