Phonology (LINGUISTICS) with Nicole Holliday — Encore Presentation

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Oh hello, it's all dad word and I am sick as hell. It is Monday, the Monday after Thanksgiving twenty nineteen, and I had a new episode for y'all, And then I got a little sidetracked by sweating and shivering and holding my head and asking my pillow.

Why why? Why me? Why why?

I'm a human being? So I told myself I would take it easy this week and give you all an Encore presentation. There's so much people who have not heard this episode, So if you happen to sleep on it last summer when it first went up, get into it. Now this ology doesn't roll off the tongue easily, but it's all about tongues and dialects and the way that we hear language. It is so good. So enjoy this week's episode. I'll be back next week with a brand

Oh hi, Hi, it's your weird coworker, the one who brings in lemons from their tree but also sometimes microwaves fish alley board for another episode of oologies.

Okay, so guess I'm dare right now. I'm using a big glob of fat in nerves that I keep in a bone bowl behind my eyes to make noises to represent my thoughts, and then I beam those grunts to a satellite using invisible data transmission, and then your nervy fat glob is like, hmm, totally yeah, I get it. So my brain to your brain. It's magic, people. So today we're gonna be speaking about speaking. I'm pumped as

All right.

I'm parking in some parking lot. It doesn't say I can't, so I'm doing it Friday afternoon and holiday weekends. I have to pee so fucking bad. Two hours in the car. I am over an hour late to this interview. This doctor is like, hmm, it's waiting in her office for me on a holiday weekends.

Okay, heavy breathing.

S. Building is empty, Doctor Holiday. I'm already rolling. I'm like ready to go.

Why how are you good? How are you? I'm so sorry? That you had such a traffic.

O. My god, this is so embarrassing.

I'm just so.

I was like, I started running it in the car. I was like, I'm going to roll in there. I'm so excited to talk. I'm glad you made it.

I'm sorry the traffic.

No, it's me. I should have left yesterday. I should have left in camp. We should have.

Thought about the fact that it was Friday.

We really didn't even think about that or the holiday weekend. And I was like, oh, my gosh. So, first off, so now you are a linguistics professor here now, right, Yes, I am. Now you've been a linguistics professor here pretty recently, right.

This is I Actually I was a post doc for one year here and then I just finished my first year as faculty, so like a baby professor.

That's so exciting.

Yeah.

Now, I understand that you started studying Spanish in high school, right. Can you tell me a little bit about when you started becoming so interested in language.

Yeah.

So I was always a kid that was like super interested in maps and geography, and then I think when I was in fifth grade, we had like three weeks.

Of French or something, and I was like this is so cool.

But like you know, in the US, kids don't really learn second languages. So it wasn't until you know, I get to high school, basically eighth grade when I started taking Spanish, and I had was a kid that was good at school, but I wasn't like super good at anything in particular until we started doing Spanish, and it was like, oh, this is the easiest thing for me, Like this must be the thing.

Side note, I'm learning Spanish on dual Lingo in case anyone wants to be my friend on it. I'm not very good at it, which.

Means I cheated and made the computer say this.

So when I went to college, I was like, I'm just gonna study a bunch of languages. I'm gonna study Spanish and Arabic and whatever. So I got into it and I was studying Arabic and it was harder than Spanish.

Obviously for an English speaker.

Quick question, how much harder is Arabic than English? I was curious from everything I just read about it. It is hella fucking hard. So though there are twenty eight characters in the Arabic alphabet, the vowels are totally left out or represented as these wee little dots and swishes around the consonants. So in one study, neuropsychologists found that the left hemisphere of the brain, which handles like linear reasoning like grammar, tends to analyze these intricate little letter

Somebody suggested my friend's dad suggested I should take Introduction to linguistics, thought I would like it, and I took it, and I got to day one and I was like, yeah, this is the thing. Like, it was never the languages. It was like the theory beneath.

The languages that I was interested in.

But I didn't really have a way to talk about that, because who learns about linguistics in high school, right, Like almost no one, zero people.

Yeah, it's never It's not something that's thought of, even though it's something that we do all day every day.

Yeah.

And the way that we teach this kind of anything allied, right is like we teach grammar, which everyone hates because we teach it so poorly and it's so prescriptive. There's so many rules and so many limitations, and so people are just like, oh, sentence structure. I want to run away from that. So even when people do hear about linguistics, they're like, oh, you're just diagramming sentences. It must be horrible.

