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This weekend, I'm having quarantinis with my quaranteam. It will be nice to be together in person, since we all have Zoom fatigue. We'll meet outdoors, so no need for PPE, but we'll still social distance. After all, we aren't covidiots, and we sure don't want a second wave. If we have to lock down to flatten the curve again, it would be a coronapocalypse.

A year ago, that paragraph would have been unintelligible. Now, it's as clear as a plexiglass shield.

The eight-month-old pandemic has had such a huge impact on the English language that editors of the venerable Oxford English Dictionary have so far issued two special updates to document it. The Canadian government has compiled a pandemic glossary, from antigen to zoonosis. And King's College London slang specialist Tony Thorne has a Lockdown Lexicon.

Because of a microscopic new germ, our daily speech is now full of medical and epidemiological jargon such as "viral load" and "contact tracing." "No mask, no entry" warnings are as ubiquitous as "No turn on red" signs.

We are also using language to relieve the awfulness of pandemic life, embracing slang, puns, catchphrases, acronyms, memes, and goofy new words that blend the sounds and meanings of existing words.

Science-based coverage sent each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday night to your inbox.

"This process isn't new. What is different is the scale of it," said Andrea Beltrama, a sociolinguist at the University of Pennsylvania. "This is a social, medical, psychological, political and economic situation that affects us around the globe. It affects fun, work, relationships. We have a clear snapshot of how language is shaped."

Will the vernacular of the pandemic disappear when normalcy (hopefully) returns?

"It will be interesting to look back in 20 years to see what stuck and what didn't," Beltrama said. "Making a word part of the lexicon is a big step toward normalizing a completely abnormal situation."

In February, U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams tweeted: "Seriously people - STOP BUYING MASKS! They are NOT effective in preventing general public from catching coronavirus, but if healthcare providers can't get them to care for sick patients, it puts them and our communities at risk!"

Seriously people- STOP BUYING MASKS!

They are NOT effective in preventing general public from catching #Coronavirus, but if healthcare providers can't get them to care for sick patients, it puts them and our communities at risk!
https://t.co/UxZRwxxKL9
- U.S. Surgeon General (@Surgeon_General) February 29, 2020

By Memorial Day, he and other top public health officials were tweeting a very different, but still muddled, message: A mask won't protect you from inhaling the virus, but wear one anyway to protect other people from you in case you're infected but don't know it.

The U.S. is hardly alone in making a mess of messaging.

British linguist Rodney Jones has parsed the evolution of slogans that were part of daily coronavirus briefings by two National Health System (NHS) officials and Prime Minister Boris Johnson, himself a survivor of severe COVID-19.

At first, one part of the slogan "Stay Home, Protect the NHS, Save Lives" appeared on each of three podiums during the briefings. But that, Jones speculated in his online article, likely led to some infighting: "Do I have to be 'stay home' again? Why can't I be 'save lives' this time?"

That problem was solved by giving each podium a poster with all three phrases shrunken and stacked vertically - making the slogan practically unreadable from a few feet away.

In May, a completely new slogan - '"Stay Alert. Control the Virus. Save Lives" was introduced, and immediately mocked. Harry Potter author JK Rowling asked on Twitter, "Is the coronavirus sneaking around in a fake moustache and glasses? What the hell is 'stay alert' supposed to mean?" Oxford University linguist Deborah Cameron tweeted, "It's a virus, not an internet scam or a terrorist plot. WTF does 'stay alert' even mean."

Within hours, social media was awash with parodies: "Meaningless slogan. Three-word platitude. Invoke heroism." "Sneak up. Shout at the virus. Then run." "Do as you please. We're not fussed. If some of you die." "Have affair. Don't inject bleach. OK just a little."

But it was Johnson's mixed messages about working from home unless you can't because you have a blue-collar job in, say, manufacturing or construction, that inspired this zinger: "Back to work. Catch the virus. Save the billionaires."

In March, President Donald Trump was criticized for calling the coronavirus the "China virus," even as reports of bigotry against Asian Americans mounted.

"It's not racist at all, no, not at all. It comes from China, that's why. I want to be accurate," Trump said.

A few weeks later, he agreed to stop using the offensive label, tweeting that the spreading of the virus was not the fault of Asian Americans "in any way, shape, or form."

But Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and other right-wing commentators continued to cast the pandemic as the U.S. vs. China, with Republican Sen Tom Cotton of Arkansas even suggesting to Fox News that the virus had been created in a Chinese government laboratory near Wuhan, where the outbreak began.

Digital and social media have made it easier to spread prejudice and xenophobia, but it has always gone hand-in-hand with disease. When syphilis first broke out in Europe in the 1400s, the English and Italians called it the French disease; the French called it the disease of Naples; Poles called it the German disease; Russians called it the Polish disease; and so on.

The 1918 flu pandemic that killed 20 million people globally was dubbed "the Spanish flu" - not because anyone knew where it originated, but because the Spanish government was honest about Spain's outbreak, while other countries were downplaying or denying what was happening within their borders, as USA Today explained.

"Language reflects and reinforces biases," said Beltrama at Penn.

Did you know that quarantine comes from the Italian " quaranta giorn i?" It means 40 days, which is how long Venice made people stay on ships in the harbor to curb epidemics in the 14th century. Virus, from the Latin for poison or foul juice, was also coined in the 14th century, long before anyone understood the causes of infection.

Other pandemic terms are old but repurposed, prompting lexicographers to add updated meanings. Shelter in place, for example, means take cover from a tornado or an active shooter, but now it's also a stay-at-home order. Limiting face-to-face contact to avoid catching a disease - a.k.a. social distancing - goes back to the Middle Ages, but now that it's synonymous with staying six feet apart, it also means physical distancing.

Essential workers, meanwhile, has become a fraught label. There is no standard definition, and calling them "heroes" doesn't erase inequities. Minimum-wage earners such as grocery cashiers and warehouse stockers are expected to risk COVID-19, no less than well-paid medical professionals.

Some technical terms have morphed into symbols. "Flatten the curve" is an epidemiological concept, complete with a now-familiar graphic, meaning curbing the spread of disease to avoid overloading hospitals.

Help fight the spread of COVID-19. Do your part to "flatten the curve" by reducing the spread of disease so our healthcare system can maintain capacity and properly care for our communities (see graphic). The best way to do this is to practice good preventive measures. pic.twitter.com/EveHSNEOAI
- Preparing WilCo (@PreparingWilCo) March 13, 2020

But in the spring, the phrase became a rallying cry - and a rebuke to people who rejected precautions.

"In no time, I noticed bars and cafés having signs that said, 'Help us flatten the curve,'" Beltrama recalled.

Perhaps the most egalitarian feature of coronargot ("corona" plus "argot") is that anyone can blend or combine existing words to invent a new one (such as coronargot). However, many of these aren't very funny or useful (such as caronargot). The Economist offered some rules for successful coinages in its weekly column on language:

"The words that went into the new word should be obvious. Few English words end in 'tini,' so if someone invites you for a quarantini, you know what to expect. By contrast, loxit, the much hoped-for exit from lockdown, is a dud. ... It sounds as though it has to do with brined salmon."

"If you want your contribution to coronaspeak to take off," the column concluded, "you need to lobby not the dictionary-writers, but your friends and colleagues, and get them to use and publicize it."

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Coronaspeak has gone viral, and the English language may never be the same

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This weekend, I'm having quarantinis with my quaranteam. It will be nice to be together in person, since we all have Zoom fatigue . We'll meet outdoors, so no need for PPE, but we'll still social distance. After all, we aren't covidiots, and we sure don't want a second wave.

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These schools are microcosms of privilege, built on ideals of racism, sexism and classism.

Last Wednesday, Shore Headmaster Timothy Petterson wrote an email to parents in condemnation of the Triwizard Shorenament that had been organised by the school's students.

"This is not who we are as a school," he said. "It is extremely disappointing to all of us that their thoughtless actions have cast a shadow, not only over the considerable achievements of their classmates, but the reputation of our school generally which strives to be a respectful, inclusive and caring environment for all."

As someone who went to private school, "respectful, inclusive and caring" are the last three words I would use to describe my experience.

I went to an all-girl's boarding school about an hour-and-a-half from Sydney. It tried really hard to emulate the same sorts of girl's schools in the city - we played weekend sport with the likes of Queenwood, PLC, and Abbotsleigh. We had our school social with Scots. Girls had brothers and boyfriends who went to Kings or Cranbrook. Private school culture is the same across all of these places, and I know it uncomfortably well.

When the list of challenges for the Triwizard Shorenament came out - which included "spitting on a homeless man", "shitting on a train" and "kissing a girl under the age of 15" - I wasn't surprised in the least.

I had watched this behaviour from other private school boys play out on my friends as I grew up. When we were 14, repeatedly getting unsolicited dick pics for days in a row was harmless but annoying fun; when we were 16, tolerating surprise anal during sex with a boyfriend made you a chill girlfriend. Some girls I know can't talk about the whole thing because it reminds them of the abuse they received, the rape and violence cultivated by private school cultures just like Shore's.

These schools are microcosms of privilege, built on ideals of racism, sexism, and classism. It's written in their history, in songs and papers from their old leaders. I'm not even being metaphorical here- - the Shore school song skips over the verse that literally starts with "and here's to the fellow who works like a black."

A Tale of Two Australias pic.twitter.com/36lNS5j2uG

- Ophelia Kraken 🌸🦑🌼 (@mardi_oh) September 28, 2020

The girls weren't free from these attitudes just because they were the objects of the boys' sexism. My school was mostly white, and if the rise of media coverage on Karens has shown us anything, it's that white women perpetrate some of the most insidious and violent racism there is.

Private schools provide a safe space for white children to indulge in racism among their peers, without consequence. The dark rye bread that was offered by the school at mealtimes was nicknamed "n****r bread" by students because of its colour. If teachers heard it, they never told them off, and those of us who objected were labelled too sensitive. I know that as a white student, so much racism went under my nose, normalised by both my white privilege and the culture of the school. For the girls of colour who went there, I cannot imagine what it was like.

I can however, speak to the queerphobia that permeated my school. I was outed on two different occasions (people didn't believe it the first time) and was terrified I would be expelled for being gay. This is the same school that wouldn't let us celebrate Halloween during our themed Friday night dinners because it was "too pagan" - I wasn't overreacting by assuming queerness would be persecuted too.

One of my friends in the younger years was asked by a peer why she didn't feel "disgusted" around me, and my teacher shut down the entire existence of queerness in sex ed with a particular mix of disgust and panic on her face. Never, in the two years I was out, did I feel like I could ask the teachers for help.

When I was outed, my power and privacy was torn from me twice, and I had to deny the existence of an identity I was only just coming to terms with. The thought never crossed my mind that this was wrong - the school acted like queerness didn't exist. I didn't have a place there. If it weren't for the support of my group of friends, and my family, I would have been alone. And I was one of the lucky ones. The last girl to come out before me had done so four years prior, and was bullied so badly she left the school.

FUCK YEAH I'M SURE THEY'LL ALL LEARN RESPECT AT ST ANDREW'S COLLEGE NEXT YEAR

- Nadine von Cohen (@nadinevoncohen) September 23, 2020

Before a school reunion, one of the old students had transitioned, and everyone in the school was warned by the prefects that there would be a boy sitting with the old girls. Someone told me they heard a teacher say he shouldn't have come back.

