#critical linguistics

[livinthebookshelf]

Today I decided to learn SFL and CDA because my work climate is not fun 🤕

[ariadne-mouse]

You know Essek's life now is hectic when he smells like he's "a day and a half to two days past his last bath" when he is a wizard with Prestidigitation aka the ideal arcane "pits & bits" sink bath. Like this is funny both because a day and a half or two days is not that long if your priorities are "running from the law" so clearly he is still finding ways to take care of himself but also he Has The Power to be squeakier and simply he hasn't.

[californiannostalgia]

watching the Screen Rant interviews for tlovm and apparently they hired a linguist to write conlang so they could have spoken marquesian

that's fucking awesome

[elswing]

SHUT UPPPPPP ABOUT THE TROP ELVES NOT BEING ELVISH ENOUGH SHUT UPPPPPP ABOUT THE TROP ELVES NOT BEING ELVISH ENOUGH

listen i love the vibes the pj trilogy elves gave off in the movies but having a solid chunk of your main cast looking very detached and spending 78% (with an additional 21% if they're female) of their screentime mogging the camera completely devoid of expression or apathetically gliding in slow motion to-and-fro offering occasional cryptic advice to the mortal characters just.. Would Not Work. unfortunately.

morfydd clark's constant scrunched up >:{ faces are not un-elvish you are just accustomed to seeing liv tyler deliver lines with her features carved from marble. also what happened to "people who think the elves are chill hippies should read the silm they're actually so crazy irrational and homicidal" OH BUT WHEN IT'S A DEADBEAT MOM IN A TUNIC AND MEDIEVAL PANTS,

[crumblinggothicarchitecture]

“And the relative simplicity of her music works with people who just want something mindlessly play in the background. It's also really easy for average people- who have no musical background- to sing along with. The lines are simple rhymes, and she never really uses any specialized vocal techniques like Vibrato. Basically, it's music for bland people who think salt is a spice.”

Some of your takes are valid and it’s healthy to critique anything that amasses such a large following in pop culture. However I would argue there is a way to do this without coming across as a pretentious undergraduate who read a few required and recommended readings from the syllabus and now sips their tea with a pinkie protruding. Let’s remember that tumblr is not inherently full of academics and defining anyone who hasn’t got a certain level of education as average or bland is such an Americanised, my way or the highway way of thinking.

It is possible to have differing opinions to others without insulting their intelligence or falsely presenting them in a certain way. Average people as a term in general, is quite elitist and classist. For example, I have a PHD in literature and am a classical musician. I work in publishing and academia.

That said, I still enjoy pop music, sometimes something can just be enjoyable and it’s not that deep.

Criticising Taylor Swift is low hanging fruit for a lit major who claims to be allied with as many causes as yourself. Or, if you do decide to continue with it, I hope you do it in a more articulated manner that focuses more on the quality of your arguments, and not just an assumption that those who oppose you are stupid or “bland” when I suspect the truth is much more complex than that, as it always is.

Best of luck with further studies. I hope to see more diverse content from you in the future, maybe some literary analysis of contemporary texts, or other artists who you deem intellectual enough to enjoy, or some recommendations.

Honestly- I do not know with which tone I should address this anon. I cannot tell if you are being hostile- but I certainly feel that you are being condescending.  

Thanks for at least direct quoting my words with which you draw issue. I appreciate it- some people send me critiques but fail to outline which of my posts is the problem.  

I can capitulate to exactly one of your points- and admit it is a good point- that I am overly sassy on occasion. The post you are angry about is just me chitchatting with someone about Swift’s live shows- it wasn’t a literary analysis. I cannot do an academic analysis of her live shows- but that does not mean I don’t have an opinion of them.  

Again- it was opinion not argument or analysis. Not a serious post. This is not a blog where I am going to speak like an academic all of the time. I’m here to have a little fun- and try to remind myself why I actually do love what I do for a living.

Generally speaking- I will try to make a more obvious, clear difference between what is just an opinion and what is a researched, literary argument on Taylor Swift in my future posting. Thank you for bringing this to my attention.  

There are some other things about your ask that I want to address, because it struck me as a bit unnecessary.  

You say that I’m “coming across as a pretentious undergraduate who read a few required and recommended readings from the syllabus and now sips their tea with a pinkie protruding” (para. 1). This is condescending. No, I did not simply “read a few required and recommended readings” to complete my education. You say you’ve got a PHd in the same discipline- and yet you want to tell me all I did for my degree was read a couple of books? You should know the kind of intellectual work that goes into real literary study. I am trying to show people with this blog, at least in some small way, that while literary study is not so straightforwardly quantifiably valuable like, for instance, physics- it is still a real discipline. With real requirements on argumentation and logic. It takes intellectual skill to wrestle with concepts in literary theory – but more so to apply them in synthesis and interpretation of textual evidence.   