I'm like, no, I don't do that at all. I'm actually horrible at that.

Now tell me what about it did you love so much? Is it because you love communication? Is it because you love how thought is shaped by language?

Yeah?

So I like the structure.

So some one of my students last semester describe linguistics as like language plus math.

So there's a lot of there's a lot.

Of like procedure and theory and like ways that you go We do problem sets right when we're teaching students, so there's like a very orderly way about going about analyzing this thing that doesn't necessarily seem really like rule governed to us. Just as people who are walking around speaking you don't think about like all of the things that you have to know in your mind sort of cognitively to be able to use your first or second language,

And they laugh?

Right, And I said, why is it funny? They're like, oh, it's like not appropriate. I'm like, but why do you know? Like why, like you know all these social things that make you know that this is not like a thing that you can do right, right, but nobody ever taught you that.

Do you ask them why? Do you ask them their opinions on why was that not appropriate? Like what are what are some of the responses that they.

Get, right, So they get well, it's not the theme of the class, right, Okay, so they know what class they're in. It's not what they would expect from me as a professor to like come in and talk about hip hop. I guess right, So all of these and also like it's a formal setting, right, We're in a classroom, so it's like not the type of thing that you expect here from a professor in a classroom. So that's why it's comical, right, because all of these things are unexpected.

They expect me to come in and say today, class, we're can I do you know? Whatever they need?

And also it's weird because it's the first thing like we don't make statements apropos of nothing usually, and when we do, we apologize like, oh, sorry, I was just thinking about right, we have to kind of couch.

It, right, And then it does a discussion follow of who the greatest rapper of all time really is? And do you ever settle on that.

No, No, they have a lot of opinions. People used to say Nas, but he's like on the Blacklist now.

So it's really okay, it's not good. Okay, so perhaps not Nas. Yeah, okay, I had to look this up. I was like, huh. So Nas was married to Kalise, a hip hop artist and a chef, two talents which blended beautifully in one of her hits that we've all sang despite our personal lactose intolerances.

Shake brings all the voice they got.

So Nas and Caalise divorced in two thousand and nine, but just a few months ago she divulged that they had a terrible physically and mentally abusive relationship. So Na's not good. So who is the greatest rapper? I was like, I gotta know what is the consensus? So I did some digging and I got lost down to very deep tunnel of opinion, an abyss of thoughts, and a lot of people say Kendrick Lamar. And then I found a list on MSN of the top twenty rappers of all times.

Like?

Essentially, steer your boat.

I think I have an unusual story because I remember the moment when I figured out my dissertation topic, and it was when I was in college. I wasn't even I think I had just decided on my linguistics major, and I was.

I grew up in Ohio.

I was undergrad at Ohio State, and I had been in Peru studying abroad. I was initially kind of interested in the language rights of indigenous people in India and South America, and I do some research on that too, like Peru and Bolivia.

So i'd come back.

But I started to have all these thoughts about like language rights in the United States, right, like who gets discriminated against right, and particularly like being black, thinking about the ways in which that kind of contributes to racism. So I came back and I wanted to This was two thousand and eight, and I wanted to volunteer in the Obama campaign. So I walked to the Obama field office and they told me to like sit down, and

Volunteers to go knock out some doors.

And I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa whoa. And I said, somebody has to like know about this, like there has to I need to read about it, like, because it just was so clear to.

Me, right, what a moment. And also in terms of the Obama campaign, I think a lot of people observe that Obama is really dead with that as well, Right, does that click for you as well?

Yeah?

And I have maybe not exactly at that point, but I have a few papers about Obama because Obama is also one of my research interests.

So I'm just casually in a hotel room perusing doctor Nicole Holidays one hundred and eighty five page PhD dissertation I found online. I was super tickled to see the forty fourth president mentioned right in the opening paragraph. She notes up top that Barack Obama is a masterful code

I am, you know, sort of very interested in this idea of what it means to sound black, sort of from the perspective of something that you can perform as part of your identity, but also when people make that judgment, like what are they hearing? And so a lot of the work that I do, sort of the quantitative work that I do, looks at what people are attuned to when they're making those kind of social judgments about race.

And what did you what conclusions did you come to? If someone asks you in a nutshell, Explain your work, Explain your findings.

Where do you start?

Yeah, so I study intonation. So it's not exactly anology.

