Jamie A. Thomas
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#languagestory blog

Video & perspectives on communication, intercultural learning & the impact of anthropological research.

The Often Forgotten Intersectionality of Race, Gender, and Language

2/7/2018

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by Jamie A. Thomas

Why is Language Missing From the Conversation?

I'm picking up the blog this month with a post that highlights how the way our bodies are read--in coordination with the languages we speak--can make for very different intersections with race and gender. How many of us think about language learning when we consider the combined impacts of racialization and gendering? How many study abroad coordinators are aware of intersectional challenges for their students of color?

Why do we forget to consider language as another dimension of our social experience? Because we take it for granted. Language is such a regularly embedded and embodied aspect of our everyday experience, we sometimes are unaware of how it can contextually shift in its use to construct ideals of woman, nation, or Arabic-speaker, for example.

The video posted below on "Study Abroad in Jordan" is my latest installment of the #LanguageStory video series, and follows two college students, Laye and Erica, in their sojourn to Amman, Jordan. I met each of them during my time as an ethnographer embedded in Jordan, and their friendship is all the more powerful considering their many differences: Laye is a first-generation Muslim immigrant to the U.S., and Erica is a White American woman with aspirations for a career in Dubai. 

Watch the Video.

It's Real: Race and Gender Have Impacts on Second Language Learning.

It's a bit paradoxical, but the notion of language is quite often missing from discussion of how socially (and culturally) constructed categories of identity can impact our experiences. In many ways, words said and unsaid can contribute to discrimination, exclusion, and a narrowing of possibilities.  What I mean here, is that even though racialization and gendering are largely accomplished through discourse and communication, we fail to pay attention to language as a medium of exclusion, or as yet another dimension of reading a person as Other.  

​Both Erica and Laye enjoy their life abroad in Amman, Jordan, and view it as an extraordinary opportunity. Their friendship has fostered a unique brand of colloquial Arabic between them. However, as it turns out, their study abroad experiences diverge in ways that relate to how their bodies are gendered and raced by others in Amman. Across each of their experiences, language remains another dimension through which they experience difference. 

For Erica, being seen as a woman narrows her opportunities to converse with men. In her homestay situation, this also leads to marriage as the central topic of conversation. This has the effect of narrowing her potential

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Internet Language IRL

12/20/2017

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by Charis Nandor

Charis is a student at Bryn Mawr College, where she is completing her major in Linguistics. You can watch her video  here.

Because Internet.

Internet Linguistics, while not actually being its own field of linguistics (yet) is starting to be a popular thing to study. People use words differently on the Internet. Punctuation is important in a way that’s more obvious than in spoken language. Even syntax (word order) can be different on the Internet.

For example, in spoken language, up to a few years ago, it would be entirely ungrammatical for someone to say “*I want this because reasons.” They would have to say, “I want this because of reasons.” However, this structure became acceptable on the Internet, and now it’s actually spread into spoken language (albeit mostly among frequent Internet-users).

“Blefadula” is Not a Word.

Of course, because language contains so many parts, I couldn’t focus on all aspects of language. I decided to specifically focus on one of the simplest things for a broad audience to understand—words. Everyone knows what a word is. “Happy” is a word. “Blefadula” is not a word. And then, it gets more complicated than that. For some people, yinz is a word. Other people might have no idea what that means, and say it definitely isn’t a word. (For reference, “yinz” is a Pittsburgh term meaning “you guys” or “y’all”.)

​The same thing happens with Internet words. While I, an avid Tumblr user, feel perfectly comfortable with doggo or snek, my parents would have no idea what these mean. One of the interesting things to me about Internet words is that they’re often very similar to “regular” English words. In this case, “doggo” is a large, cute dog and “snek” is a cute snake. 

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How Do You Say "F*ck Off"? Cursing as Part of Fieldwork

6/24/2016

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Why Taboo Words Are Important in the Field

Working with a local Spanish-speaker in Oaxaca, to finalize transcription of a Spanish interview with a member of the Zapotec community in June 2016.Working with a local Spanish-speaker in Oaxaca City, to finalize transcription of a Spanish interview with a member of the Zapotec community in June 2016.
Today, I'm writing to you from somewhere in Mexico, where I'm spending the summer doing field research and writing. Over the course of my extended visits to this country since 2010, my Spanish has enormously improved. This means my interviewing has gotten more effective because I'm better able to listen in detail.

​But there are many ways of speaking Spanish--any language, really--and among these, is the stylish use of slang, and colorful incorporation of taboo terms like swear words, profanity, and dirty words. Believe it or not, words such as these pop up in interview situations, and other contexts of field observation and participation. Sometimes it becomes my task to swear right along with my participants, or at least empathize with their animated excitement or frustration.

Speech communities are constantly innovating new turns of phrase, and American English is no exception. Can you imagine if you didn't know the loaded meanings of the now ubiquitous "balls" or 
"surfboard"? (Haha, you'll have to go urban dictionary for more information, I'm afraid that would be too much of a digression to explain here.)

In this blog post, I describe a recent episode in which I appropriately used some dirty slang here in Mexico, and how this led to a unique opportunity for intercultural learning. I also share a new list of dirty words I learned just last week in Oaxaca City, with a discussion of why I think these colorful words should be more purposefully included on your own list of 
survival vocabulary. 


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The Bronx Spoke and I Talked Back

2/9/2016

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By Jamie A. Thomas
Picture

Closing Social Distance on the Street

When I stepped onto the street, all around me I heard sounds. Car horns, cell phone conversations. Clothing outlets and grocery stores lined the avenue, some with doors ajar, and folks were selling things in the open air, too. Everyone else was making their way home as though at the end of a long work day, their footsteps ladened with backpacks, boxes, and other packages they were carrying onwards. My first time in the Bronx, and it could've been a scene from a vibrant street in one of Mexico City's several colonias. I was awestruck by the lively rhythm of this community. Words in Spanish and Vietnamese renewed old Jewish storefronts, where Stars of David still crest brick and mortar facades.

On my way to the nearest subway station, a colorful man standing on the corner approached me, advertising for a local business over a megaphone. He was doing his energetic best to get me to support a nearby salon. As I kept walking, I responded to let him know he had been heard, but that I wasn't interested. Why not? I told him I wouldn't be around long enough, that I wasn't a New York local. Where you from? Philly, and I was on the move, I said smiling, having used a phrase my mom often returned to.

But an interesting thing happened as I was talking to this guy.

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Why We Love Our Neighborhood Coffeehouse

1/5/2016

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By Emma Kates-Shaw & Allie Drabinsky
"I really like the atmosphere, and the way that you can come, grab a coffee and sit for hours at a time surrounded by people, and the noise is really comforting." - Coffeehouse goer

Watch the Video.

The Atmosphere of Hobbs Coffee #languagestory

Background to the Project: Talking Over a Good Cuppa.

Together, we worked in our sociolinguistics course this semester to investigate the meaning of "atmosphere" in the coffeehouse Hobbs, which is located just off of Swarthmore's college campus. This video project began with a few hours spent talking over coffee, discussing with one another what stood out to us as linguistic markers in the space.

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    Jamie A. Thomas is a linguistic anthropologist and digital media producer. Her forthcoming book Zombies Speak Swahili is all about the undead, videogames, and viral Black language. She teaches at Santa Monica College and CSU Dominguez Hills.

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