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Category: Linguistics
Lexiculture (word list + class project)
Once again this year, my students in my undergraduate Language & Culture class will be writing original research papers on the history of individual English words. I’m teaching online but the project is completely portable to that format. I’ve always found this to be a great way to introduce students to doing their own research on sociolinguistic / social-historical / lexicographical topics, and this year’s list of words for them to choose from is (he says not-so-humbly) pretty awesome. What are your favorites?
- all in
- all out
- Amerindian
- amp up
- anymore
- baloney
- bejesus
- bespoke
- booty
- brain trust
- bruschetta
- burnout
- business end
- buzzkill
- call dibs
- car phone
- card-carrying
- centric
- challenged
- childfree
- coed
- columbused
- conversate
- deja vu
- disinterested
- doggone
- donut
- drama queen
- druthers
- endgame
- fast forward
- finalize
- frenemy
- get-go
- goner
- grassroots
- halfsies
- hardcore
- hardwired
- has-been
- hiccough
- highfalutin
- hyphenated
- impersonator
- impostor
- Information Superhighway
- jailbait
- jinx
- jock
- Judeo-Christian
- kewl
- lavender
- lit
- majorly
- man cave
- Mohammedan
- moonshot
- next-level
- NSFW
- nth
- nuke
- nutjob
- octoroon
- often
- outro
- peopling
- phase out
- porridge
- pronto
- pussyfoot
- rando
- realtime
- reboot
- recap
- restroom
- runner-up
- shoo-in
- shout out
- slider
- snuck
- stalemate
- stalker
- stat
- suntan lotion
- suplex
- swiff
- tailgate
- tardy
- thunk
- tinfoil hat
- touchless
- trump
- underprivileged
- upside the head
- upsize
- vibe
- wannabe
- white trash
- whodunit
- whole nother
- widget
- workshop
- yea big
Back from the dead?
Welcome to the latest and perhaps the last in a series of self-flagellatory blog posts in the post-blog era of Glossographia, apologizing for a lack of content here! Ahhh … but this time I have lots of exciting things to come in the next few months.
Most notably I want to draw your attention to my forthcoming book, Reckonings: Numerals, Cognition, and History, coming out in late fall from MIT Press: Reckonings: Numerals, Cognition, and History. Lots of new publications and content and such to be coming out this fall.
In general, though, to keep up to date on whatever doings are transpiring, follow me on Twitter @schrisomalis where I will surely post more regularly than here.
Language and Societies abstracts, vol. 11 (2019)
The abstracts below are summaries of papers by junior scholars from the 2019 edition of my course, Language and Societies, posted at the course blog of the same name. The authors are undergraduate and graduate students in anthropology and linguistics at Wayne State University. Comments and questions are extremely welcome, especially at this critical juncture over the next two weeks, when the authors are making final revisions to their papers.
Kate Blatchford: Redefining Urban Space: Language in the City Beautiful Movement
Dina Charara: Islamophobic Discourse Beneath the Façade of Liberalism and Atheism
Amanda Diaz: To stage manage or not to stage manage
Sam M: Comparing nineteenth century literature portrayals of AAVE by black and white authors
Justin Mazzola: A Ghost of a Tale: Discerning Evidentiality Among Ghost Narratives on Reddit
Shannon Mckeown: Fake News, Crooked Hillary, and Bad People: A Linguistic Analysis of Donald Trump’s Twitter Insults
Jahnavi Narkar: The Promise of Fairness: A Linguistic Analysis of Skin Lightening Advertisements in India
Jennifer Reed: Linguistic Landscape of Japanese in Novi
Zachariah Shorufi: The linguistic legacy of British colonization in Iraq
Tabitha Trembley: The Dichotomy of Gender in Relation to Honor as Shown in the Language of Irish Fairy Tales and Folktales Printed After 1800
Michael T. Vollbach: Historical Influences on the Odawa Language
Li Zhang: Navigating internet censorship in China
Language and Societies abstracts, vol. 10 (2018)
The abstracts below are summaries of papers by junior scholars from the 2018 edition of my course, Language and Societies, posted at the course blog of the same name. The authors are undergraduate and graduate students in anthropology and linguistics at Wayne State University. Comments and questions are extremely welcome, especially at this critical juncture over the next two weeks, when the authors are making final revisions to their papers.
Yen-ting Chang: “Found My Best Self”: Women’s Fitness and Body Transformation Discourse
Asa Choate: French Naming Practice of Assimilating English-based Internet Terminology
Grace Fusani: Languages in Dreams: A Look into the Influencers of Bilinguals & L2 Learners in the Dreamworld
Ashley Johnson: Language, gender, and uncertainty in writing about sex identification in Maya bioarchaeology
Robert McCallum: Tensions, Power and Words: The Use of Authoritative Brand Identity Language on Ad Agency Websites
Andrew McKinney: Sorrow, shame, and lament in Irish folk lyrics
Kelsey McKoy: The Interpretation of African American Vernacular English in Museums
Craig Meiners: Metaphors in Branding and Design of Professional Basketball Players’ Shoes
Carly Slank: Dogespeak: a Heckin Good Descriptive and Contextual Analysis
Samantha Spolarich: The magical discourse of Harry Potter: how spells came to be
Jami Van Alstine: Voice in postcards related to the woman’s suffrage movement in the United States in the early 20th century
Anna Zabicka: “Rigvir, Anyone?”: A Discourse Analysis Of Oncolytic Virotherapy Medication Websites
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