Sorry, international phonology.

Total international phonology is anology. We'll use that one. And so a lot of times when I talk to just people that don't know as much about linguistics, when I ask them like, oh, what do you think makes somebody your ability to judge somebody black? If they if you can't see them, like, why would you make that judgment? And they usually say they think about the grammar, and you know, there's a stereotype like vill say that it's

Much about the voice.

What it is about the voice and the tone and the way that the pitch of the voice goes up and down, this kind of movement that causes this kind of judgment. So that is primarily what my research focus is on.

Really, So is it so there? I imagine there's two different ways of looking at it. It's the actual physiology of why people's voices sound a certain way, the actual voice box, and then it's also how how much it's used, right, So how do you separate that when you are studying?

So the social things are kind of more what we're interested in, right, So there's always going to be individual level variation, and our minds are really good at that. Like when we hear a child and an adult say the same thing, we can process the same information even though they're vastly different sizes. Right, Their vocal tract is actually similar shape, but the scale is really different.

So what I'm.

Interested in is the ways in which these patterns are socialized. So one thing, for example, like if we look at pitch just the numbers don't matter. But like, the average man in the United States has a pitch that's like around between one hundred and one hundred and fifty hertz, and the average woman has one that's between like two hundred and two hundred and fifty herts. But only half of that variation can be explained by physiology.

Really, and what's really.

Shocking is like, if you look at kids like four year olds, right, four year old boys and four year old girls, their vocal tract is physiologically the same, right before puberty.

They have the same sort.

Of voice, and they're the same size too, Right, the girls have already learned been socialized into raising their voice and the boys have already been socialized into lowering it. Even though there's no physiological differences, you can tell the difference between a four year old boy and a four year old girl because they've already been socialized into it.

Oh my gosh. So intonations are picked up socially. Of course, the very purpose of language is to communicate within a social system, and evidently younger folks and women tend to be the drivers of linguistic trends. So like uptalk started in California, but it's now spread geographically and to men, although they don't like to admit it, And the purpose it may serve conversationally is to convey empathy, just to

You did a really good vocal fry.

Yeah, happens when we have creaky voice or vocal fry is our vocal folds.

We don't call it.

They're not actually chords or yeah, they're folds. So they kind of vibrate together, and they vibrate together periodically, sort of like a wave. Right, But when we do creaky voice, they vibrate a periodically, and so what happens is the pitch actually drops out, so we get to the bottom of our range when we do that. And lots of languages. Some languages use creaky voice to do actual like grammatical

So we get kind of a bad rap for it.

Yeah, true, and we shouldn't anyway.

It's just like a way of moving your vocal folds like that doesn't mean that you're more or less intelligent, all right?

Quick aside to address what might be driving the increased prevalence for vocal fry the last few decades, So it may be a way for women to lower the register of their voice, as lower voices are perceived to be more authoritative. So given that women weren't allowed to wear pants on the Senate floor into like the nineteen nineties, we're just we're doing what we can. We're pulling out all the stops. It's like, what do we need to

Yeah, for sure.

So there's it's very complicated, but basically we language is like social contagion, So we always talk like the people that we talk to.

You might have noticed this, like people will.

Say this to me, like, oh, I went to the South, and like, now I sound like the people in this when I'm in the South, I sound like the people in the South. Yes, yes, right, because we do. Actually, this is a thing called speech accommodation theory. We do actually accommodate to the people around us. We converge towards them if we like them. If we don't like them, we diverge away from them.

No way.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So like it's contagious, right, So as you see communities in contact with each other that maybe weren't before, like, they're going to start to converge and diverge based on the way that people those communities interact with each other. So one example of this is thinking about like the California like the creaky voice thing that you're saying. People will talk about like the Valley Girl thing as aspirational, particularly in the eighties.

Like oh my God, like totally ps. I just went into the wayback machine and I listened to portions of this song, which is supposed to be comedic, but it's incredibly viciously homophobic, and it made me very, very sad. And it also made me reflect on how important social progress and empathy and tolerance are and that it's a battle worth fighting to have a more loving society. Anyway, so you.

Had these girls in the Midwest that were like trying to approximate a California identity because they like it.

So they started to.

Sound like California because they were It was a style that was now available to them, right, because they could see it, they could hear it. People were traveling more, they were interacting more, and so they started to change the style.