SO, why are you essentially patting my head and saying “aw-cute she read some books and now thinks she’s smart?”   

To be clear- I am not in undergrad. I have finished two different degrees and am currently working on my third.

Why would you accuse me of classism and elitism predicated solely on a bad joke in a post wherein I am not even doing any real literary analysis? What prompted that? I made no effort to even pretend the post in question was little more than opinion- my real posts however, about literary analysis, I take great pains to research and edit those together with care.  

Also, “Americanized” what? Are you American? Because people ‘round here don’t care about what level of education you’ve got? The access to education varies remarkably state to state- and down into Latin American too- and we all know it. So, there is very much a culture of “help each other out when struggling” and not a culture of thinking that everyone of Earth needs to go through American University in order to matter. What are you talking about? Do you think American’s hold the monopoly on having Dogmatic views or “my way or the highway” thinking? That’s obviously not true- so what are you trying to say here?  

Did you miss the part of my Bio where I talk about being a teacher? I am a teacher in one of the poorest- most unfunded places in the country. My friend- I am repulsed by the idea of classism- I take my position in my community very seriously. Knowledge is not a stick with which I attempt to beat others down- Please understand that.  

Next, you say it is possible to critique without insulting people’s intelligence (para. 2). um, I did not insult anyone’s intelligence? I said their taste in music was bland, which does not correlate to an assumption on their intelligence. Um- I have also said many times that I like simple pop- music. Am I calling myself stupid because I’ve been listening to “Espresso” by Sabrina Carpenter on repeat? NOpe. It’s just a silly little song- and dancing to it makes me feel cute, young and free- but it’s still a bland song with no literary or moral value. What exactly is the problem here?  

Okay, within this same point you draw issue with my use of the word average, saying that “average people, as a term...is quite elitist and classist” (para.3). Okay, you misinterpreted my use of the word “average” here- as I was not referring to people as “average” because they have no education, or a different education compared to my own. I was only using the term in the most colloquial sense- meaning “in general” or “on average” as in the median percentage of people have no musical background- therefore they find simplistic pop music the easiest to digest and the simplest thing to play in the background or sing to on car trips. It’s pleasing to the ear because we don’t have too much “work” into understanding it- that's what I mean when I say it’s bland. 

If oatmeal was a type of music- it would be pop music. bland filler- but you know it can still be good.   

Okay, let’s talk about your final point “Taylor Swift is Low Hanging Fruit” (para. Whatever I can’t be bothered to count). Ummm? A billionaire musician who has massive worldwide acclaim and social impact is “low-hanging” to you? I mean yeah- she's clearly not worth study through the lens of poetical semiotics, or God forbid- Linguistic Morphology; however, there are several different ways a good analysis of her work could function- through feminist, Marxists, Post-colonialist, or anything under the umbrella of cultural studies. I also intend to do a rhetorical analysis on her use of “lower class” aesthetics and how that attracts the audience she wants. And, I’ve done a couple of syntactical analyses. However, I had to prop those up with a dichotomization of her work to someone with more impressive literary value, like Kendrick Lamar, because her work alone is not strong enough for that type of analysis.  

Apologies if I have written a return, you did not expect or want- perhaps, I should be less sensitive on the internet. I do often brush off people's condescension, especially when I notice that they are extremely young or just do not know anything at all about my field of study. Because why worry about uninformed opinions? I wanted to speak with you, however, because you do care. It is obvious, and I am glad that people do care. I admire you for caring about the integrity of the discipline- but I really wasn’t doing what you thought I was doing.  

 I admire anyone who also studies Literature, and you say you’re a classical musician, I think that’s so impressive! I love classical music! Rachmaninoff makes me feel insane! I love it! You know that one O’Hara poem? The one that is an ode to Rachmaninoff’s birthday that ends “you’ll never be mentally sober” because I feel that line in my bones. And don’t even get me started on Tchaikovsky- Truly, you might never hear the end of it. (CAnnoNS!!!!??? what a guy)

 I just wanted to clear up anything that you found offensive- but I also defended myself because you do know what I’m talking about when it comes to literary study- and so the conversation took priority over the other meaningless “hate” messages I get. And- boy howdy- I've been getting hate messages pretty much daily. 

Promise to no longer be condescending to me and I think we ought to be friends and not fight- let me start- what did you concentrate on for your PHd? 

