Jamie A. Thomas
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#languagestory blog

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

Russia in Your Meme

12/22/2017

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by Erick Gutierrez

Erick is a junior linguistics major at Swarthmore College.
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Haverbros, Mawrters, Scripsies, and SPUdents

12/22/2017

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by Juhyae Kim and Anya Slepyan
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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...

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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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You Are How You Speak

12/19/2017

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by Melanie Ackerman & Emily Williams 
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When asked to investigate instances of language diversity on our college campuses as an assignment for an Introduction to Linguistics course, we conducted surveys to explore how knowledge of a secondary language affects one’s primary mode of speech. We compiled survey responses regarding Swarthmore College students’ acquisition of new languages with responses from members of the Bryn Mawr College athletics department about the differences in their slang and terminology across varying sports and jobs. Our findings reflect how influential learning a second language or being part of a secondary speech community can be in forming a better understanding of a primary language or speech community.


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Learning English While Albanian in the U.S.

12/19/2017

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by Jacob Clark

Jacob is a freshman at Swarthmore College. Watch his video on the complexities of language ideology here.

What's Different About Growing Up Albanian in the U.S.?

Jacob's interview of Albanian-speaker.
For my Sociolinguistics (LING 025) final project, I’ve been gathering data on the language ideologies (language ideology being defined as the set of beliefs one has about languages they have access to/knowledge on) of native Albanian speakers who also speak English. I’ve been interested to see if any strong differences in language ideologies occur due to different language upbringings.

  • My first informant was Irisa. Growing up in Albania, Irisa was only exposed to Albanian. Irisa and her family moved to the U.S. in 2008 when Irisa was 8 years old; this began Irisa's interactions with English.
  • My second informant was Erika, born in the United States as the daughter of Albanian immigrants. Erika was exposed to Albanian and English at the same time.

While interviewing Irisa, she mentioned that English and Albanian are divided in terms of where she makes use of either language. Albanian is the language Irisa uses the majority of the time: when she is with her family, when she is with Albanian friends, and even when she is thinking, the language is Albanian. Just as a reminder, Irisa began learning English when she was 8 years old and put into English-based schooling. For her, English is reserved for school and communicating with friends that are not Albanian-speaking. As she shared with me, “I have a hard time expressing myself in contexts outside of school.” 


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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.

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