I imagine that must be true too, for like transcontinental like the old movie boys, like that was an aspirational kind of dialect as well. Right, yeah, it was.

I mean it's really funny because no one ever really.

Talked that way, right, it was nobody's like first dialect. But it is definitely like a st It's funny when they were talking about Kevin Spacey's character on House of Cards. He has this kind of like weird, aspirational Old South thing that nobody really sounds like, but it's an idea of what somebody like that is supposed to sound like.

And so when you're looking at this, because I know that you've you've obviously studied a lot of people doing this, do you find that there might be kind of aspirational tones depending on who they're talking to. I started telling Nicole a story I had heard the day before from

Yeah, so we all have you know, everybody has styles, right, So you're not going to talk to your doctor and your priest and your mom and your best friend the same way, right, right?

Hey Mom, Hey Dad? Sorry I say that F word on this podcast Sometimes I know it's uncomfortable for you.

But for some people that have to negotiate moving in between this, like mainstream and not mainstream, or like these different racialized groups, communities, whatever, the difference can be sort of more contrastive. So I'm presently working on a project with Laurence Squire's who she teaches English at Ohio State, and we've been interviewing black students there about their experiences

It's interesting how many layers of adaptability you have to have in your speech every day. Was on the phone with someone at a bank today and my friend was in the room, and I was so self conscious because the way I was speaking to this banker was like, yeah, fantastic, I'll go ahead and compile the profit and law statement for my es corp. And then I'll circle back and

Yeah, it's really hard.

So one of the things that I teach a lot is about African American English and linguistic discrimination. So you know, Black children are much more likely to be labeled as learning disabled and reading and one of the reasons for that that is not that they're learning disabled, but the materials are not designed for them.

They're designed for.

Middle class white kids who speak standard some kind of approximation of a standard English. So it's not that black children can't read, it's that when they are evaluated by white teachers in a system designed for middle class white kids, of course they're not going to perform as well.

It's not made for them.

Yeah, So a lot of the movements from teachers sort of especially back in the day, where okay, well we need to transition them away from this, we need to teach them standard English. And it's still a controversy because everybody knows, like, if you want to get more economic success, like you do need to command standard English. But you're asking a lot of those kids, right, So the white kids get to speak the same way at home and at school, and now all the black kids have to command two varieties.

One for home and one for school.

And by the way, the one that they speak at home is constantly devalued every other place in their life. You know.

So I have students ask me this.

Sometimes they're like, well, if African American English is so stigmatized, why does the community hold on to it, Like, why hasn't the language just died and I'm like, because it means something, right, because it establishes solidarity, because it establishes in group, because it tells a historical narrative of the history of black people in the United States. Like, it's not something that people really want to get rid of, as much as they know that it's stigmatized.

Do you find historically that it has roots or it has connections from a tonal level closer to Southern American English?

Yeah, So African American English started in the South. So there's actually a lot of similarities between Southern white and Southern black varieties.

It is harder for listeners. People have done studies on this.

It's harder for listeners to tell the difference between rural black people and rural white people.

In the South. Really yeah, so, and it's.

Because they're kind of more similar, but also because people have these stereotyped expectations going in, like the if you sound roal, it's white, yeah, right, even though there's lots of real black people.

Rightt you picture a farmer and overalls who's like an old white guy with a straw hat or something.

Yes, exactly, like the ideas that people have going in and so yeah, like all of the black people in the United States were originally brought to this out because we were enslaved, right.

So side note, if you're like I could become better educated on the history of American slavery, which I'll wager many Americans fit this category. There are so many good books and resources. There's one HBO documentary, Readings from the Slave Narratives, which features transcripts of first person accounts and they're read by actors like Samuel Jackson and Angela Bassett and Don Cheedle and Oprah Winfrey. It's on YouTube, just there for you, waiting to be watched.

We only really got out of the South in big numbers in the last hundred years, right, with great migration, and even then only got out of sort of very dramatic segregated ethnic enclaves even more recently than that. And you could argue that we're not even out of them, right because like, look at whatghborhoods look like, not diverse, and so for that reason, it actually has the effect of keeping the language more insulated, right, because you talk

Right right exactly.

So it's it's kind of an interesting like you can look at the language evolution as like the rings of a.

Tree see the Dendrology episode on trees that.

Tell the like you cut the tree open and you can see like every layer of the history. Like you can see that in the language too.

Wow.