 I, myself, focus on post-colonialism, feminist theory, and post-modernist thought in American Literature. I work mainly within US Multi-ethnic literature, though, outside of school, I have an intense fascination with medieval or ancient Literature- primarily, these days, classical Sanskrit poetry. Last year it was an obsession with old Norse literature- lol I like to switch things up. Have you ever read the Heliand? It’s about Viking Jesus- so cool and written in old Saxon! But, anyway, I think the unique prosody of Sanskrit is so neat-o. My other obsession is this one old french poem called "le roman de silence" what a crazy little gender-bending 13th century thing that is (haha). And this doesn't even get into my philosophical preoccupations- though I believe I will discuss those on my blog, too, at some point.

Anyway- perhaps I will talk about my more niche interests on this blog- all good things in time. I have no interest in solely focusing on Taylor Swift forever- but I do want to finish saying all the things I’ve been holding back for years. I think it’s important- because Swift holds such a massive influence over people. It’s healthy, as you said, to critique people like that.  

Okay- Sorry I talked soo long. Peace Out :)

[forgetriestowrite]

everybody say thank you Critical Role's Taylor for some of the funniest thirty seconds i've ever seen

[shytimelady]

So I'm back on my Latin bullshit (I was never off my Latin bullshit) because I got a new textbook for spring semester and I'm going through and brushing up on some stuff, and I'm also back on my Critical Role bullshit so I'm now in the process of being struck by the auditory similarity of the name Orym to the noun ending -ōrum. For reference, -ōrum is the genitive plural inflective for masculine and neuter nouns, which essentially conveys the idea that whatever proceeds it and its noun belongs to multiple other things (the girls' book, the trees' leaves). Anyway, I'm not the most deeply invested in CR lore but the general gist I'm getting from my casual listening and my interaction with some of the community is that Orym's whole thing is self-sacrifice for the sake of others and I think the belonging to multiple other things connotation of the name is great regardless of whether it's intentional. anyway.

[kaiserouo]

Hope there will be a conlang critic episode about this

[leandra-kinard]

People on this website try to be tolerant and supportive so much that they actually become the opposite.

The whole ABO vs. a/b/o discourse reminds me of that ridiculous drama on the "negro" crayon. By not wanting to be racist to English speaking Black people, you end up being racist to the entire Spanish speaking world.

I will probably preach this til the day I die, even if people don't like it. But context matters. It fucking does.

Also, the argument I saw on that post in some of the reblogs and comments that "no other slur gets a pass like this" is wrong. Fag for example has multiple common meanings in other languages or cultures, even just in American vs. British English. In British it simply means cigarette and is therefore inoffensive, in American English it's a slur.

You cannot go through life dictating that 270+ cultures (or more if we count various cultures within countries) bend to your rule because something is offensive in one of those 270+ cultural contexts but not in all the others. That's not only unattainable and illogical, it's a bit tyrannical.

I've read words or phrasings many times that made me think "yikes, in German/Czech/whatever this would be so offensive".

Well, that's just life in a multicultural, multilingual world. You gotta be logical and sensible and get used to it.

End of story.

[omegaphilosophia]

The Philosophy of Natural Language

The philosophy of natural language is a branch of philosophy that explores the nature, origins, and use of language as it is naturally spoken and understood by human beings. It involves the study of how language functions in communication, the relationship between language and thought, the structure and meaning of linguistic expressions, and the role of context in understanding meaning. This field intersects with linguistics, cognitive science, logic, and semiotics, aiming to understand both the abstract properties of language and its practical use in everyday life.

Key Concepts in the Philosophy of Natural Language:

Meaning and Reference:

Semantics: One of the central concerns of the philosophy of natural language is the study of meaning, known as semantics. Philosophers explore how words and sentences convey meaning, how meaning is structured, and how language relates to the world.

Reference: Reference is the relationship between linguistic expressions and the objects or entities they refer to in the world. Philosophers like Saul Kripke and Hilary Putnam have contributed to understanding how names, descriptions, and other expressions refer to things in the world.

Pragmatics:

Context and Meaning: Pragmatics deals with how context influences the interpretation of language. It examines how speakers use language in different contexts and how listeners infer meaning based on context, intentions, and social norms.

Speech Acts: Philosophers such as J.L. Austin and John Searle have explored how utterances can do more than convey information—they can perform actions, such as making promises, giving orders, or asking questions.

Syntax and Grammar:

Structure of Language: Syntax is the study of the rules and principles that govern the structure of sentences in natural languages. Philosophers and linguists investigate how words are combined to form meaningful sentences and how these structures relate to meaning.