Private schools function on a completely different plane of reality. When these students graduate and step into the regular world with everyone else, some of them are completely detached from real life values. A girl once told me with a straight face that she wasn't rich just because she had a house in Vaucluse. As a middle-class kid on a scholarship, their attitudes warped mine so much that I grew up thinking I was poor.

Private school kids don't exist in a void, and neither do their values.

They go on to work in law, medicine, government, art, education, and business. They raise their children with the same ideas and don't see any reason to hold them accountable when the rest of the world discovers how they think. The Shore boys aren't an exception.

Challenges like "getting with an Asian chick", or "getting a gay man's number", and "spitting on a homeless person" are perfect examples of how sexism, racism, classism, and privilege is normalised and entrenched in these environments.

Those #ProudShoreMums and columnists speaking out in defence of private schools are safeguarding an institution that benefits them, while students who couldn't fit in because of a fundamental aspect of their very being watch from the sidelines, with 12 years' worth of trauma and shame.
Lydia Jupp is a freelance journalist who writes about gender, queerness, culture, and politics. You can find more of her work and an abundance of youthful existential crises over on her Twitter @lydiarosejupp.

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The Triwizard Shorenament Isn't A Surprise To Anyone Who Went To A Private School

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These schools are microcosms of privilege, built on ideals of racism, sexism and classism. Last Wednesday, Shore Headmaster Timothy Petterson wrote an email to parents in condemnation of the Triwizard Shorenament that had been organised by the school's students. "This is not who we are as a school," he said.

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'Mr. Vice President, I'm Speaking.' What Research Says About Men Interrupting Women-And How to Stop It - TIME

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It wasn't like I chose not to go to uni. I don't remember ever making that choice. Growing up like I did, where I did, you didn't see it as an option. 

Uni was for other people. Other people who don't live in public housing, with dads who don't drive trucks.

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It wasn't like I chose not to go to uni. I don't remember ever making that choice. Growing up like I did, where I did, you didn't see it as an option. 

Uni was for other people. Other people who don't live in public housing, with dads who don't drive trucks. https://t.co/W4soKOJ1sy

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It wasn't like I chose not to go to uni. I don't remember ever making that choice. Growing up like I did, where I did, you didn't see it as an option.

Uni was for other people. Other people who don't live in public housing, with dads who don't drive trucks. pic.twitter.com/W4soKOJ1sy
— Jacqui Lambie (@JacquiLambie) October 7, 2020

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It wasn't like I chose not to go to uni. I don't remember ever making that choice. Growing up like I did, where I did, you didn't see it as an option. 

Uni was for other people. Other people who don't live in public housing, with dads who don't drive trucks. https://t.co/W4soKOJ1sy

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.original_text
It wasn't like I chose not to go to uni. I don't remember ever making that choice. Growing up like I did, where I did, you didn't see it as an option. 

Uni was for other people. Other people who don't live in public housing, with dads who don't drive trucks. https://t.co/W4soKOJ1sy

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.text
It wasn't like I chose not to go to uni. I don't remember ever making that choice. Growing up like I did, where I did, you didn't see it as an option. 

Uni was for other people. Other people who don't live in public housing, with dads who don't drive trucks.

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University Fee Increase

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Jacqui Lambie delivers emotional speech condemning uni fee rises

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Tasmanian Senator Jacqui Lambie has delivered an emotional speech in the Senate, condemning legislation that would result in university fees rising.

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An Australian ice-cream company will rename one of its signature brands, the Eskimo Pie, to help achieve "racial equality".

Peters has announced the ice-cream, which was introduced in Australia in 1923, will be re-branded as the Polar Pie, citing the colonial and derogatory connotations of the word Eskimo.

In a statement, Peters said the company was "committed to being a part of the solution on racial equality and we acknowledge that now is the time for change".

It comes after US company Dreyer's Grand Ice Cream announced it would also change the name of its equivalent product after previously conceding that the term was "derogatory".
Australia's Coon cheese to change name in effort to help 'eliminate racism'
"We have been reviewing our Eskimo Pie business for some time and will be changing the brand name and marketing," the US company said in a statement in June. In response, Donald Trump Jr tweeted: "The bullshit never ends."

The word Eskimo is a colonial term that has been used in Alaska to refer to Inuit and Yupik people. Lawrence Kaplan from the University of Alaska's Native Language Centre has written that the term is "now considered unacceptable by many or even most Alaska Natives, largely since it is a colonial name imposed by non-Indigenous people".

Norma Dunning, an Inuit writer and academic from Edmonton in Canada, told the Guardian in June that the term Eskimo had the effect of turning her ethnic group into a caricature. "We have to think about how these renderings of Indigenous people have a subconscious effect on the public imagination," she said.
Food brands are phasing out racist mascots. Will sports teams follow?
Peters' decision to rename the ice-cream follows a string of high-profile decisions by companies to do away with racist or insensitive brand names.

In July, the dairy company Saputo announced it would change the name of its cheese brand Coon more than 20 years after it was first lobbied to do so. It followed the announcement by confectionary company Nestle that it plans to rename its Allen's Lollies-branded Red Skins and Chicos products due to "overtones" which it said were "out of step" with its values.

Peters, which was sold to a European food firm in 2014, said it had chosen the term Polar Pie because it "retains a strong association back to the original brand and product idea - a frozen treat you eat much like a pie - with your hands and hence the name Polar Pie".
Topics

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Eskimo Pie ice-cream to be renamed to help achieve 'racial equality', says Peters

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An Australian ice-cream company will rename one of its signature brands, the Eskimo Pie, to help achieve "racial equality". Peters has announced the ice-cream, which was introduced in Australia in 1923, will be re-branded as the Polar Pie, citing the colonial and derogatory connotations of the word Eskimo.

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ANTHONY ALBANESE MP
LEADER OF THE AUSTRALIAN LABOR PARTY
MEMBER FOR GRAYNDLER

BUDGET IN REPLY 2020
*** CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY ***
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
PARLIAMENT HOUSE
CANBERRA

THURSDAY, 8 OCTOBER 2020

My fellow Australians.

We live in a great country.

Amidst all the chaos and hardship that has shaken our world in 2020 - there is nowhere else you'd rather be.

The credit for that, as always, doesn't belong to the politicians here tonight.

It belongs to you, the people of Australia.

We are coming through this pandemic because of your hard work, your sacrifices, your sense of community.

Your willingness to put not just your friends and neighbours, but people you have not met and probably will never meet, ahead of yourself.

Your values. Australian values.

That we look after each other.

And - it's that spirit, those values, which should define what happens next.

Because the challenge - and the opportunity - facing us now is not just a matter of getting things back to the way they were.

We have to aim higher than that, strive for more than that.

We have a once-in-a-generation chance to rebuild our economy and our country for the better.

To launch a recovery that delivers a stronger, fairer and more secure future, for all Australians.

This Budget fails the test.

The Budget reflects the Government's character of being guided by short term politics, not long term vision.

Our economy was already struggling coming into the crisis. Slow growth, flat wages, declining productivity, business investment going backwards, a doubling of debt.

Now they are cutting wage subsidies, slashing unemployment benefits back and have no plan for childcare, aged care or social housing.

This Budget leaves people behind.

Women have suffered most during the pandemic, but are reduced to a footnote. The best the Government can offer is they can drive on a road.

And if you are over 35 you have certainly been left behind.

This week your wage subsidy was cut.

In March your wage subsidy disappears.

If you're then unemployed you get $40 a day and forced into poverty.

Then you will compete to get a job with people who will have their wages subsidised.

A quadruple whammy.

The Morrison recession will be deeper and longer because of this Budget.

I was brought up to look on the bright side.

My mother Maryanne, was a great optimist.

She was crippled with rheumatoid arthritis and other health conditions, which meant constant pain and long stints in hospital.

A single mum who raised me in public housing and relied on a disability pension, she did it tough.

But she always had a smile on her face, she never complained about her lot in life.

Like every Australian parent, her greatest aspiration - and the reason for all her sacrifice - was to make sure her child had a better quality of life and greater opportunity.

That aspiration for others has been on full display in 2020.

Volunteers fighting bushfires.

Healthcare workers fending-off a pandemic.

Cleaners and supermarket workers and truckies working around the clock to keep our economy going.

Teachers re-defining education, practically overnight.

Farmers and regional communities who had already copped drought and bushfires.

Small business reinventing themselves - and locals backing them in.

Trade unions agreeing to temporarily put aside hard fought industrial gains, to maintain jobs and keep businesses going.

Public servants reminding us of the honourable profession they belong to.

Australians rallying to help each other through tough times.

But if this crisis has reinforced what we know is good about our country....

....it has also revealed what is wrong with our economy.

The Budget figures tell the story.

An end to 3 decades of economic growth.

A million unemployed, with 160,000 more by Christmas.

A trillion dollars of debt.

Debt which had already doubled under this Government now 4 times that which the Coalition inherited.

And there were the damning silences.

Too many Australians are in insecure work - the first to be laid off, with low wages and few entitlements.

... and this Budget said nothing about that.

Too many women are shut off from economic opportunity - earning less and retiring with less.

... and this Budget said nothing to change that.

Too many family budgets pushed to breaking point by the cost of childcare.
... and this Budget said nothing to help with that.

Too many older Australians who built this country are being treated without the respect and dignity they deserve.

Too many older Australians are lonely prisoners of a broken aged care system.

Facilities run for the highest profits at the lowest standards.

A care economy workforce in childcare, aged care and disability care that is overworked and underpaid.

And Tuesday's Budget said nothing and did nothing about that.

How can the Government push the national debt to a trillion dollars and yet leave these fundamental problems unresolved?

Tonight, as Labor Leader I want to outline how we can change this for the better.

How we can emerge from this crisis with a stronger economy and a fairer society.

The pandemic has shown that Labor's values of fairness, security and the power of government to change lives for the better are the right values in a crisis.

They are also the right values for the recovery.

Throughout this crisis, my colleagues and I have been constructive.

As the party that led Australia safely through the Global Financial Crisis, we understand, that in the middle of an emergency, the priority is on urgent action.

Still, we sought to make improvements including arguing for wage subsidies, which the Prime Minister rejected as "very dangerous".

We wanted casuals, universities and the arts to be included. This would have saved tens of thousands of jobs.

We warned of the damage caused by a smash-and-grab on superannuation, forcing desperate people to raid their own retirement savings while they waited for support to arrive.

We called for Telehealth and mental health support.

We backed the trade unions call for the government to introduce a national scheme of paid pandemic leave so no-one had to choose between turning up to work sick or putting food on the table.

Our constructive approach contrasts with the Coalition during the GFC which voted against the Rudd Governments economic stimulus to protect jobs - and complained about the debt they inherited which was one quarter of the debt created by the Morrison Government.

The only legacy delivered by this Budget is trillion dollar debt. A reform desert.

The decisions in this budget should be about setting Australia on a course for the next decade and beyond.

And when those decisions are wasteful, or unfair, or short-sighted or just plain wrong...then it's not the government who pays in the long run, it's the whole country.

Just look at the NBN.

The Liberals have wasted years trashing Labor's plan for broadband delivered by fibre to the home and business.

