London Language

Not 'Missing' Women Players (Or 'Mrsing' Them)

BBC - why has Wimbledon dropped 'Miss'?

I just read about this change at Wimbledon which apparently brings the referential 'etiquette' for women players in line with men. I hadn't realised that men were no longer 'Mr', but I find the fact that women were being 'missed' and 'mrsed' while men weren't being 'mistered' far more surprising than this change.

I'm also confused by the news that umpires still say Miss or Mrs and no mention of whether they call the men 'Mr'.

Billy

MA Creative Writing

 Our colleagues at Middlesex just launched a new MA in Creative Writing

Billy

Latest News on Linguistics at Sussex

Here's the latest news from the Save Linguistics @ Sussex facebook page:

. . . . .

To all Sussex Linguistics supporters,

Today, University Senate, the highest academic decision making body within the University, met and discussed Linguistics. Even after they had agreed to put it on the agenda, USSU and staff had to fight to make sure it got discussed and that staff were briefed.

For the first time since the decision was announced, a full and comprehensive rationale with statistics and evidence was given, information that had been never made available even after constant requests for it. Senate members in the face of this felt they had no choice but to accept the University's rationale, however this wasn't the end of the discussion.

Senoir managements actions in handling the situation were widely criticised by academics, staff and students, lining up to pick apart the rationale they gave. From the lack of scrutiny, no consultation and no meeting minutes to refusing to talk with students and the resulting escalation of the situation, senate members openly voiced their anger. The committee were particulary insisantant to state this was a perfect case of how NOT to make important decisions. There was also large support to ensure that no students will face any disciplinary action over the camp.

Though Linguistics has not been reinstated as a degree program, we have saved Linguistics as the University is now committed to maintaining the course for the indefinite future as an essential element to English Language and other indisciplinary elements. Now they are looking into how to ensure Linguistics continues to remain a core part of English and the University in the future.

This is not the end of the campaign, as the Vice Chancellor, though refsued to apologise, has agreed to meet with Linguists to discuss the matter further next year. USSU will continue to oppose all cuts to our education and continue to remind the University that this is our education and that we need to be made part of the decision making process too.

Thanks to the hardwork and support of students, staff and activists, both locally and nationally, Linguistics' future has been gurannted as a course and management shown they cannot run the university in such a top down, anti-democratic and haphazard manner.

Let this to be a lesson to all those facing cuts up and down the country, that when students, staff and unions organise and fight back, we can overturn managments decisions and win back our education.

Yours,

Lee Vernon
USSU Finance Officer

'I was not cheated. You cheated me.'

Love this utterance from a clearly very (pragmatically) sophisticated 5 year old at Language Log

B-)

the meaning of 'bogus'

Simon Singh has applied to appeal against the initial ruling in the libel case brought against him by the British Chiropractic Association.

The cases raises lots of issues, but the focus of most of the linguistic discussion has been on whether 'bogus' means something like 'knowingly deceitful'. Personally, I'm a bit unsure about my own intuitions here. If you want to think about your own intuitions, the key passage in the original article was:

The British Chiropractic Association claims that their members can help treat children with colic, sleeping and feeding problems, frequent ear infections, asthma and prolonged crying, even though there is not a jot of evidence. This organisation is the respectable face of the chiropractic profession and yet it happily promotes bogus treatments.

You can find out more and follow the story from the beginning via the Sense About Science website:

http://www.senseaboutscience.org.uk/

And there's a nice discussion of linguistic issues on the Language Log here:

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1426

Simon's own account is here:

http://www.senseaboutscience.org.uk/index.php/site/project/340

Billy

'take courage'

A few interesting stories recently for anyone looking at issues about regulation and self-regulation in media communication. This BBC story is about a beer ad which has been banned for suggesting that beer might make you more confident.

Earlier, the Guardian had an interview with Chrisopher Meyer as he steps down as chair of the Press Complaints Commission

Billy

lesbian vampire killers

We've discussed lots of good examples in class recently. I'll upload info and links soon. In the meantime, I'm planning to talk about Lesbian Vampire Killers in Monday's 'Writing Techniques' class. An excellent example of syntactic ambiguity. Homework might be to find out exactly how many different possible meanings it might have. More creatively, maybe we could work on a Pythonesque/Pirandello-esque sketch where characters find it impossible to act until they can determine which reading they should go for? ('No no, we're not lesbians who kill vampires! We're killers of lesbian vampires!' 'Are you sure?'...)

Billy

junk charts

junk charts

Sylvia pointed me to this extremely rich data source

B-)

'oldest English'?

BBC — 'oldest English words' identified

It would be interesting to discuss the nature of this evidence and how reliable we think it is...

Billy

what's new? gestures and infant speech

BBC News - gestures 'develop infant speech'

I've just had a morning of tutorials with students working on dissertations at various levels. One thing we often talk about is how surprising the results of an investigation are likely to be.

This news report is interesting from that point of view (as well as more generally). The researchers are reported as describing their results as 'surprising' since they 'contradict the folklore'. I think that's right in that some people think that the more articulate you are the less you need to use gestures. But is it surprising that toddlers who communicate more nonverbally at 14 months go on to have higher vocabularies at four-and-a-half? I suppose it depends on what hypotheses you're already assuming. So the question 'are your results surprising?' always depends on what assumptions you're already making.

B-)