Universal Grammar: The concept of universal grammar, proposed by Noam Chomsky, suggests that the ability to acquire language is innate to humans and that there are underlying grammatical principles common to all languages.

Language and Thought:

Linguistic Relativity: The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis suggests that the structure of a language influences how its speakers perceive and think about the world. Philosophers debate the extent to which language shapes thought and whether different languages lead to different cognitive processes.

Conceptual Frameworks: Language is often seen as providing the conceptual framework through which we interpret the world. Philosophers examine how language structures our understanding of reality and whether it limits or expands our cognitive abilities.

Philosophy of Meaning:

Theories of Meaning: Various theories of meaning have been proposed in the philosophy of language, including:

Descriptivist Theories: These suggest that the meaning of a word or phrase is equivalent to a description associated with it.

Causal Theories: These argue that meaning is determined by a causal relationship between words and the things they refer to.

Use Theories: Inspired by Ludwig Wittgenstein, these theories claim that the meaning of a word is determined by its use in the language.

Language and Reality:

Metaphysical Implications: Philosophers explore how language relates to reality, including how linguistic structures might reflect or distort our understanding of the world. This involves questions about whether language mirrors reality or if it plays a role in constructing our experience of reality.

Ontology of Language: This concerns the nature of the entities that linguistic expressions refer to, such as whether abstract objects (like numbers or properties) exist independently of language.

Communication and Interpretation:

Hermeneutics: Hermeneutics is the study of interpretation, particularly of texts. Philosophers in this tradition, such as Hans-Georg Gadamer and Paul Ricoeur, explore how understanding is achieved in communication and how meaning is negotiated between speakers and listeners.

Ambiguity and Vagueness: Natural language often contains ambiguity and vagueness, where words or sentences can have multiple interpretations. Philosophers study how these features affect communication and understanding.

Language and Social Interaction:

Language as a Social Phenomenon: Language is inherently social, and its use is governed by social norms and conventions. Philosophers study how language functions in social contexts, how power dynamics influence language, and how language can both reflect and shape social structures.

Language Games: Wittgenstein introduced the concept of "language games" to describe how the meaning of words is tied to their use in specific forms of life or social practices. This concept emphasizes the diversity of language use and the idea that meaning is context-dependent.

Evolution of Language:

Origins of Language: Philosophers and cognitive scientists explore how language evolved in humans, the relationship between language and other forms of communication in animals, and the cognitive capacities required for language.

Language Change: Natural languages are dynamic and constantly evolving. Philosophers study how languages change over time and what this reveals about the nature of meaning and communication.

Critique of Language:

Deconstruction: Philosophers like Jacques Derrida have critiqued traditional notions of language and meaning, arguing that language is inherently unstable and that meaning is always deferred, never fully present or fixed.

Critical Theory: In the tradition of critical theory, philosophers analyze how language can perpetuate power structures, ideologies, and social inequalities, and how it can be used to resist and challenge these forces.

The philosophy of natural language offers a rich and complex exploration of how language functions, how it relates to thought and reality, and how it shapes human interaction and understanding. By examining the nature of meaning, reference, context, and the social dimensions of language, philosophers aim to uncover the fundamental principles that govern linguistic communication and the role of language in human life.

[livinthebookshelf]

Scholarship can make a significant contribution to enlightenment, yet ‘scholarship’ needs to take a stance and express itself in comprehensible ways, in many different public spheres and via different genres of text and talk.

Ruth Wodak (Interviewed by Andreas Schulz)

[ariadne-mouse]

Sorrowlord Zathuda: the child will learn

Corellon: the children will learn

[magicallarynx]

only sam riegel could commit to the bit so hard that he produced one of the rarest speech sounds in recorded language (at 3:42 of c3e65, linked below)

phonetic transcriptions/elaboration below:

clip/quote: "(to be the) first to [play]" (0:3:42)

the top line is what Sam somehow managed to say, in closeish IPA (the bottom line, for contrast, is what Sam would say in his normal accent)

Note the voiceless bilabial trill /ʙ̥/ in place of the lateral approximate /l/. Please excuse the screenshot of quickly typed IPA tumblr kept murdering it when i copied it over

[rotzaprachim]

substrates and substrate hypotheses in linguistics make me sooooo insane you’re saying this language hasn’t been spoken in two thousand years but also people are still using words from it in their gardens and kitchens and to name their children and the substarates are still ghosts in their words and their grammar and they don’t even know????