They went out and bought 50,000 kilometres of copper - enough to wrap around the entire planet - so they could build a slow, third-rate network that was out of date before it started.

Now instead of leading the world on internet speed, business connectivity and online learning, Australia is playing catch-up.

If we're going to come out of this recession stronger and fairer, then our country needs a plan to ensure no-one is left behind, and no-one is held back.

Our plan to take Australia from recession to recovery is this:

Rehire our workers.

Rewire our economy.

Recharge workforce participation of women.

And rebuild our nation.

Labor knows education is the key to opportunity.

Our schools, TAFE and vocational education and universities are vital national institutions.

And making sure a quality education is accessible and affordable for every
Australian doesn't just open doors of opportunity for individuals, it makes us a smarter, more productive, more future-ready country.
CHILD CARE
And investing in education needs to begin at the beginning - with quality childcare.

We all know how much our kids change and learn and grow before they're at school.

Ninety per cent of human brain development occurs in the first five years of life.

What children learn at childcare is so vital for giving our kids the best possible start. But the current system of caps and subsidies and thresholds isn't just confusing and costly, it actually penalises the families it's meant to help.

Right around Australia, instead of childcare supporting families where both parents want to work...the costs - and the tax system - actively discourage this.

And - as is too often the case - it's working mums who cop the worst of it.

For millions of working women, it's simply not worth working more than three days a week.

This derails careers, it deprives working women of opportunities they've earned.

And it costs workplaces - not just day-to-day productivity but years of valuable experience and knowledge and skills.

If I'm elected Prime Minister, I'm going to fix this.

Tonight, I announce that a Labor Government will, from 1 July 2022, remove the annual cap on the childcare subsidy, eliminating once and for all, the disincentive to work more hours.

And we will increase the maximum Child Care subsidy to 90 per cent - cutting costs for 97% of all families in the system.

And we will order the ACCC to design a price regulation mechanism that will ensure every taxpayer dollar spent flows directly through to savings for Australian families.

This is real reform. It will boost women's workforce participation, boost productivity and get Australia working again.

Building a childcare system that works for families will turbocharge productivity in workplaces, delivering a much-needed boost in economic growth of up to 4 billion dollars a year.

For me, the principle is very simple:

Early education is vital for our children's future.

And childcare is an essential service for families - and for the economy.

So our long term goal - and the mission we will set for the Productivity Commission which will be asked to report in the first term of a Labor Government - is to investigate moving to a 90 per cent subsidy for child care for every Australian family.

Labor created Medicare - universal health care.

We created the NDIS - universal support for people with disability.

We created superannuation - universal retirement savings for workers.

And - if I'm Prime Minister - I will make quality, affordable childcare universal too.
A FUTURE MADE IN AUSTRALIA
This global pandemic has exposed the terrible damage seven years of Liberal Government has done to Australian manufacturing.

I don't want our country to always be the last link in a worldwide supply chain.

My vision is for us to have the skills and smarts and people and industry to make things here and sell them on the global market.

So, tonight I want to talk about Labor's plan for a Future Made in Australia.

A mass mobilisation of resources, an across-the-board strategy for:

Job creation

Training and skills

Lower energy prices

Infrastructure

Government purchasing

Manufacturing and construction

A plan to grow our economy out of this recession - and build for the future too.

The first policy I announced as Labor leader was to build on the success of the Infrastructure Australia model and create Jobs and Skills Australia.

This is about joining-up the needs of our economy now - with training opportunities for the future.

We have a shortage of nurses, welders, brick layers, engineers, and hairdressers.

Yet under this government, there are 140,000 fewer people doing an apprenticeship or traineeship than there were seven years ago.

We want to equip every Australian with the skills for a good secure job.

And we want to make sure every employer has access to a well-trained Australian workforce.

And right at the heart of our plan for skills and training is the great institution of public TAFE.

But there's more government can - and should - do.

Every year, the Commonwealth spends billions of taxpayer dollars on building and upgrading roads, maintaining railways and repairing bridges.

To deliver maximum public value for money, Labor will create an Australian Skills Guarantee.

On every major work site receiving Federal Government funding, one out of 10 workers employed will be an apprentice, a trainee or cadet.

These common sense measures will train tens of thousands of workers..

We will also consider how this principle can be extended to Federal Government subsidised sectors like aged care, disability care and childcare in co-operation with providers.

And we'll bring the same approach to defence acquisitions too.

Over the next decade, there is $270 billion of defence spending on the books.

These investments in national security should also deliver a dividend for national skills, training, research and manufacturing.

A Labor Government will implement concrete rules to maximise local content and create local jobs.

At best, the Liberals' approach is all over the shop when it comes to Australian content.

Remember when one of this Liberal Government's Defence Minister said he wouldn't trust Australians to build a canoe.

Australians will never forget that it was this Government that drove Holden, Ford and other car makers out of Australia, taking tens of thousands of jobs in auto manufacturing, servicing and the supply chain with them.

This wasn't just dumb and devastating in the short term.

Cutting down the Australian auto industry also cut Australia off from the next round of opportunities, dealing us out of a new wave of technology that could have been made in Elizabeth and Altona and Geelong but instead is being made in Detroit and Tokyo.

It's the same at a state level.

Liberal Governments have consistently said we can't build trains here.

And yet the ones they've bought from overseas have been too long for our stations, or too narrow for our tracks, or too tall for our tunnels.

Last December I visited the Downer EDI site in Maryborough, Queensland where skilled Aussie workers are refitting rail carriages purchased from overseas by the former Newman LNP Government.

This work is being done in a factory that's been building quality trains since the 19th Century.

Our country has the skills and the knowhow. What's missing is a government that believes in manufacturing and has a plan to deliver.

Tonight, I announce that a Labor Government will create a National Rail Manufacturing Plan.

We will provide leadership to the states and work with industry to identify and optimise the opportunities to build trains here in Australia - for freight and for public transport.
POWERING THE NATION
Labor will invest in the skills and research and training to kickstart the next generation of Australian manufacturing jobs.

And we'll deliver the affordable, reliable energy to power industry into the future.

The Liberals have had 22 energy policies in 8 years.

And all they have to show for it are higher electricity prices and higher emissions.

Australia can do so much better.

We can be a renewable energy superpower, with clean energy powering a new era of metal manufacturing and hydrogen production.

Labor has a clear target to tackle Climate Change - net zero carbon pollution by 2050.

Every State and Territory Government - Labor and Liberal - supports this goal.

The Business Council, the Australian Industry Group, the Australian Energy Council and the National Farmers Federation agree on it.

Qantas and Santos and BHP and a host of other major companies all back it too.

Everyone but the Morrison Government, which is frozen in time while the world warms around it.

Of course, there's a lot more we can do right now to make energy more affordable.

Australia's electricity network was designed for a different century.

For a time when solar panels ran pocket calculators, not the 1 in 4 households which have rooftop solar.

The current network takes no account of the rise of renewables as the cheapest new energy source, and doesn't help link these new sources up to the national grid.

A Labor Government will tackle this head on.

We will establish a new Rewiring the Nation Corporation to rebuild and modernise the national energy grid.

By using the Commonwealth's ability to borrow at lower interest rates, it will be done at the lowest possible cost.

The projects needed to rebuild the grid have all been identified in the Australian Energy Market Operator's Integrated System Plan.

The planning work is done.

Rebuilding the grid will create thousands of jobs - particularly in regional Australia - and deliver up to $40 billion in benefits.

Fixing transmission is technology neutral and will allow the market to drive least cost, new energy production.
HOUSING
Reforming childcare, rebuilding the National Energy Grid and revitalising Australian manufacturing are at the heart of Labor's plans for job creation over the next decade

But in the middle of the first recession in 30 years - we know Australia needs a plan to create jobs, right now.

One of the fastest ways to lift economic growth and get tradies back on the tools is to invest in social housing.

There's 100,000 social housing dwellings around the country that are in urgent need of repair.

The roof leaks, they're full of mould or damp, the plumbing isn't up to scratch.

If these were MPs offices they'd be fixed overnight.

These are people's homes - and they're a job creation plan ready and waiting in every city and town.

Tradies could be ordering from suppliers today, they could be on site, tomorrow.

And the pipeline of work doesn't stop at existing houses that need fixing.

There are new houses that need to be built too.

200,000 Australians are on waiting lists for social housing.

I grew up in public housing.

I know - when you don't have much - having a roof over your head provides security and makes all the difference.

So many economists have identified investing in social housing as the best way to provide immediate stimulus to the economy.

It would create thousands of jobs in construction and the trades...

...and just like for my mum, it would give thousands of people a better life.
AUSTRALIAN CENTRE FOR DISEASE CONTROL
The pandemic has exposed Australia's vulnerability.

This has particularly impacted the elderly with more than 670 deaths in aged care, in a system described by the Royal Commission in their one word title of the Interim Report issued last year, as "neglect".

This Budget has done nothing to address this neglect and nothing to ensure aged care residents have enough nurses, carers and other staff that they need and deserve.

The Royal Commission declared last week there was still no plan for aged care.

It is also the case that our pandemic preparedness was poor. The last national pandemic preparedness exercise was run by the Rudd Government in 2008.

A Labor Government will establish an Australian Centre for Disease Control to bring us into line with other advanced economies.
NO ONE LEFT BEHIND
On Tuesday night, Australia needed a plan to seize the economic opportunities of the next decade.

We are, after all, located in the fastest growing region of the world in human history.

Instead, we got an incoherent grab bag, fixated on the photo opportunities of next week.

And that's the defining flaw of this government - and this Prime Minister.

They think an announcement is the end in itself.

Always there for the photo opp, never there for the follow up.

We see it time and time again.

Remember the "Back in Black" mugs they were selling last Budget, ahead of delivering the biggest deficit in Australian history?

Perhaps the mugs should have said "dirty deeds, done dirt cheap".

When you look at the waste and the grift and the pork barreling exposed by the Australian National Audit Office that's had its funding cut in this Budget as payback...

- the Sports Rorts scandal
- the $30 million paid for airport land that was worth just $3 million....

Two years after announcing they would support a National Integrity Commission, the legislation is as visible as a Morrison Government surplus.

A Labor Government will deliver a national anti-corruption commission to restore faith in our democracy.

In seven years, the gap between what they've promised on infrastructure - and what they've delivered - is nearly $7 billion.

They turn up, they turn over the first sod and years later weeds are growing on the empty lot.

And in spite of a Budget drowning in red ink, there were no new game changing infrastructure projects funded.

As Australia's first Infrastructure Minister, I know what a missed opportunity this budget represents.

Then there's the Emergency Response Fund.

This $4 billion fund was created in the aftermath of the catastrophic bushfires with $200 million available each financial year from 2019-2020.

It's for recovery, as well as resilience in the lead up to bushfire seasons.

Not a dollar has been spent. Not one.

This week I spoke to Zoey Salucci in Cobargo.

The Prime Minister should remember her. She was the young pregnant woman who had lost her home and asked for more help for the Rural Fire Service. She was reluctant to shake his hand.

Zoey's son Phoenix turned 6 months old this week, named after the Greek mythological bird that obtains new life by rising from the ashes.

When Phoenix was born, Zoey, her husband and their two year old daughter Uma, were still living in a van. She despairs that so many of her community are still living in temporary caravans on land that is yet to be cleared.

