oozey mess
Sade Olutola
KIROKAZE
will byers stan first human second
noise dept.
Discoholic 🪩
pixel skylines
Peter Solarz
sheepfilms
todays bird
cherry valley forever
Monterey Bay Aquarium
No title available
Andulka
if i look back, i am lost
Lint Roller? I Barely Know Her
Jules of Nature
Misplaced Lens Cap
Claire Keane
⁂
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Nepal
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Singapore
seen from United Kingdom
seen from Venezuela
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Malaysia
seen from Italy
seen from Canada
seen from Australia
seen from United States
@brymes
Ugh! How do you pronounce UGG™?
You may think pronouncing UGG is as easy as saying “AHH” when you slip your foot into the cushy sheepskin lined interior of an UGG boot. It is! But, in happy citizen sociolinguistic fashion, there is more than one way to do it. I discovered this recently when a student pointed out (literally spelled out) that she was wearing some cozy “U-G-G” boots, treating UGG as an initialism, like UCLA or…
View On WordPress
Gelati and ChatGPT
As citizen sociolinguists, as humans, we listen and learn from the language around us. Inevitably, over a lifetime of living among multiple communities and generations, traveling here and there, raising a family, and having a career or two, our communicative repertoire will be more expansive and powerful than the sum of all the language we learn in schools, the vocabulary represented in the…
View On WordPress
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…
Multilingual Mondegreens
View On WordPress
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…
View On WordPress
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…
View On WordPress
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…
View On WordPress
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…
View On WordPress
“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…
View On WordPress
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…
View On WordPress
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…
View On WordPress
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,…
View On WordPress
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…
View On WordPress
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…
View On WordPress
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…
View On WordPress
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…
View On WordPress
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…
View On WordPress