[crumblinggothicarchitecture]

tbh it's not just insinuation of you doing some class discrimination that is gross, other things listed by them as accusations towards you are at least equaly as disgusting, if not more. "ableism, classism, racism" i'm sorry, i didn't know swift is disabled, poor or non-white, oh wait, she is neither of these. yes, grammar policing can be used to discriminate, but when it's used to punch down people, who actually belong to these categories.

also there are literal college courses focused solely on swift's writing, but you as someone with english lit degree can't do some grammar analysis on your private blog? is other anon as offended about these courses and sending them emails about how discriminatory it is to pick apart someone's writing? of course not, because the only people, who would spend money an that type of a course are rich ts fandom cultists, who wouldn't say anything, that might be actually critical about swift. also anon doesn't actually care about picking apart someone's writing, they only care about swift's writing being put under some criticism, because otherwise they would be sending offended emails to every school or critic for the crime of literary analysis.

it's almost as if swift trained these people with her never ending victimhood and copying, to look in her name for any struggle to steal whenever she is being criticized. not an ounce of critical thinking or just common sense to look at it for a second and realize that these don't apply to swift. "so yeah not a good look" yeah, but not on crumblinggothicarchitecture

Sorry, this took a minute for me to get to <3. I appreciate this perspective. I didn't even mention that in the ask, but it's so weird to accuse someone of being racist, ableist, classicist just because I analyzed Taylor Swift’s poor grammar. Swift is the one who calls herself a writer and claims she one of the best writers on the planet right now. So, it stands to reason that I would use my English Degree to analyze her grammar if, for any reason, I felt she actually wasn't a good writer.

If I say that someone isn't a good writer. I'm not going to just state that and leave it there. Obviously, it's on me to effectively argue my point. I do, however, have ways to argue my point. So, naturally, I will get into some linguistic or literary criticism of Swift.

I'm not sure that Grammar-Anon really understands what I am trying to do here. Besides, I think you're right about them not knowing that linguistics is an actual academic discipline. Are the people who dedicate their whole lives to studying and teaching grammar also being racist, ableist, and classicist? LOL.

The English language is such a beautiful medium for expression. It's one of my favorite languages, among many, to read poetry in because it has such an amazing breadth of vocabulary words with which to express emotion. In most linguistic study, it is the mechanism of language itself that scholars pull into study. Fascinating stuff- and people study it all. There are scholars whose life's work revolves around understanding AAVE dialects, or understanding Louisiana Cajun dialects, or understanding mid-Atlantic dialects, or Jewish-New York regionalisms. This is just a short list of regionalist dialects I've personally read about in the last few months- however, the list is expansive and covers much more than just the American continent. For instance, there is a whole subset of academic study centered on the post-colonialist use of English Language in India. Scholarship in this field often takes into account feminist theory, Marxist theory, or Post Colonialist theory. (Again, I just listed my favorites, but there are many more theoretical lenses through which people study the impact of grammatical praxis).

This is something people make into their whole life's work- it's not somehow offensive to participate in low-stakes grammatical analysis of Taylor Swift.

You're right, some people just can't handle the idea of putting her work under the microscope because it would impact their narrow-world view if someone said actually Swift is a bad, unoriginal writer. Imagine the meltdown if twitter Swifties found me :O

I've been giving Swift a pass for years, mostly because I would dismiss her music as simple pop-music. It's meant to be fun. I would listen to it, because it was an easy break from the dense, challenging stuff I would read for classes. However, now I'm going to tear apart Swifts work. It's the principle of the matter now because she seems to think she's the greatest American poet to ever live. I am both bored, as summer approaches and I have nothing else to work on, and frustrated that she's pretending to be a poet.

She's not a tortured genius. She's a trust fund baby who got as far as she did on mediocrity because of her parents' money. We "wouldn't last an hour in the asylum" where they raised her- Ha. She wouldn't last a second working a part-time job after school to pay rent. I get upset when people accuse me of some type of classist's attitude purely because I use my education when they know nothing about my story. I got a lucky break.

Education is my road out of abject poverty. Nothing else was going to save me. I did it all on my own, with the help of a bunch of scholarships, lucky breaks, and really wonderful teachers. Now, in my real life, I am the teacher now. I want to root for people. I critique for the sake of wanting people to improve their skills.

Taylor Swift's arrogant attitude and unwillingness to face criticism just gets under my skin. So, what do I do? I'm not fond of ad hominem attacks. Instead, I will make some good arguments about her bad writing and have some fun in the process. :)

So yeah- I guess it's not a good look.

[jingerpi]

I should probably not be suprised when jan pi toki pona give me unsolicited toki pona advice but it still gets on my nerves. like, im willing enaging with the linguistics people and a constructed language i should expect people to be persnickety about it but that doesn't make it any less annoying @-@