Yet the $4 billion funding announced remains untouched.

That's why the true test of this Budget isn't this week's headlines.

It's not the rhetoric or the promises.

It's whether money reaches the people who need it.
CROSSROADS
Australia is at a crossroad.

It's not of our choosing but the choices we make could change everything.

This is an opportunity to reset and renew.

There was a time when the average wage let you buy a house. When secure jobs with sick pay were the norm.

Before the balance tipped so far one way that ordinary people were left vulnerable.

Let's use this opportunity to get the balance right again.

Let's put security back into work - so that people don't have to choose between their bank account and their health.

Let's transform childcare so that it's affordable and accessible to every family.

Let's fix our aged care system so that it's driven by dignity and care, not profit.

The choices we make now will define who we are in the future, so ask yourself - what sort of country do you want?

Do we want to return to the same work insecurity, the same cuts to TAFE and uni's, the same 2 nd rate services for the bush, the same stale arguments over climate change?

I want us to do better.

I want a country that makes things, creates wealth - and shares it.

A country where the next generation inherit opportunity and prosperity - not debt and doubt.

A country which respects our farmers and miners in the regions and our cleaners and musicians in the cities.

A country that respects those who've come across the sea to enrich our society - and one that recognises the privilege of having the world's oldest continuous culture and recognises First Nations people in our Constitution - and gives them a Voice to this Parliament.

A country where - when the going gets tough - government is on your side.

That's the Australia I believe in.

That's the better future I want us to build together.
CONCLUSION
The year 2020 has been the year from hell.

But during this calamity we learnt a lot about ourselves. And about each other.

A man called Tom Uren was the closest person in my life I had to a father figure.

Tom fought in World War 2, he spent his 21 st birthday as a Japanese prisoner of war on the notorious Thai-Burma Railway.

He never talked much about what he went through.

But he always said Australians survived because of a simple code:
The healthy looked after the sick, the strong looked after the weak, the young looked after the old.
Those values are at the heart of what it is to be an Australian.

And those values are why I'm optimistic about our country's future.

Because just as our people have rallied to each other and risen to the challenges of this pandemic.

I know Australians can seize the opportunities of the recovery, seize the chance to rebuild and renew our country.

But people can't do it on their own.

My Mum battled a ton of adversity to give me opportunities she never had.

But government played a part too: it put a roof over our head, it gave me an education and a start.

That's why I want to be Prime Minister.

Because I know government has the power to break down barriers of disadvantage, to change lives for the better.

I've seen it. I've lived it.

And that's what Labor's plans are all about:

Creating jobs for today - and training our people for tomorrow.

Making quality child care a right for all, not a luxury for some.

Rebuilding our manufacturing sector.

And powering our recovery with clean energy

Tonight, I've talked about how we can make this once-in-a-century crisis the beginning of a new era of Australian prosperity and Australian fairness.

With the right plans, the right policies - and the right leadership - I truly believe our country can make this moment our own.

Strength and fairness.

We can beat this recession, we can launch a recovery and we can build a future where no-one is held back and no-one is left behind.

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CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY *** HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES PARLIAMENT HOUSE CANBERRA THURSDAY, 8 OCTOBER 2020 My fellow Australians. We live in a great country. Amidst all the chaos and hardship that has shaken our world in 2020 - there is nowhere else you'd rather be.

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Updated April 17, 2018 12:06:34

When people learn the ABC has a pronunciation database - and that part of my job is to attend to its upkeep - the emails they send in are not always complimentary.

"You should be concentrating on the diversions being made in the name of modernism," begins one.

For this correspondent, and many others, an unforgiveable solecism is eroding the good name of this once great nation. To be specific, it is a perceived inability to pronounce the name of this once great nation.

"The uneducated pronunciation of the name of this great country, Australia, is insulted by the use of a Y," the correspondent writes. "As in Austraya, which immediately comes to mind."

Perhaps without realising it, this person has hit upon an issue with quite a long history - just not quite in the way they think.

A proud tradition of pronouncing Australia incorrectly

Towards the tail end of 1933, Londoners realised something strange: BBC announcers seemed to take multiple approaches to pronouncing the word Australia.

In one, the first syllable rhymed with the title of Patrick White's then-unpublished Voss. In the other, the first syllable resembled the vowel sound in ore.

This state of chaos terrified the British public so much that newspapers lobbied the BBC to go with (their orthography) Osstralia.

Actual Australians, hearing of this debate, argued for a third way.

"I agree that Australia should not be pronounced Orestralia," said the Reverend GE Hale, a lecturer in public speaking at the Workers' Educational Association of Adelaide.

"But neither should it be pronounced Osstralia."

For Hale, there was a third way - closer to Orestralia, but without stress on the first syllable. Orstralia.

That this great country had not settled on a single pronunciation of its own name, even 30 years after Federation, didn't seem to faze its residents.

On the contrary: there is some evidence to suggest that speakers of Australian English used these variant pronunciations as a handy form of social marker.

In his autobiography, the writer Hal Porter observed that he was "an unmistakable Australian, albeit of the Awstralian rather than the Osstralian variety".

Porter's remarks on the Australian accent, written in 1963, neatly mirror today's anxieties around pronunciation.

Where contemporaries bemoan the "uneducated pronunciation" of Austraya, Porter reckoned those who said Awstralia possessed "an ineradicable and perverse" accent.

(After all, nothing is more indicative of the Australian quality of mateship than hanging your compatriots out to dry for their speech patterns.)

"Wealth cannot taint [their accent] nor education undo it," Porter wrote, adding that such an accent telegraphed the "certified weaknesses" of the Australian character.

This ex nihilo linking of feature-of-speech to national moral failure is first-rate demonising. You get the sense Porter, who died in 1984, would have really hated Crocodile Dundee.

Straya, mate

But stuffing up this first vowel sound isn't the only sin Australians are allegedly guilty of. Worse, to some minds, is when we lop the first syllable entirely off.

In 1988 - the Bicentennial year, no less - Fairfax language columnist Alan Peterson angsted publicly on what he termed "the slurred uhStralia", as well as its stablemates 'Stralia and 'Straya.

"Pronunciation of our nation mourned" ran the headline that, admittedly, kept its tongue firmly cheek-adjacent.

Returning the missing initial vowel to the word, Peterson said, would make a fitting Bicentenary gift to the language.

Prescriptivists and their pedants-in-arms tend toward a form of temporal arrogance: English is always assumed to have been mutilated but recently, their bastion against ignorance is always thought always to be tongue's last.

Peterson, writing in 1988, could not have known that the Australian National Dictionary's (AND) second edition would find citations for 'Stralian back to 1902, and for 'Stralia that predate Federation.

The elision he held to be poisonous was, in fact, patriotic.

(In fairness to Peterson, the earliest citation the AND has for Straya is his - though even that abbreviation must have been made in the 1930s. As GE Hale wrote at the time: "On no account should the 'i' [in Australia] be spoken as 'y'.")

I am, you are, we are... what, exactly?

At the heart of complaints about how to pronounce Australia - and at the heart of many such complaints about pronunciation - is how you feel about change.

One of the earliest historical sources describing a distinct Australian accent comes from Scottish-born educator and musicologist Samuel McBurney.

In 1887, travelling throughout the colonies on a lecture tour with his wife, McBurney made a study of peculiarities in the Australian dialect.

This surviving article forms one of the earliest detailed accounts of the Australian tongue.

The striking thing is, McBurney was confronted with broadly similar acoustic phenomena to those of today's complainants: shortening of words, elision of some vowel sounds, broadening of others.

(In one anecdote, McBurney describes 19th century colonials enunciating I die as Oi doi, which - to my ears - just sounds like Kath and Kim.)

Rather than spurn this newfound tongue, McBurney largely approved. Australian English could "compare favourably" with any dialect of Britain, he said.

Verbal contractions such as 'Straya, which some now deplore as evidence of lazy character or educational decline, McBurney saw as part of the grand Victorian teleology of progress.

"Labour-saving devices are not confined to tilling the ground," he wrote. "Where the young colonial finds himself understood by half the oral exertion necessary, he abbreviates."

The truth is probably somewhere in the middle: variant pronunciations, of the national word or otherwise, are no more the result of concerted attempts to streamline language than they are of any grand modernist project.

It's just variation, which - on the historical evidence - has been a part of Australian speech for longer than the country has existed.

Dictionaries, when confronted with Australia, either list multiple pronunciations (Macquarie) or don't offer one, assuming it to be self-evident (Australian Concise Oxford).

(Though even then: there's often a difference in how words are pronounced in isolation, compared to how they are produced in continuous speech.)

But the assumption (by some) that a person might might be uneducated, all because of how they pronounce one word - or that, through the use of neutral vowels in connected speech, the national character is somehow degraded?

That, to my ears, sounds positively un-Australian.
Tiger Webb is a researcher with ABC Language.
First posted April 14, 2018 06:30:00

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Australians struggle to pronounce the word 'Australia' correctly

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Updated April 17, 2018 12:06:34 When people learn the ABC has a pronunciation database - and that part of my job is to attend to its upkeep - the emails they send in are not always complimentary. "You should be concentrating on the diversions being made in the name of modernism," begins one.

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Restrictions on dancing at weddings have provided Australians across the country with a bit of light humour amid the global pandemic. Comments from New South Wales premier Gladys Berejiklian in July establishing her state's COVID-safe celebration behaviour provided many with some chuckles: 'no mingling, no dancing, no singing'.

But the positive response to containing the coronavirus across the country has seen restrictions on dancing ease in some states.

This week both Queensland and South Australia decided residents will be allowed to pull out some of the dance moves that have been on hold over the last few months -- but before everyone starts to cut the rug, specific details about dance etiquette have been issued.

Earlier this week, Queensland premier Annastacia Palaszczuk announced by December 1 there will be unlimited dancing in the state.

But until that dancing free-for-all is allowed, Queenslanders will be limited to 'subtle dance', "standing up and wiggling their hips" from 4 pm today, according to health minister Jeannette Young.

Subtle dancing will be allowed from 4pm today in Qld. Jeannette Young: "I'm not sure what the definition of dancing is...I think if someone is standing up and wiggling their hips that is fine". @brisbanetimes
- Lydia Lynch (@LydiaLynch101) October 2, 2020

The move has some parents relieved that the news came just in time for their sons' school formals -- it means they won't need to encourage them to "carry" conversations instead.

Just in time for my lad's school formal tonight. I was worried about his ability to carry a conversation for 4 hours so this is a relief for all involved. https://t.co/lIDisxR5Zy
- Reg Roberts (@RugbyReg) October 2, 2020

In South Australia, there's now a maximum of 150 guests at private functions like weddings, and guests will be allowed to try some moves on the dancefloor. Guests will also be allowed "vertical consumption" -- or in layman's terms, drinking while standing up.

"For licensed premises, we will now allow vertical consumption outdoors...previously we've only allowed for seated consumption," Premier Steven Marshall said on October 1.

Some are adding the term "vertical consumption" to their COVID-19 dictionaries, while others are looking forward to combining the now-allowed behaviours.

And NSW premier Glayds Berejiklian's previous message of 'no dancing, no mingling and no singing' were lifted on September 24. Over the last seven days, NSW has had no recorded community transmission.

For the seventh day in a row, NSW has not reported a single recent case of locally transmitted #COVID19.