I'm so curious what you think of how, especially with social media, how social media has changed, uh maybe spread or appropriated African American English, because I feel like with There's I hear that there's Black Twitter is a different thing. If you have not heard of black Twitter, by the way, it has its own Wikipedia page, and to paraphrase that, it's a cultural identity focused on issues and experience of

Yeah, it's really interesting. So there is this thing that's like online imagined Black English. So there is a way that black people, like on Black Twitter for example, communicate their norms of.

The community, like just with any community.

But also there is a way in which like that is appropriated by the white gaze.

So like what people think, people think is going on.

And it's really funny because whenever someone makes the arguing like go, African American English is just poor grammar, I try to explain to them that they don't understand the grammar. Those people if you ask them like okay, well what does it sound like, like make a sentence for me, they will always be wrong.

Because they don't understand the ramadical rule.

And so like you know, people that are on black Twitter, like in the community or whatever can tell when when it's a parody, because people will break rules that they don't know about.

Oh tell me everything.

Yeah, So like it's even hard for me to do.

But there's there's a thing in African American English it's optional called zero copula. So if you think about like Kanye whatever like that that ishkra right, you don't need an is.

There, and that's fine, but you can't just do that with every subject.

Like you can do it with a third singular like that, but you can't really do it with a first person. So you can't say like ikray. When you get white people like mocking this, they'll say things like ikra, and you're like, no, no one, no speaker of African American English would ever say that.

I was curious about people imitating African American language grammar, and sure enough I found a tweet posted seven hours ago about someone homesteading chickens with the words I cray. Now. The user, according to her bio, is a blonde, holistic doula from Michigan who gardens. So yeah, Nicole kind of nailed it. I'll see it appropriated and I'll cringe a bit. I guess, what are the differences between written and spoken African American English?

Yeah, it's hard, right, So, actually, white people have been appropriating African American English since forever, right, So, like the word cool comes from African American English, like over one hundred years ago, right.

So I started reading up on this topic and I came across an Oxford Dictionaries blog titled quote when is lexical innovation cultural appropriation? It was a fascinating read and it was addressing the use of words like shade and yes and woke. And I scrolled down to see, like who wrote this amazing piece, and the guest blogger was doctor Nicole Holiday. Of course she is the coolest.

I mean, we're cooler, so they take things her mess is fine.

I meaned in a certain way, right, but I mean it's also a lot of pressure to always be cool by so you know, this is a well established, like long term trend. It's interesting with the Internet because you can't see people or hear them in the same way, so you can't you don't actually know if the speaker is black. Sometimes, especially on Twitter, right, you read a tweet and you're like, who.

Is that from?

And you have to do like a deep investigation into like are they black? I don't know, because is it appropriate for them to like I have.

This problem on Twitter?

Right?

Yeah.

So that's one way in which social media is like really throwing people for a loop because you can't you can't contextualize.

People online the way that you can in real life.

Or at least make educated guesses about them the way

But teenagers don't have that. And all of this stuff.

On the internet is jaw is driven by young people, right, So there is this kind of freshness, this coolness that gets adapted. But I do think that, you know, just like with every other kind of appropriation, people in the community get frustrated, particularly with people using things wrong. So I was talking to a reporter from NPR a couple weeks ago. I don't know she ever ended up writing this but she was talking about thirst trap okay, and

Right.

Also just see Instagram in general.

You could have a whole Instagram account that's a thirst job, I guess. But what she was saying is like somebody had written a thing about James Comy in the interview that he was giving and was like, James Comy is a thirst chap right now, because he was like seeking attention for in these interviews. Ooh, it's really transformed meaning. And as a linguist, it's funny because I'm like, well, words are allowed to change meaning, like especially online they change meeting really quickly.

Right.

But also like that very clearly came like from African American English, like from you know, black Twitter, black communities online, and now you've just ruined.

It, right, I think is do you think urban dictionary ruins all of the good, like all of the good kind of like insular terminology, I.

Mean by the time it gets to urban dictionary, people aren't using it though, Like that's the thing. So we're thinking about this as sort of as adults, like if you have to look it up in urban dictionary, like it's already over.

