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AI’s Eternal Present: The Hollywood Basement

What is a “Hollywood Basement”? How would you define it? This week I was reading through an interview recorded by Marcyliena Morgan and discussed in her book, Language, Discourse and Power in African American Culture (Cambridge, 2002). In this interview with lively older women who had lived through the Great Migration and were discussing their experiences living in Chicago at that time, one of…

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Multilingual Mondegreens

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Citizen Sociolinguistics and AI-Assisted Writing

Totally flummoxed and trying to get a handle on students' use of AI tools this year! Would love to hear others' takes...

This semester I have been receiving a lot of bizarrely polished essays from my students.  They aren’t plagiarized or even straight-up usages of ChatGPT.   I haven’t seen one grammatical mistake, not one spelling mistake, but these essays don’t read like they’ve merely been through spell-check and grammar-check. There are many oddly elaborate, yet somehow simultaneously formulaic word…

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The Ludic Fallacy and Citizen Sociolinguistics

What is the Ludic Fallacy, what does it have to do with Citizen Sociolinguistics, and why does it matter?  According to Finance Philosopher Nassim Nicholas Taleb, who coined the term in his best seller Black Swan (2007), the Ludic Fallacy is the misapplication of the rules of games to real life situations.  To exemplify the Ludic Fallacy, Taleb contrasts how an imagined Professor of Statistics…

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Introducing: A Place to Talk about Language

Introducing: A Place to Talk about Language

The foundation of all citizen sociolinguistics is talking about language.  Everybody does it, and, inevitably, though talk and conversation, everybody, collectively creates how we view and think about language around us.  Those everyday conversations have been the springboard for most of the posts on this site.  The goal of this citizen sociolinguistics website has been to document varieties of…

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Talking about Language, Talking about L-O-V-E

Talking about Language, Talking about L-O-V-E

The hip hop classic, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill (1998), is now over 20 years old.  The album was recorded before either of my children, now ages 13 and 21 were born.  But, during quarantine, I’ve had the pleasure of sharing it and listening anew with my 13-year-old daughter.  Musically it’s a masterpiece, but there’s more than music here: One of the most compelling and original parts of…

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“Smaller People”? – Citizen Sociolinguistic Arrest!

“Smaller People”? – Citizen Sociolinguistic Arrest!

We will be as fair as we possibly can. The smaller people will definitely be handled.

–Diane von Furstenberg, on the fate of her vendors during the COVID-19 downsizing of her wrap-dress empire

All of us have probably at one time either called someone out for saying something offensive, or been called on our choice of words.   Calling someone out for their words is awkward and takes effort. It’s…

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Teenage Talk: It Doesn’t Just Change Language, It Changes Our World

Teenage Talk: It Doesn’t Just Change Language, It Changes Our World

Citizen Sociolinguistics flourishes in those moments when language catches us by surprise and forces us to start talking about it.  Consider, for example, the way people alternately marvel or reel in horror at the language of teens. There’s something intriguing going on with teen language that sparks human curiosity. Parents and high-school teachers like to share their stories about the language…

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Five Language Games for Online Learners of all Ages

Five Language Games for Online Learners of all Ages

Lately, the Internet has become an indispensable resource for teachers and professors as we surf through websites and social media looking for examples, links, lessons, or just something to break the ice, lighten the mood, and remind us all of our shared humanity while online.

While searching, we might also discover a secret that most avid Internet-surfers already know: The Internet can make…

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The Age of Zoom Meetings for a person who stutters

The Age of Zoom Meetings for a person who stutters

As many of us continue to adjust to working (or studying) from home, there’s been a proliferation of pieces about digital communication in today’s Age of Zoom Meetings. Despite the obvious benefits offered by these platforms during a pandemic, both researchers and “laypeople” have explored why exactly Zoom meetings can be so frustrating. Technological failures and glitches clearly play a part,…

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A New Lingua Franca for COVID-19

A generation from now, we will look back on this time and remember our shared language–a shared language that citizen sociolinguists have made visible and viable.   During the COVID-19 global pandemic, we have all been learning new words and phrases, and while we haven’t been able to share each other’s space and live company, we have been able to create a new global Lingua Franca for the COVID-19…

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Elbow, Elbow Pit, or Cough Pocket?

The human elbow is getting a lot of attention these days, as we collectively fight the global spread of COVID-19.

But what does that word “elbow” refer to?   Am I the only one who has spent most of my life using “elbow” to refer exclusively to the pointed part of our arm that sticks out when we bend our arm?   I don’t think so. Ask any person on the street to point to their elbow and I bet you…

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JOE BIDEN IS NOT ARTICULATE: Does it matter?

JOE BIDEN IS NOT ARTICULATE: Does it matter?

Lately, Joe Biden’s language has been under the articulateness microscope.  When there are substantive policies to be debated, why do we hold up articulateness for critique in political discussions? Biden seems competent enough, and experienced. Does it really matter if he is articulate?  Short answer: It depends on what people say about it.

So, let’s take a look:  How are people talking about…

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BEING INARTICULATE AS A SIGN OF COMPETENCE: You know what I mean?  

Being inarticulate is highly under-appreciated.  In many cases, rather than a sign of carelessness or miseducation, being inarticulate may instead be an important building block of sociality and even democracy in a diverse society.  Consider, for example, the following much-maligned expressions deemed “inarticulate”:

You know what I mean?

Like, um…

Whatever

These are expressions that have been…

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Citizen Sociolinguistic Arrest: Update that Syllabus, Boomer!

Citizen Sociolinguistic Arrest: Update that Syllabus, Boomer!

Citizen Sociolinguistic Arrest: Update that Syllabus, Boomer!

The beginning of January brings a new year, and, for anyone involved in the University, a new semester.  And, with that, after the relaxed, snack-filled and beverage-saturated days of the holidays, many a lament about the return to a more frantic pace and the need to ramp up for new students. My colleagues and I are spending the first…

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田园女权 (Countryside Feminism ) on Weibo: a citizen sociolinguistics perspective

Editor’s Note:  This is a guest post by Peizhu Liu, an Educational Linguistics PhD student at the University of Pennsylvania.  

A year ago,  a newly-coined expression – 田园女权(Countryside Feminism ) –attracted my attention on Weibo, which is one of the biggest social media platforms in China, with over 445 million monthly active users as of 2018 (“Sina Weibo”, 2019). Even though I had already…

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Given or Negotiable?: Korean Family Address Terms on the Move

Given or Negotiable?: Korean Family Address Terms on the Move

Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Eunsun Lee, a doctoral student in Educational Linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania. 

When you meet someone in Korea, there are several things they will ask you to initiate a conversation. Among many other things such as your occupation and country or city of origin, they will want to know your age, which determines the address term that they can use…