Four cases of returned travellers in hotel quarantine were diagnosed in the 24 hours to 8pm last night. Three were acquired overseas, and one in Victoria. pic.twitter.com/CWAHRCDVVm
- NSW Health (@NSWHealth) October 2, 2020

So dancing is back on the agenda, but tread with caution.

"It is still a high-risk environment and we ask both the patrons and also the function organiser to make sure the bridal party up to 20 is clearly identified ... it has to be the same up to 20 group that is on the dance floor," Berejiklian said on September 24.
People in Australia must stay at least 1.5 metres away from others. Check your jurisdiction's restrictions on gathering limits. If you are experiencing cold or flu symptoms, stay home and arrange a test by calling your doctor or contact the Coronavirus Health Information Hotline on 1800 020 080. News and information is available in 63 languages at https://sbs.com.au/coronavirus Please check the relevant guidelines for your state or territory: NSW, Victoria, Queensland, Western Australia, South Australia, Northern Territory, ACT, Tasmania

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'Subtle dance' and 'vertical consumption': new terms in Australia's COVID dictionary

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Restrictions on dancing at weddings have provided Australians across the country with a bit of light humour amid the global pandemic. Comments from New South Wales premier Gladys Berejiklian in July establishing her state's COVID-safe celebration behaviour provided many with some chuckles: 'no mingling, no dancing, no singing'.

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In March of this year, just as the pandemic was upending the way we live, a crime was committed. A young woman, whose name was Breonna Taylor, was killed, as an early local news report described, "inside a home [...] in the middle of an officer-involved shooting. [...] Police discovered Taylor inside the secured home, who was found dead from the gunfire."

Through the linguistic fog, we can just about make out what happened, and who might have been the perpetrators of this crime. The public has grown increasingly aware of the power of language to uphold the powers that be, from politicians to police. Many have pointed out how unbalanced and troubling this kind of manipulative indirect language can be. Even when the facts are as clear as day, media reporting of crimes where the police might be the instigators uses language that obscures those known facts. Why?

In the phrase "officer-involved shooting," language itself aggressively suppresses law enforcement's own aggressive actions.

Though it's a fact that Taylor was in her own home, media reports can render it more impersonally as "a home" or "a residence," subduing the horrific image of being attacked in the very place we tend to feel the safest.

And likewise, in the phrase "officer-involved shooting," language itself aggressively suppresses the police force's own aggressive actions. Since its first appearance in the 1970s, this has been a problematic euphemism, stemming from technical police jargon that many journalists have persistently repeated in their reporting, in strange headlines like " Death of man in officer-involved shooting ruled a suicide" and " Pensacola police involved in officer-involved shooting in downtown Pensacola."

We've heard of the so-called victimless crime, but can there be such a thing as a perpetrator-less crime? Who can we blame for these acts when our own language is used so often, so fearfully, to avoid naming names?

All human cultures have their secrets, taboo subjects that must not be mentioned, at least in polite society: the grubby experiences of being human, from bodily functions to how we function with each other in society. But what happens when we need to mention the unmentionable, as we so often do?

There's a certain safety in indirect language and other linguistic methods of preventing the mud of the unmentionable from sticking to clean-living folk, or what Judith T. Irvine, in her essay "Leaky Registers and Eight-Hundred-Pound Gorillas," calls a kind of " linguistic cordon sanitaire."

For myriad reasons, we can use forms of indirect and coded language such as euphemisms ( "officer-involved shooting," "collateral damage," "going to the restroom"). Euphemisms are supposed to be nice ways of saying not-so-nice things. According to one researcher, through euphemism " distasteful activities can lose their repugnancy, harmful conduct can be made respectable, and that which is socially unacceptable can be transformed into something socially approved."

Passives can be used (by whom?) (such as "she was found dead from the gunfire," "mistakes were made"), truncated to suppress the human agent until actions appear to simply happen, with no one responsible for them at all. There are other linguistic hedges, such as existential constructions ( "there was a shooting"), or turning an active verb into an impersonal and important-sounding nominalization (such as "incarceration"). These are found in quite a lot of technical jargon, downplaying the impact of the very act itself.

We might also separate ourselves from unmentionable events by shifting the footing and the framing when reporting information, by putting those noxious words we're too timid to voice into other people's mouths. Or so they say. Or, says Irvine, we could shift the register, by talking about you know what and you know who in more formal, technical, or Latinate terminology (a well-known learnèd way of archly beating around the bush about the "naughty bits").

The euphemism, one of the oldest forms of language, covers up the human condition. "Thus gentlemen dine, perspire, and expectorate while peasants eat, sweat, and spit," as Irvine puts it. But euphemisms are not just for keeping up appearances as we Tom Ripley ourselves up the class ladder.

We use this kind of language often in an effort to be tactful, polite, and to avoid confrontation and minimize negativity, which are cooperative ways to communicate with each other-usually a good thing. By not taking a more direct linguistic stance, language can appear to be more neutral and objective, disconnected from the personal.

So what harm can there really be in the humble euphemism or its linguistically indirect colleagues?

Rather than reporting that, say, a politician told a lie, publications may prefer to use more roundabout phrases.

What some studies have found is that people are actually more likely to use euphemisms to save face socially than in consideration of the feelings of others. This, coupled with the desire to sound neutral, objective, and authoritative, can lead journalists to use euphemistic language to reframe a story obliquely, even when the facts themselves are indisputable. This can obscure or omit important information. Rather than reporting that, say, a politician told a lie, publications may prefer to use more roundabout phrases like the rather archaic "falsehood" or the technical-sounding "misrepresentation," if they don't avoid addressing it at all. By reframing events to sound more socially acceptable, to avoid the disagreeable, such tentative reporting not only reveals hidden biases and value judgments, it also can fall into ethical traps that have real-world and legal repercussions.

Researchers Caitlin M. Fausey and Lera Boroditsky ask the simple question " When bad things happen, how do we decide who is to blame and how much they should be punished? " The language of police reports, legal statements, and public discussions can include active phrasing with an agent, but also passive or indirect constructions with no agent. Can the differences between these constructions influence our ideas of who is to blame, how much we blame them, and how financially liable we think they are as a result? Even if it's a well-known event we can observe with our own eyes, the answer is: probably.

"For example," Fausey and Boroditsky write, "in the 197,745 trials held between 1674 and 1913 at London's central criminal court [...], cases with the agentive phrase 'broke it' in the court records resulted in a guilty verdict more often than did cases with the nonagentive phrase 'it broke' [...]. In the most serious of cases (when the charge was 'killing'), the transitive/intransitive contrast as marked by different verbs also predicted verdicts. Saying 'killed' resulted in more guilty verdicts than did saying 'died'."

Because it's impossible to tell whether these historical cases were just due to reports tending to use more active, agentive language when the perpetrator was clearly more guilty, the researchers set out to test the impact of this kind of language framing. Hundreds of informants were asked to view certain reporting about the infamous Super Bowl "wardrobe malfunction" incident, in which Justin Timberlake ripped Janet Jackson's costume a little too shockingly. The outcome was that Jackson was publicly blamed and shamed, CBS was fined half a million dollars for public indecency, and Justin Timberlake, whose actual fault it was for doing the ripping, went on to have a long and storied career. The linguistic experiment found that just changing the language had a strong impact not only on how people viewed Timberlake's culpability but also on how much they believed he should be fined. When reports of the incident used more direct language, people believed Timberlake should pay an extra $30,000 in fines. This was 53 percent higher than what people thought he should be fined when the reports used more indirect language. So, yes, language matters.

The research supports the fact that euphemisms and other indirect language can not only affect people's perceptions of blame, it can also encourage unethical acts, because people tend to view actions as legal or appropriate when described euphemistically-presenting "bribes" as a "soft commission," for example. Repetition of euphemisms can lead people to forget what ethical problems they once arose from, such as in phrases like "creative accounting" or "right-sizing," which are wholly disconnected from any corporate illegality or ruthlessness.

The morality of the euphemism can certainly be complex, particularly when it comes to violent crime. On the one hand, traumatic experiences can be difficult for survivors and even eyewitnesses to articulate directly. But on the other, the very use of indirect, euphemistic, or coded language to ensure safety can also cause observers to downplay the seriousness of the crime and obscure the perpetrator's responsibility for that crime.

In one serious case, researchers Kristen Lucas and Jeremy P. Fyke investigate how the indirect, euphemistic language used in the discourse around the Jerry Sandusky sexual abuse case at Penn State University enabled a "decade-long organizational cover-up that ran concurrently with Sandusky's pattern of abuse." In order to save face and avoid embarrassment and bad publicity for the football team, Penn State leaders used the ambiguous interpretation of euphemisms, such as "horsing around," to conceal the facts of the case and downplay the severity of what was reported to them.

Though it was true that, shockingly, no one directly reported the crimes to the authorities, Lucas and Fyke point out that that doesn't mean employees weren't talking and trying to report the crimes to the university's chain of command. This is not completely surprising, as research shows that organizations may often suppress dissent, and "subordinates often are fearful of engaging in critical upward communication, with some of the most cited reasons for remaining silent being fear of being labeled as a troublemaker, concern for ruining relationships, fear of being punished, or concern about the organizational hierarchy."

When graduate assistant Michael McQueary first reported the sexual assault he witnessed involving then-assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky, possibly due to the upsetting nature of the event, his language was euphemistic, but he believed the meaning was clear. This meaning was semantically diluted and bleached as it moved up the chain of command, from euphemistic language such as "in the shower with a little boy," "something was going wrong," and "It was way over the lines" to, astonishingly, "horsing around," "playful," and "kind of wrestling."

In the current debate about police brutality and racial bias, it is all the more important to be aware of what influence language can have on ordinary people's lives. As Orwell once said, "[...] if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought." Though euphemisms and other linguistic hedges have their place in how we communicate, the repeated use of troubling euphemistic messaging, such as "officer-involved shooting," does have an impact on whether perpetrators are ultimately held responsible for their crimes. Framing reports about crimes euphemistically, or omitting disagreeable information out of fear of offending, can certainly have an effect on how people understand the serious moral implications of a situation. It can also allow leaders to mindlessly act or to deliberately ignore ethical crimes while morally justifying their decisions based on more favorable semantics of a form of language that exists to hide the unpleasantly dark truths in human nature.
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The Ethical Life of Euphemisms | JSTOR Daily

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In March of this year, just as the pandemic was upending the way we live, a crime was committed. A young woman, whose name was Breonna Taylor, was killed, as an early local news report described, "inside a home [...] in the middle of an officer-involved shooting. [...]

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A couple of years ago, a male colleague introduced me to someone as a 'ball-breaker'. He looked at me and smiled, clearly intending this as a compliment, and went on to make a joke about how even he was a little scared of me sometimes. 'Ball-breaker'. It makes me uncomfortable. It's a phrase which implies that the subject is aggressive, and has the power (and tendency) to emasculate men. It implies that the subject is brutal, perhaps destructive. I don't recognise myself in any of those depictions of leadership. This phrase is also heavily gendered; you seldom hear men described in such terms.