Oh yeah right yeah. If you're ever on urban dictionary, which I have been, it's like you, there's nothing more embarrassing being like than taking your your for me, like my old white ass to urban dictionary, be like what does this mean? Bye the bye? I looked up Urban Dictionaries history and it was created by some white guys and they don't moderate super racist and sexist stuff on there,

Yeah, And it's like it's hard for me because like, first of all, I'm a linguistics professor, but I'm also pretty young and black, so I'm like I'm cool, like I should know, right, and the students here say stuff to me that I'm like, oh my god, I have no idea, like like I have to look it up in Urban Dictionary and like, yeah, thirty years old in the world of slag is ancient. Yeah, like I haven't been qualified to speak on it in like seven or eight years probably.

Oh my god. And how has it changed since you started studying linguistics, because you at thirty, which is super young to have a PhD and be a professor, but you've been studying it for a number of years. Have you seen terminology change even in how we talk about it? I feel like ebonics was a word people used for a while, and I feel like that is not an okay word these days.

People will still use it, but it does seem like antiquated to me.

How is the conversation changing and how shouldn't we talk about it? Or how or what or what things are already ancient?

And yeah're sing Ebonics actually was a word invented in like sixties seventies, and.

It's actually a cool word.

It's ebony plus phonics, but linguists don't use it. We stopped using it like in the nineties because it had such a bad connotation. So now we say all African American English, right, which is not as much fun to say as a bonyx. It does give it sort of a more like ray. We have a scientific I think

We ask that of some kids but not others.

Yeah, right, I think definitely in the realm of education, teacher training, I've had met so many teachers that now have had some linguistic training, like in their master's degree or something like that, which obviously makes it more equitable for their black students in the classroom, and I mean

But those things are connected, right.

How does it? How should curriculum change?

Yeah, well it's hard at this sort of you know, fifth grade level. When we're talking about teaching kids to read.

I'm not qualified on that exactly.

But I think when we teach grammar quote unquote as such like in you know, middle school or whenever, fourth grade. Whenever people have that they should learn it as linguistics, like kids in other countries, like the when I studied abroad in Peru, like the Peruvian kids that I was studying with had learned some basic linguistic stuff when they were in elementary school. So one of the very first things that my students learn in day one is like,

Just to emphasize that again, variation is not a problem. Variation is a feature, and language, of course is elastic.

But we teach kids in school right now like this is proper English, everything else is bad. And by the way, not only is everything else bad, it's a sign of like a moral failing if somebody uses aint like Heaven forbid, right right, But then we're so hypocritical because then we go on Twitter and we say ain't for stylistic reasons and whatever. So I think we could be less dogmatic.

And if you had to break down the difference between grammar and linguistics in a nutshell for someone who is not not schooled in it, what is the difference.

So we talk about linguistics as descriptive rather than prescriptive. So sometimes like I'll go to a party or something and I'll tell people that I'm a linguist and they're like, oh my god, I have to watch my grammar around you. I'm like, actually, I am the person that you least need to watch your grammar around.

Because I'm not here to judge, Like I understand rach.

I aim you know, I've been socialized here just like everybody else. But I aim to be like more understanding of the variation that I encounter, rather than jumping to the conclusion like oh, somebody said, ain't like they must not be.

Educated, right.

That's the prescriptive thing, and that's the thing that we teach people, like, you know, you must follow this set of rules. Don't end a sentence with a preposition, which is like everyone does anyway, like one does.

We all do, and it's.

Weird when you don't it. Sometimes, I know that is a thing up with which I will not put like.

No, not and we're gonna look back and be like people spoke like that, like no one. I think we look back on on on ancient texts or and we look at it we're like this is so awkward. And so I mean, yeah, a language is elastic, so it's going to change and it changes as we use it.

But like, why can't that be okay?

Like why do we have these crusades about like, no, we have to preserve this, you know, like we're still spelling through th h R o U g H.

There is no reason for that.

No reason for it. It's true.

Yeah, don't even get me started.

So linguists are really interested in speech, but like, don't even get me started on writing, because like the writing system of English is at nightmare.

It's I imagine it makes it a harder, harder language to master as well.

Yeah, in terms of writing, right, So actually people think, oh English is so hard to learn. It depends on the language you're coming from. So your first language determines the difficulty of the second language, the relationship between the first and second, So sort of the farther away, the

Like that's a good point. Yeah, you see an e and an i in the same word. You don't know what's going on? Yeah? Yeah, And so are there any I always ask this of all the ologists, are there any anything in media that addresses what you do that you really like or you really think? Missus the mark, I always think about that Key and Peel sketch, one of the first Key and Pel sketches I ever saw. I was like, oh my god.

