by Juhyae Kim and Anya Slepyan
Juhyae is a junior linguistics major and education minor at Swarthmore College. Anya is a freshman and potential major in Russian, also at Swarthmore College. Watch their video essay below.
Juhyae is a junior linguistics major and education minor at Swarthmore College. Anya is a freshman and potential major in Russian, also at Swarthmore College. Watch their video essay below.
College Campuses as Speech Communities.
Watch the Video. | In our #LanguageStory project, we set out to explore the semiotic landscapes of various college campuses to see how certain speech communities and identities developed within them. We first had the idea for the project during fall break, when Anya visited a friend at a different college. Anya and her friend were discussing the school police at their various colleges and realized that though they served the same function, the emic terminology or nomenclature differed from school to school. What Anya called “pub safe” (abbreviated from Public Safety), her friend referred to as “camp sec” (Campus Security). |
While this difference may seem insignificant, it made her think about the variations in language across college campuses, and how the unique slang and language varieties helped build campus identities. As a freshman, Anya was especially aware of the fact that she had entered Swarthmore knowing none of the appropriate and community-specific language, but had quickly picked the slang and jargon necessary to navigate the specific semiotic landscape of our college campus. This made her curious to explore the different school-specific language used on various colleges, and to explore how language use may differ at schools of different sizes, types, and geographic locations. At the conclusion of our research together, we found that the existence of campus-specific vocabulary results in unique speech communities on each campus, which is an essential factor that forms campus identity...
Conducting Interviews Across 6 College Campuses.
Our process for gathering data was relatively straightforward. We first brainstormed about nearby campuses, and thought of other schools around the country where we had connections to another student. We then came up with a list of questions and began to conduct interviews. First, we visited the nearby campuses of Bryn Mawr College and Haverford College. At Bryn Mawr, we spoke with Kennedy, a friend of Juhyae’s. At Haverford we approached a student who was relaxing on “Founder’s Green,” a central space of the campus. He introduced himself as Alex, and we interviewed him after explaining a bit of what our project was about. We then took pictures and video footage of the two campuses in order to better understand their semiotic landscapes.
The remainder of the interviews were collected individually, either in person or online. Juhyae interviewed her friend Jessica, a senior at Seattle Pacific University, via the internet software Zoom, and Anya interviewed her sister, Mara (senior at American University) in person and her friend Lucy (freshman at Pomona College) via Facetime. By interviewing friends at schools that are located in different regions across the country, and also vary by size, type of institution, and proximity to other schools, we hoped to gather somewhat diverse data about campus-specific language use on American colleges and universities.
The remainder of the interviews were collected individually, either in person or online. Juhyae interviewed her friend Jessica, a senior at Seattle Pacific University, via the internet software Zoom, and Anya interviewed her sister, Mara (senior at American University) in person and her friend Lucy (freshman at Pomona College) via Facetime. By interviewing friends at schools that are located in different regions across the country, and also vary by size, type of institution, and proximity to other schools, we hoped to gather somewhat diverse data about campus-specific language use on American colleges and universities.
Labels Are a Thing!
Our findings primarily revealed linguistic community building through labels. Some of these labels were self-identifiers used by the students to create an in-group on their campus, such as the way Bryn Mawr students refer to themselves as “Mawrtyrs” and Swarthmore students call themselves “Swatties.” Other self-identifying labels were ironic, such as the usage of “Wonks” for American University students, and “SPUdents” for students at Seattle Pacific University. The ironic usage of such self-identifiers is a reaction to campaigns by the college administration which are not fully accepted by the student body.
Additionally, students may have labels for the students at other colleges, such as “Mudders” (Harvey Mudd), “Scrippsies” (Scripps) and “CMCers” (Claremont McKenna College). However, sometimes these labels can turn negative as they become associated with stereotypes of other students. For example, Kennedy made reference to “Haverbros,” whom she describes as the typical frat-boy, lifting bro stereotype. Lucy also described CMCers using similar terms. We were interested in the fact that schools who were in much closer proximity—about 10 minutes or less by car—to other schools, such as Haverford, Bryn Mawr, and Pomona, had more terms describing students of other campuses than did schools that were more isolated, such as Swarthmore, American, and SPU. We believe that the close proximity of one school to another causes more interaction between the schools, intensifying the identity-building, both linguistic and otherwise, at these schools.
Additionally, students may have labels for the students at other colleges, such as “Mudders” (Harvey Mudd), “Scrippsies” (Scripps) and “CMCers” (Claremont McKenna College). However, sometimes these labels can turn negative as they become associated with stereotypes of other students. For example, Kennedy made reference to “Haverbros,” whom she describes as the typical frat-boy, lifting bro stereotype. Lucy also described CMCers using similar terms. We were interested in the fact that schools who were in much closer proximity—about 10 minutes or less by car—to other schools, such as Haverford, Bryn Mawr, and Pomona, had more terms describing students of other campuses than did schools that were more isolated, such as Swarthmore, American, and SPU. We believe that the close proximity of one school to another causes more interaction between the schools, intensifying the identity-building, both linguistic and otherwise, at these schools.
"The Slytherins of AU"
Labels can also be applied within campuses, breaking the student body into smaller groups, often by major. For example, Mara says that the business school students at American University are called “Cogods,” and they are considered to be “the slytherins of AU.” Pomona also labels students by major, although they do this largely by identifying the major by the name of the building it is housed in. For example, math and physics majors are referred to as “Millicans” while “Thatchers” are music students. This practice of labeling, including self-labeling, labeling students at other campus, and labeling students within a campus, is all related to the art of creating ingroups (and outgroups) with the help of linguistic identifiers.
Furthermore, campus identity can be created by shared lexical items and linguistic behaviors among the students that relate specifically to the campus and semiotic landscape of the college. Examples include the “swat swivel” (a phrase for looking around to make sure the person you are about to talk about is not directly behind you, practiced at Swarthmore), “spiblings” (fellow students from one’s Sponsor Group at Pomona), and the “Drunk Bus” (AU shuttle after 9:00 PM on weekends). Interestingly, many campus-specific lexical items are created and disseminated through Facebook meme pages, which can also be considered to be a part of the broader, semiotic landscape of colleges. Larger institutions like American University, for example, depend more on their meme pages to create cohesion and group identity than do smaller schools, such as the liberal arts colleges in our sample. However, there are active meme pages at nearly every college, and each plays an important role in the creation of group identity across a college campus.
Furthermore, campus identity can be created by shared lexical items and linguistic behaviors among the students that relate specifically to the campus and semiotic landscape of the college. Examples include the “swat swivel” (a phrase for looking around to make sure the person you are about to talk about is not directly behind you, practiced at Swarthmore), “spiblings” (fellow students from one’s Sponsor Group at Pomona), and the “Drunk Bus” (AU shuttle after 9:00 PM on weekends). Interestingly, many campus-specific lexical items are created and disseminated through Facebook meme pages, which can also be considered to be a part of the broader, semiotic landscape of colleges. Larger institutions like American University, for example, depend more on their meme pages to create cohesion and group identity than do smaller schools, such as the liberal arts colleges in our sample. However, there are active meme pages at nearly every college, and each plays an important role in the creation of group identity across a college campus.
Language is Part of Our Group Identity.
Our results illustrate the essential role of language in the creation of group identities on college campuses, and that the specifics of language use, especially labeling, vary based mostly on the type and size of the college, as well as its proximity to other schools. Pomona, Haverford, and Bryn Mawr, which are no more than ten minutes away from at least one other college, each have common lexical items primarily to define students of nearby schools. On the other hand, AU, SPU, and Swarthmore each have lexical items that are more internally focused than externally focused.
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