My colleague clearly felt that he was saying something positive about me; saying I am strong and effective in the workplace. In reality, phrases like this reduce women to being defined purely by the impact they have on men. She's not being called decisive, honest or driven; she's being called a 'ball-breaker', implying that all she does is dominate men and, no matter what she achieves professionally, it is only notable through the lens of how men feel about her leadership. If she makes a decision which a male colleague would not have made, she metaphorically 'breaks' his 'balls' - he is not the one in control and he is therefore rendered useless. She has done that; the 'ball-breaker.'
If a man had done it, everyone else's 'balls' would have remained in tact but, because she is a woman in leadership, she leaves a trail of emasculated colleagues in her wake.

How ridiculous.

Language like this is at the more extreme end of the scale of gendered language in our workplaces. It is damaging to women and men alike (there are plenty of words and phrases used to describe men which are also problematic). I would argue that, when your workplace is a school, this is potentially even more dangerous because it might also impact on how our young people see the world and themselves.

The split in language used to describe men and women in the workplace is well recognised; women are bossy, pushy, scatty, 'blonde', emotional, dramatic, bitchy, catty, manipulative... these are terms which we generally don't use to describe cis-gendered (straight) men. This starts early; we shower little girls with platitudes about their appearance and sweetness, while simultaneously describing boys as boisterous and strong. This is a problem in our schools, because it means that women in positions of authority generally have more to do in themselves to embrace and develop their confidence as leaders. Let me explain:

If we tell young boys it is ok to be strong, decisive, wilful, and we embrace the 'boys will be boys' (*shudder) reaction to aggression and play fighting, then it is not a huge leap as a male adult to be strong and direct in a leadership position. It is socially acceptable for men to be dominant figures and to engage in challenging others when necessary.

In contrast, let's look at the expectations of girls growing up in our society; there are heavily segregated aisles in toy shops which direct girls to looking after dolls, being nurses, not doctors, pink kitchens and not a toy car in sight (unless it's a pink convertible for Barbie). Girls are told from a young age that they are best suited to nurturing, caring roles, and that their value is measured by how pleasing they are to others. It is far less socially acceptable for women to be dominant and strong in a work environment; they are often expected to be the peace-makers, the glue, the compromisers.

The issue with this divide is that we need all of these characteristics in good leaders. Effective leaders should have the capacity to be strong and firm when it is necessary, and to be the compromiser and nurturer when appropriate. To develop the best leaders, we mush support people to develop these parts of themselves so that they have a broad toolkit to work with. The way we split supposedly 'male' and 'female' character traits means that, when those more traditionally masculine traits are called for, it is more difficult for a female leader to exhibit these characteristics because they have further to go - they have to embrace a persona which they have been conditioned from a young age to perceive as unfeminine. It also means that, for male colleagues, the reverse is true; there are real challenges and expectations around how they should behave which aren't necessarily fair either.

Personally, ideas of femininity and my own identity didn't bother me for a long time. I come from a family of very powerful women; my Nan wrote speeches for the Trades Unionists in the 60s and 70s, my aunt is a successful politician and business leader, my mother is a local welfare rights worker and campaigner. While I haven't escaped some degree of gender programming via the media (just look at my lipstick and heels collection), I have been very fortunate to see strong models of women in the workplace my entire life. This is not the case for many women I know and have worked with. I have seen women shy away from promotion opportunities which they really want, and are qualified for, because they don't think they are ready. I have seen women reluctant to have challenging conversations with colleagues because they don't want to be seen as being 'pushy'.
A friend of mine has agreed to share the following anecdote anonymously. At the time, she was a head of department working in a large school. She had a male second in department who she was working hard to develop. He was very ambitious and talented. For his own development, she took him into a data meeting with the principal and some other senior leaders. Throughout the meeting, though she was the head of department, and she had a proven track record of successful work and results in the school, the other people in the room (all men) addressed most of their questions to her second in department and, even when she was speaking, he often jumped in and interrupted her. She was really uncomfortable during the meeting and felt that something should be said. The next day, she went to speak to her line manager (one of the leaders who had been in the meeting) and explained how she felt. She was told that she should stop being so paranoid; her memory of the meeting was not at all how it happened, and perhaps she was being a bit insecure and over-sensitive.
This incident has two major implications for the female leader:
1. It is difficult to complain about something if those around you refuse to legitimise your feelings, and paint your reaction to something using gendered language. Terms such as 'insecure' and 'sensitive' suggest that the issue here is that she is being too weak, too soft, perhaps too feminine. In this situation, my friend did not take this further with her leadership team because she didn't want to be labelled 'whiny' or sensitive.
2. In order to address the behaviour of her second in department, she will need to have a clear, honest discussion to explain how unprofessional he was being by interrupting her. That is part of her job as his line manager; it is her duty to him to ensure that he understands how to behave appropriately in meetings. That is a difficult conversation to have. It requires direct challenge and confidence in your convictions. It also requires the firm composure you must have if the colleague in question disagrees with you, and you need to reiterate your expectations. In this situation, my friend did not have the conversation with her colleague. In her own words, she "chickened out". She didn't feel comfortable. This was perhaps made more difficult for her because her line manager didn't support her when she raised it with him.

This is one example. There is a double standard in what we expect from men and women, the way we describe them, the way we react to them. When I went back to work following maternity leave, my son went into nursery for three days per week, my husband began to work part time (he looks after our son for two days per week), and I worked full time (still do). This had been our plan for a long time; parenting is a team sport, and we put our players in the positions where they will be most successful. It works for us. The double standard we faced from people we knew, though, was really unexpected. My husband has had nothing but positive (if patronising) reactions to his part time move; "so caring," "such a good daddy," "so brave." On the flip side, I have had a number of quite unpleasant comments from the same people; "I don't know how you could leave him," "I could never have given up that time with my children," "don't you think a child needs his mother?" Our parenting choices are our own, we make them together, we are happy with them, but somehow my husband is a heroic model of the modern man, and I am some sort of heartless 'career woman'!

I am lucky. I work in a school which has a strong female presence on the leadership team, and a culture of developing and supporting teachers to be rounded leaders; there doesn't seem to be that false dichotomy in our school that men are a certain way and women are another. That is, perhaps, also because our academy trust has a very strong ethos of equality, developing staff and quite forward thinking working practices.

There are things which all schools can do, and things which both women and men can do to change institutional cultures:
Schools and school leaders:

Unpick 'masculine' leadership skills with women. Help them to talk about and embrace those characteristics which they might have subconsciously seen as being unfeminine or unattractive. You could provide scenarios to talk through and unpick how they make people feel and why that might be.

Provide practice support for challenging situations. Some of the most useful development I have had as a leader is when senior colleagues have let me practice with them before having the real challenging conversation with someone I lead. This gives you a sense of stability and conviction in what you are saying, as well as a chance to talk through what to do if conversations go in a direction you are not expecting. (Thanks to Mark, Jonny, Caroline and Kat - they are all leaders I have worked with who have given me that time.)

Provide coaching for women. Having someone to talk through concerns or challenges without them giving answers or solutions is important. A coach asks the right questions - the answers come from you. That strengthens your confidence in yourself, builds independence and resilience, whilst also giving you a range of angles and approaches to a problem.

Be vigilant, and call out gender stereotypes in your institutions. If school leaders openly criticise and deal with gendered language and inequality when they come across it, then cultures quickly shift. Remember, the people who are most heavily affected by this issue may not feel comfortable to speak out for themselves.
Women:

Be 10% braver. Speak out about your experiences. Educate colleagues. Challenge people when they say or do things which are inappropriate.

Re-define femininity. If your own femininity is something which is important to you, then remember that it means so much more than some 1950s submissive housewife. If you work with integrity and honesty, your behaviour at work should never be used to reflect negatively on you as a woman.

Ask for support. Reach out to women in your workplace, and women in the wider teaching community for support. Organisation such as WomenEd, the Maternity CPD Project and Women Leading in Education will happily provide mentors, coaches and support to women in education.

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Call me a 'ball-breaker' one more time...

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This is a re-post of a blog I wrote for WomenEd in February 2019. A couple of years ago, a male colleague introduced me to someone as a 'ball-breaker'. He looked at me and smiled, clearly intending this as a compliment, and went on to make a joke about how even he was a little...

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Business Bullshit: An A-Z to get you through the dark days 👇

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Business Bullshit: An A-Z to get you through the dark days 👇

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Business Bullshit: An A-Z to get you through the dark days 👇
— Business Bullshit (@StopBusinessBS) April 3, 2020

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Business Bullshit: An A-Z to get you through the dark days 👇

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Business Bullshit: An A-Z to get you through the dark days 👇

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Business Bullshit: An A-Z to get you through the dark days 👇

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We cannot be sure what MPs and peers will talk about in 2019, but one word is likely to crop up a lot.

Brexit was mentioned 7,495 times in Parliament last year.

However it was only in December 2012 that it made its first appearance, courtesy of Liberal Democrat peer Lord Maclennan.

And the following year the word wasn't mentioned at all.

Here are some other words that have risen and fallen in political popularity.

Although the UK has been a member of the European Union for decades, the bloc is discussed far more often now that the UK is departing.

There was a bit of a spike in 2011 when the European Union Act was passed, creating a legal requirement to hold a referendum if any proposals were made to transfer further powers from the UK to the EU.

In the end, a referendum took place simply because the then-Prime Minister David Cameron promised one.

And when the UK voted to leave, mentions of the EU shot up.

Leaving the EU has big consequences for many aspects of policy - especially the UK's trading relationships.

The EU's customs union means there are no internal tariffs, or import taxes, on goods that are transported between them.

The UK government wants to leave this body in order to have the freedom to negotiate its own trade deals with other countries.

Politicians barely ever mentioned the customs union before the Brexit vote, but, as you can see, that changed dramatically.

Aside from Brexit, one area in which there has been a huge shift in the past decade is technology.

"No sector of society is immune from the explosion in the use of social media communication tools," said Labour's now deputy leader Tom Watson back in 2008, marking the first mention of "social media" in the House of Commons.

He was right, and use of the term has increased every year since, with 825 mentions in 2018 alone.

The surge in mentions for "artificial intelligence" has been even more recent.

It was barely mentioned before 2016, when politicians said it a few dozen times.

But it rose dramatically the following year when the House of Lords Artificial Intelligence Committee was established.

So, politicians are talking more about Brexit and technology - but what have they stopped talking about as much?

The economy is a big one. During the financial crisis and the following years of recovery, it dominated the political conversation.

The UK economy was in recession for five quarters in 2008 and 2009, but speculation of a later "double dip" recession turned out to be unfounded.

The UK has had a budget deficit - spending more money than it receives - ever since 2001. After the financial crisis, it ballooned.

It has slowly fallen since, but has not been eliminated.

When we look at parliamentary mentions of "deficit", we see a very similar pattern.

It shot up around the time of the financial crisis and has been slowly falling ever since.

While we might hear lots about the customs union, transition period and backstop now, we are less likely to hear similarly complex economic terms.

Take quantitative easing - when a central bank buys assets, usually government bonds, from money it has created electronically.

What is quantitative easing?

Both the Bank of England and the US Federal Reserve embarked on the process in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis in an attempt to stimulate economic growth.

But mentions have slowed to a trickle over the past decade as Brexit has taken centre stage.

Foreign policy priorities have also shifted over the past decade.

Thousands of British troops were stationed in Afghanistan in the late 2000s, with 454 soldiers losing their lives in the country between 2001 and 2015.