Is it when they're on the phone and past each other?

Yeah? Okay, So for everybody listening out there, yeah, I teach with Key and Peel a lot because I'm interested in biracial people and they're.

Just so on the market.

Right, So this is this is a skit in which Key is like on one side of a street and Peels on the other, and they're like walking towards each other about to pass each other, and each of them is on the phone and they don't know each other.

Because you're my wife and you love the theater and it's your birthday.

Great, and they're talking in a very sort of standard way like yes, okay, I'm gonna go to Whole Foods later. Like each of them is talking like this, and as they get closer, they speak more African American English.

So then he's like.

The orchestra is already filled up, but they do have seats that are still left in the dress circle.

So if you want to me to get them theater tickets right now, we'll do a right stuff dog about five minutes a work. Yeah, okay, yeah cool.

No, they all go singers, they all go singer song.

No, man, I'm about I'm telling you man, I'm about to cross the study.

I think Peele gets to the other side, he's like, oh my gosh, Christian, I almost totally just got mugged right now.

Oh so they were so standard and then they felt this need to like perform African American English when they passed each other. But then he bought into like all of these white ideologies, like at the it's crazy.

Are there any questions that you cringe when you get asked in what you do, like.

How many languages do you speak? Never ask a linguist how many languages do you speak?

Really you're like a few though, to be fair.

I know, but it's like not important, like I could, you know, sometimes I joke with people like zero, Like, clearly, English is my first language, and I studied Spanish.

For a long time.

I have to agree in Spanish, and I studied Bolivian Quechua for a while, in Arabic for a while, but I don't speak super well.

Right, So in asking Nicole her least favorite question, I asked Nicole her least favorite question. I am the worst.

I know a lot of things about a lot of languages, but that's not what linguists do. Like sometimes people think we just go around collecting languages like their stamps or something. Yeah, and like we don't, Like we care a lot about the structure of the thing. And I'm associate linguist by training, and so like I care a lot about the people, right, I care about the language and as much as I need to understand it to be able to understand what's

You're like, don't don't get subway directions from them?

Yeah, no, don't do it.

So I note if you ever go to Paris, two things, let old uncle Ali help you out. Don't wear athletic sneakers unless you are actively participating in a triathlon. Also, just learn how to apologize in French. It's literally the most useful linguistic tool. To have in your pocket, just groveling, ashamed to be American ness, and then everyone's so nice to you. They're like, oh, you're cute. You are like a sad dog. And do you find yourself from on

Yeah, I can't even like control it. It's hard to It takes a lot of cognitive load to be able to understand what you're doing at the same time as you're doing it. So when I interview people, they're like, yeah, I code switch, And I'm like, what do you change? And they're like, I don't know. And I feel the same way, Like I know the things that people change,

But to say exactly what.

It is, like, yes, it's in the intonation probably, but I can't even really tell.

You what is.

And I normally I run through listener questions, but because traffic, I'm going to run through the most popular one I got.

Yeah, we have ten minutes.

Good, But before we you get to your Patreon questions, we're going to hear a little bit about sponsors who make it possible for us to donate to a different organization or charity each week. We didn't get to do this the first time around with Nicole Holidays. So I texted her this morning and I said, Hey, we get to donate to a charity. What do you choose? And she said awesome, and she chose Initiate Justice. Initiate Justice dot org is an organization that partners community members and

And that is Initiate Justice dot org.

So a donation went to them this week thanks to sponsors that you might hear about right now get value.

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Okay, back to your questions. I think the most popular question I got because we had a lot of questions, but is what happens to me when my accent comes out when I'm drunk? What is going on there?

I love that as a question. That's the most popular question. Yeah, what happens when you're drunk? A couple things. There's some lowered.

Inhibitions that happen with alcohol. Right, So say that.

You are a speaker of a stigmatized variety, like you are from the South and you sound southern, and you are in California. You probably do some work in your mind, maybe not even consciously, to sound less Southern, because you get tired of people either making fun of you or

Whatever, I'm from the South, and I'm just gonna do.

It, right, I am this way with chancing and karaoke. But it's not all mental.

There's another thing, sort of physiologically, right, So alcohol can cause sort of a loosening of some of the pieces of your vocal check. So that's why you get sword speech, right, You lose some control. So if your speech is kind of slurring or something like that because you're really drunk, then you'll sound different.