The last combat troops left Afghanistan in 2014, though a significant number are stationed there now in non-combat roles as part of the Nato mission.

The UK's troop contribution to this mission was beefed up in 2018, corresponding with a small uptick in parliamentary mentions.

The story of Iraq is more complex.

It was mentioned a whopping 3,805 times in 2003 when the war began.

It then fell sharply, before ticking up again from 2014 related to so-called Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

It is hard to predict what might plummet from the news agenda. However, it seems likely that Brexit and technology will remain big issues over the next decade.

But remember, back in 2010 the customs union was mentioned once in the House of Lords - and not at all in the House of Commons.

In 2018 those figures were 547 and 1,537 respectively.

So, it is more than possible that the biggest political issue of the 2020s is not even on politicians' radars right now.

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We cannot be sure what MPs and peers will talk about in 2019, but one word is likely to crop up a lot. Brexit was mentioned 7,495 times in Parliament last year. However it was only in December 2012 that it made its first appearance, courtesy of Liberal Democrat peer Lord Maclennan.

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Updated October 16, 2019 14:37:01

The British Psychological Society is calling for changes for how we talk about fatness, suggesting we should no longer use the phrase "obese people", but instead, "people with obesity" or "people living with obesity".

These changes are being proposed to recognise that fatness is not about personal choice and that fat shaming and fat stigma are harmful.

But this suggested language change is based on the idea obesity is a disease to be cured and fat people are not a natural part of the world.

This serves to reinforce stigma, rather than prevent it.

How does stigma and shame affect fat people?

Fat stigma can harm people's physical health, mental health, and relationships.

Independent of body mass index (BMI), fat stigma increases blood pressure, inflammation, and levels of cortisol in the body, due to the activation of the fight or flight response.

Fat stigma reduces self-esteem and increases depression. It isolates fat people, making them less likely to engage with the world. It also impacts on fat people's relationships with family, colleagues, and friends.

People around the world, and of all ages, hold negative attitudes about fatness and fat people.

In a study in the United States, for example, more than one-third of the participants reported:

"...one of the worst things that could happen to a person would be for [them] to become obese."

How terminology reinforces stigma

While many people are uncomfortable with the term fat, fat activists prefer the term.

They see it as both as an act of rebellion - to adopt a word that has been wielded against them - but also because they argue it's the most appropriate word to describe their bodies.

To be overweight implies there is a natural weight to be; that within human diversity, we should all be the same proportion of height and weight.

Obesity is a medical term that has pathologised the fat body.

The British Psychological Society's acknowledgement that rather than saying "obese people", we should call them "people with obesity" reinforces that obesity is a disease; a chronic illness people suffer from.

The desire to shift to person-first language is understandable.

Person-first, or people-first, language is an attempt to not define people primarily by their disease, or disability, or other deviating factor.

Person-first language recognises people as individuals with rights to dignity and care, and puts the person, rather than their "condition", first.

But others have argued person-first language attempts to erase, deny, or ignore the aspect of the person that isn't "normal", and reinforces that there is something shameful or dehumanising about their disability or disease.

They promote identity-first language, which allows people to take pride in who they are, rather than separating a person from that aspect of themselves.

The problem with person-first language, they argue, is that those identities are stigmatised.

But without the stigma, there would be no concern with calling someone a disabled person, for instance, rather than a person with disabilities.

So what should we do?

The best approach, especially for healthcare professionals, is to ask people what they prefer their designation to be.

And for the rest of us, to acknowledge that what an individual wants to be called or how they want to talk about their experiences is up to them, not us.

If a fat person wants to call themselves fat, it is not up to non-fat people to correct them.

Shifting the language we use to talk about fatness and fat people can reduce fat stigma.

But continuing to frame fatness as a disease is not a helpful contribution.

Cat Pausé is a senior lecturer in human development at Massey University. This article originally appeared on The Conversation.

Topics: health, obesity, community-and-society, discrimination, australia

First posted October 15, 2019 06:00:51

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Cancelling the word 'obese' won't make it easier to be fat. Here's why

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The British Psychological Society wants to do away with the phrase obese people in favour of people living with obesity. But framing obesity as a disease to be cured and fat people as unnatural only reinforces stigma, writes Cat Pausé.

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Non-English speaking migrants take to the unique Australian dialect more readily than English-speaking migrants, according to research by ANU.

The research from the School of Literature, Languages and Linguistics found migrants learning English as their second language use "Aussie words", such as 'esky', 'thong', 'doona' and 'nappy' at the same rate as Australian-born people.

Lead researcher Dr Ksenia Gnevsheva said it was important to study how people acquire the vocabulary of a second English dialect because it reflects how well they settle in and become part of Australian society.

"The way people adopt local words and phrases after arriving in Australia is reflective of their engagement with the Australian culture," Dr Gnevsheva said.

"It was interesting to see how readily non-English speakers do this and the social forces that drive the process."

"Despite a perception that immigrants are resistant to assimilation, what our research found is people who speak a foreign language are actually more likely to adopt the Australian lexicon, more readily than native English speakers who come here and at the same rate as the Aussies who live here. That quite extraordinary," said Dr Gnevsheva.

The study involved testing four groups of people living in Australia: native Russian speakers; whose first working exposure to the English language was in Australia, American migrants who experienced Australian English as their second English dialect, native Russian speakers who had lived in America before coming to Australia and native Australian speakers.

The groups were shown pictures of 50 items that have distinctly Australian or American names such as jam (jelly), esky (cooler), lolly (candy), lift (elevator), rockmelon (cantaloupe), tomato sauce (ketchup), torch (flashlight) and queue (line) and were asked what they called these things.

"The results were surprising in that the local Australians used 80 per cent of the Australian words and 20 per cent of the American words, the same results as Russians speaking English as their second language," Dr Gnevsheva said.

"The American group only adopted 20 per cent of Australian words and the Russian speakers who had lived in the US first kept half of the American words they'd learnt and adopted 50 per cent of the words in the local Australian dialect."

Dr Gnevsheva said some of the social forces that affect second dialect acquisition are personal and mostly bound up in identity.

"We found people who already speak English can be reluctant to "give up" their native words in favour of the Australian version.

"Many of the Americans in the study said they knew Australian words like 'nappy' but just couldn't bring themselves to use them because they felt like a "traitor" to their country and culture if they did.

"This also shows us just how strongly a person considers language a part of their identity and how big an ask it is if we demand they give up their native tongue.

"Whereas, the Russians who'd learnt a bit of UK English at school were far less wedded to the words they'd learnt from a book and were ready to drop them in favour of the Australian version," she said.

"They found on arrival here what they'd learnt didn't chime with real life situations or communications in the country they'd chosen to move to."

In another experiment, the same four groups listened to the words - plus a few made-up words - spoken in Australian and American accents and were asked if that word was a real word or not.

Results found the same group who had English as their second language were the best at recognising words correctly in both accents.

Unsurprisingly, the Australians were best at recognising words in an Australian accent and the Americans were best at American words in American accents, but did poorly on Australian words in an Australian or an American accent.

This confirmed the second-language speakers as more agile, adaptive and attuned to the local dialect and the best of all four groups at second dialect acquisition.

Dr Gnevsheva's co-researchers were: Anita Szakay of Macquarie University and Sandra Jansen of the University of Paderborn.

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Non-English speakers adopt more Australianisms: ANU research

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Non-English speaking migrants take to the unique Australian dialect more readily than English-speaking migrants, according to research by ANU. The research from the School of Literature, Languages and Linguistics found migrants learning English as their second language use "Aussie words", such as 'esky', 'thong', 'doona' and 'nappy' at the same rate as Australian-born people.

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What unites a nation? A shared culture, similar values, healthy respect? Or in the case of Australian English, perhaps a rabid obsession with nicknames?

In these polarizing times, it's all too easy to feel as though you don't even share a common language with some of those you share a country with. We're keenly aware of how changing language can divide and bias us, even if we sound the same. Bewildering linguistic innovations in slang, jargon, the idioms and argots of different subcultures, generations and even genders can be used to put people in their separate places.

So it's fascinating to observe those communal language quirks that work to bring everyone back together again. When speakers share a linguistic camaraderie that reflects a community's values, it can ultimately help build a culture.

This is the case for the weird, wonderful, and distinctly Aussie habit of nicknaming and abbreviating everything. Nicknames may seem trivial, and even childish, but they also reveal how Australians see themselves and relate to each other, all baked (under a hot summer sun) into their language use.

The Aussie Habit of Nicknaming

"Strine" slang has always been an important part of Australian life, prized for its informality and irreverence, at times vulgar, at times poetic, employing metaphors ( "don't come the raw prawn with me"), similes ( "as mad as a cut snake"), as well as rhyming slang ("dog's eye with dead horse"-obviously a meat pie with tomato sauce). But Aussie slang, and Aussie nicknames, have moved on from the colorful ocker idioms of yesteryear.

Enter nicknames of the hypocoristic persuasion, beginning in baby talk or childhood language as shorteners (and in some cases lengtheners) for actual people's names. Thus a Robert might be "Robby," Mark could end up "Marko," Sharon is classically "Shaz/Shazza" and for this Australian linguist, it was sadly impossible to avoid being called "Cheese" at school. This shows that though nicknames might generally end up as a shorter, easier version of something, length is probably not the most crucial aspect of a nickname. Rather, nicknames carry certain other pragmatic senses, such as a rejection of formality, and breeding familiarity (and therefore sometimes contempt, as we shall see).

Australian English gave the world the word "selfie," and (probably) the new cute word on the block "doggo."

Now, not content with making up informal pseudonyms for all our friends' names, Australian English also tries to make friends with the rest of words in the dictionary. That's right, Australian English is not just to blame for giving the world the word "selfie," and (probably) the new cute word on the block "doggo", but so much more. Many other ordinary words can be abbreviated into these childlike, diminutive forms that can have a curious effect on how Australians interact with each other-even if they don't know each other.

Australian hypocoristics are formed by a semi productive process, easily understood and enthusiastically shared by its native speakers, and providing a rich source of new slang, just as an older, more idiomatic slang style begins to die out. Australians can't seem to help themselves and will attempt to shorten any poor, innocent word they can get their hands on, whether it's an avo toastie for brekkie or a choccy bikkie with a cuppa in the arvo-it can often seem so incomprehensible to the wider English speaking world, but not to Australians.

All the ways in which Australian English can form these abbreviations is an interesting story in itself, so I'll keep it short. Consider these examples, some more common than others, in which the first syllable (or so) is truncated and a suffix is added to the end:

1. : exxy (expensive), mozzie (mosquito), uey (u-turn), selfie (self-portrait photograph).

2. : aggro (aggressive), rando (random person), weirdo (weird person), arvo (afternoon), povo (poverty/poor person), avo (avocado).

3. : dins/din-dins (dinner, with reduplication), totes (totally), probs (probably), turps (turpentine), Salvos (Salvation Army, with -o ending), maths (mathematics).

4. : preggers/preggas (pregnant), Maccas (McDonald's), champers (champagne). This patterns after the so-called Oxford slang suffix that gave us soccer (association football).

5. : soz (sorry), appaz (apparently), Bazza (Barry). (This last form may puzzle you, as it weirdly changes "r" at the end of syllables to "z". This has to do with non-rhotic Australian English's inability to pronounce /r/ at the end of a word or syllable. Phonologically speaking, /z/ is not only a common replacement for /r/, but it also then patterns after the plural-like -s ending).