I tried to find a good movie clip with a drunk Southerner here. But I just started going down rabbit holes of drunk people like barfing on YouTube and started making me sad. Anyway, I wanted to ask her so many more questions, but she had a heart out and la Memorial Day traffic is the Devil's evening board game. And I'm so sorry. What do you think? My last two questions are always the thing that you hate the most about your job? What do you hate about it?

Yeah, it's really hard to be an expert on language because language is a thing that everybody has, right, So if I was like a geologist, I always dream of like my alternate world in which I'm a geologist and I study rocks and people leave me alone.

They don't ask me how many rocks I have from how many language speaking?

But people assume that you're an expert, right, They're like, oh, you know way more about rocks than me. So like when you come across rocks in the wild, they're like, hey, geologists, tell me about this rock, and you're like, cool, I will because I'm an expert. When you're a linguist, everyone wants to tell you about the thing that you're wrong about.

And I'm like, I am actually an expert in this thing.

And what's maddening is every native speaker is an expert about their language. Like, people know things about language that I don't know. But I do have some scientrific training that, you know. I wish people would like give me credit for. So I have had people like straight fight me when I say, like, African American English is rule governed.

They're like, no, it's just bad grammar. I'm like, I have a PhD. O my god, and so that is the thing.

And you to get that PhD that must have required so much data collection? And did you have to do sentence structuring? I mean did you did you have to come out with formulas?

Yeah?

So I spent five years in grad school, which is not even that many comparatively.

Yeah.

Side note, average time to get a PhD. Looked it up eight point two years. Now, the average length of an American marriage eight point two years. So someone please write a dissertation on how long a person can withstand something difficult yet illuminating.

And I had to study every aspect of linguistic analysis, So like I study tone and social factors, but like I had to study the way that sounds are put together, the way that words are put together, the way that sentences are put together, like meaning in a logic theory.

Kind of context.

Like, I just study so many things about the nature of language that I don't necessarily use every day now except for what I'm teaching, but also just thinking really deeply about the nature of sound, which is the thing that I do, and the nature of like how language works to do social things, like we use it to accomplish social things.

Yeah. True.

So even if you.

Know it's not necessarily that, like having the PhD is the big thing. The thing is that I've spent like years and years reading and thinking and talking and writing about these things, so I feel, you know, somewhat qualified to speak on them.

It's great that you're talking about talking talking.

Yeah, talking about how we do is talk about talking.

And then what's your favorite thing about it? What just like gives you butterflies?

I really like teaching students. So you know, I teach in a liberal arts college and it's undergrads, and people are like oh, you don't want grad students and like, crad students are a pain. Have you ever met a grad student? I was the worst grad student. I don't

Just seeing like light bulbs go off, like illuminating, right, so exciting because that's you've had so many light bulb moments like that coming to do what you do, Yeah, oh my gosh. And then is there anything you think people who are more curious about this, like anywhere to see your writing or any any resources you think people should look down, anything people should do or be more aware of, because I could sit here and ask you questions for ten hours, like I'm so pissed at traffic

Yeah, So I will say if you like podcasts, which you might, there's one that's called Enthusiasm.

It's really good.

It's got a lot of sort of introductory topics on linguistics.

There's a few language podcasts.

There's also one Lexicon Valley, which is hosted by John mccorder at Columbia Universities linguistics professor.

So I'll put links to those on my website ali war dot com slash ologies, as well as links to some books Nicole recommends about linguistics and discrimination.

I recommend a book called English with an Accent by Rosina Lippy Green a lot about sort of language and social social issues and social justice.

I teach with it in my linguistic discrimination class.

Cool. But there's a lot of good stuff out there. So those are some beginning recommendations and.

Where can people find you.

I'm on Twitter, regular Twitter and black Twitter, both twitters. I'm mixed linguist on social media, and i like to respond to inquiries from you know people, so get at me on the interwebs.

I guess cool and well awesome, We'll get you out of here. Thank you so much, welcome.

It is really fun.

Oh my god. So to continue learning about and exploring intonational phonology, you can look into doctor Nicole Holiday's work. She's just brilliant and I want her to give like fifty ted talks. And for links to books and documentaries that we talked about, you can go to aliward dot com slash ologies. I'll put a bunch of links there. You can also join up in the Ologies podcast Facebook group. And thank you to my dear sisters Hannah Liippo and

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