The act of nicknaming is not unusual in itself-other dialects of English do it too, in similar morphological ways, but perhaps in more restricted contexts, such as the aforementioned baby talk and pet names. It's just that Australian English speakers ( along with our trans-Tasman cousins, the New Zealanders), seem to regularly do it so much more, and in much wider social and speech contexts. The fascinating thing then is not just how all these hypocoristics are formed, but why Australian English speakers do it so often.

It's related to how baby talk is formed, and certainly looks like a diminutive, but unexpectedly, Australian hypocoristics don't necessarily have the sense of being a smaller version of something, as linguist Anna Wierzbicka points out. For example, the abbreviations used in American English baby talk, like "birdie," "doggie," and "kitty," have a diminutive effect (and might also be used this way in Australian English), but when the same suffixes are used with other, less childish words, such as " tradie" (tradesperson), "lippie" (lipstick), or " sunnies" (sunglasses), this doesn't hold true. Instead, according to Wierzbicka, the pragmatic effect is one of "convivial good humor" and fellowship, while downplaying the importance or formality of what's being said.

Nevertheless, because these abbreviations look just like the diminutives used in child language, some cultural commentators might find themselves cringing at the overuse of Australian hypocoristics, regarding them as infantile or juvenile, or even uneducated. So why don't Australians start taking themselves more seriously, and use full, grown up words like the rest of the world?

What Diminutives Do

There might be a point to it all. When we dig a little deeper, it turns out that some of the unique characteristics of diminutives, found in so many different languages, could hold a clue to why these diminutive-like nicknames are so popular with Australian speakers.

Diminutives, a fascinating grammatical class in themselves, are near universal, according to scholar Daniel Jurafsky, and are prominently used in child language. The association that diminutives have with childhood is key when we start to consider their use in wider, adult speech contexts. Some researchers claim that diminutives can also be gendered, as apparently more women use them than men, theoretically because women are more likely to be communicating with children. It's not clear, however, that this assumption holds water across the sea of languages. In a quantitative study of Greek diminutives, for example, sociolinguist Marianthi Makri-Tsilipakou finds that Greek men are more frequent users of diminutives in speech, possibly because it is more marked when Greek women use them. Meanwhile, in Australian English, hypocoristics do not appear to be constrained in use by gender or generation. Everyone uses them.

As a matter of fact, Jurafsky points out that the semantics of diminutives are not restricted or limited to this idea of smallness or childishness, even if that is their core meaning. There's evidence that, in many languages, diminutives developed from hypocorism, that is, from people's nicknames in childhood, rather than the other way around. When people nicknamed words in the same way, these abbreviations acquired the baby talk sense of "small" or "nonserious." When regularly used in different speech contexts, perhaps this core meaning of the diminutive then developed new, related connotations-sometimes even contradictory ones. In Mexican Spanish for instance, "ahorita," a diminutive form of "now," has the more intense sense of "immediately, right now" while in Dominican Spanish the very same word means "soon, in a little while."

The enthusiastic and effective use of nicknames mirrors core Australian values and desired national characteristics, such as mateship, friendliness, informality, and solidarity with other Australians.

It's easy to see how the close association of diminutives with children's and (as it's assumed) women's language can give rise to a range of non-threatening pragmatic senses in different languages. They've been used to convey affection, informality, playfulness, familiarity, euphemism, inoffensiveness, politeness... and even, in the end, contempt. While a friendly nickname can express familiarity and help build relationships, an ironic nickname like "little Donny" applied to an adult you don't respect can carry the weight of contempt.

What Language Use Reveals About Culture

So how does this all play out in the great Australian obsession with nicknames? The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis being what it is, linguists tend to be cautious about directly or causally linking linguistic or grammatical processes to real social and cultural phenomena. Nevertheless, Anna Wierzbicka makes a compelling argument that this widespread use of Australian hypocoristics is evidence that language use can be strongly associated with culture. The enthusiastic and effective use of nicknames mirrors core Australian values and desired national characteristics, such as mateship, friendliness, informality, and solidarity with other Australians. This claim has been made for other languages too, such as Greek, where a similar, informal socialization and friendliness is interpreted through the use of diminutives.

Playful hypocoristics are a way to convey this shared ethos, downplaying formality and minimizing the kind of bragging so upsetting to Australia's infamous Tall Poppy Syndrome, in which those who rate themselves and their successes above all others are cut down (in this case, probably with a sharply worded, friendly nickname or two). Perhaps the cuteness makes everything seem friendlier. Pure speculation? Research studies have shown that the use of hypocoristics by Australian English speakers to each other does have a real world effect, resulting in an increased positive reception, as speakers are seen as more likable. The same use of those same nicknames by a non Australian accented speaker does not have the same effect.

Interestingly, there's a contrasting example of how language and culture interact when we consider American culture, with its national stereotype of the rugged individuals going it alone, the ethic of hard work, and the drive for personal success. Studies have observed, in language found in books, song lyrics, and T.V. shows, that there's a marked increase in ego-driven language use, phrasing that emphasizes uniqueness, the personal, the individual, the self.

Likewise, in a study of compliments and politeness, Americans were described as "emphatically enthusiastic" (PDF download) in the way they tend to offer direct, maximized appreciations of success compared to some non-Americans. In American English, for example, speakers are socialized to be politely, but forcefully, complimentary through structures like " I love your -" (I love your shirt/hair/car/etc.), while in New Zealand English the more tepid "like" replaces "love" in twice as many compliment cases. While Americans tend to overtly observe and celebrate successes through enthusiastic compliments, non-Americans such as Brits, Germans, and Scandinavians are more likely to praise by understating or minimizing the force of the compliment, if they use them at all, such as "you're not a bad driver," or "that wasn't the worst meal you've cooked."

While Australian and American societies are similar in many ways, they differ markedly in which national characteristics are most valued by their citizens. Where Americans might elevate the individual, self-sufficiency, and success, Australians seem to value mateship, the collective, and community building-and it's possible this is reflected through the language use of both societies. Australia's quirky, playful obsession with nicknames, a kind of small poppy syndrome that helps Australians share and celebrate their culture of egalitarian friendship and community, might have a serious side after all.

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Small Poppy Syndrome: Why are Australians so Obsessed With Nicknaming Things? | JSTOR Daily

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What unites a nation? A shared culture, similar values, healthy respect? Or in the case of Australian English, perhaps a rabid obsession with nicknames? In these polarizing times, it's all too easy to feel as though you don't even share a common language with some of those you share a country with.

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What could the many synonyms in the English language possibly have to do with social disconnection? And what does jargon, a kind of language that nobody likes but can't stop, won't stop using, have to do with manipulating meaning?

Perhaps nothing at all... or perhaps they can be stark reminders that words aren't all created equal. The language choices we make can have profound repercussions for how we engage with the world, and the world with us.

How Language Reflects Life

Recent research tells us that the very technologies designed to connect people, such as social media, often end up disconnecting us from experiencing the simple pleasures of being human in the natural world. Modern life online can be lonely. Language sometimes reflect this.

As life grows increasingly more complex, it requires an ever-evolving, specialized language, another kind of social technology, to explain all the shadowy online things on which we spend our precious time, social interactions that are virtually real, yet somehow not quite real. Language naturally changes, and yet many of the trends of words, catchphrases, sound bytes that are produced and promoted over others can also give us a niggling sense of disconnection, or even of being played, where the emotional impact of meaning itself can also seem virtually real, yet not quite real. Through language, trivial things can be made to seem more important than they are, while more significant things can be overlooked-or deliberately obscured.

Consider the wild debate over how the Oxford Junior Dictionary for children removed infrequently used nature terms like "chestnut," "lark," "buttercup," and "clover," and replaced them with seemingly more relevant contemporary technical jargon, such as "block-graph," "analogue," "chatroom," and "mp3 player," thereby prizing an "interior, solitary childhood" over one spent playing outside in the woods and fields.

English probably has more synonyms than any other language.

Does it matter? Why be up in arms about this news at all, as many prominent writers and readers were? In general there's nothing wrong with new words entering the language. This decision was made based on usage studies from largely children's texts and corpora, so shouldn't we all move with the times and trust in an objective science? Or could data be biased?

As the uproar shows, in some vague, indescribable way, we feel something when we see the first group of words that we may not with regards to the second. Is it just cultural, poetic, or linguistic prejudice that makes us like a some words, and not others? Or is there some other story behind why some words seem to alienate us?

The English Language's Split Personality

It may have something to do with the strange bipolar nature of English, lexically torn between two languages. The English language is at its heart a Germanic language. And yet, after the Norman Conquest, Norman French became the language of the elite ruling class. This caused a huge influx of Latinate words to enter the language at high levels of society, such as government, law, education and business. French was the language of power.

This had a profound effect on the emerging Modern English language. As a result, English has this split personality of two opposing lexicons-one from the Germanic/Anglo-Saxon side of the family tree and the other from the French/Greco-Latinate interloper-existing side by side (and uncomfortably glaring at each other at family reunions).

Because of this, English probably has more synonyms than any other language, with many redundant pairs that mean essentially the same thing, like flood/inundation, snake/serpent, inside/interior, friendly/amiable, bloom/flower, answer/respond, cow/bovine, gift/present to name just a few. But words are not all about meaning. Though they may mean the same things, the ways and the contexts in which they're used are very different, as well as the assumptions we implicitly make when one is used and not the other.

Germanic origin words tend to be the short words, usually describing simple human needs, nature, life and relationships ( births, deaths, love, sun, moon, earth, water), while Latinate words are all the big long ones- more polysyllabic, abstract, formal, and fancy. It's thanks to both linguistic strands, as well as other borrowings, that English has such a richness of vocabulary, with clear jobs for both classes of words.

Style guides, plain language advocates, and teachers often follow George Orwell's dictum to "never use a long word where a short one will do."

Together with conventional Latin and Greek scientific usage, Latinate forms by now make up a majority of English vocabulary... and that number might be increasing, thanks to jargon.

Where Jargon Fits In

Originally used in more formal, intellectual and abstract contexts, Latinate words have held onto their prestige and their power. So when we coin new words to describe new things (and old things), especially if we want to sound smart, precise, and scientific, we overwhelmingly reach for a Latinate form, not a Germanic one. Instead of just talking, we now also have dialoguing (even if we wish we didn't). Some studies have shown that though users of this more formal language might be seen as competent, listeners often view them as distant and unapproachable, while speakers that use more Germanic forms are often seen as flexible and might be more likely to "help you out of a jam."

This is perhaps because most of the words we absorb as babies and first learn as children are still the little Germanic words, and they also happen to be the ones that are still most commonly used. So we develop this long-lived, deep-rooted familiarity with their meanings and their senses in a way that we don't with Latinate words, which can often seem detached and disconnected from any emotional reaction to a word's meaning. While we worry about disastrous " flood" warnings, our French friends might have the same kind of emotional panic about imminent " inundations." English has borrowed the same word but it certainly doesn't feel the same. Likewise, snakes might give you the shivers, while serpents don't threaten you in quite the same way. Short, Germanic origin words can have a significant impact on how we react to information.

For that reason, style guides, plain language advocates, and teachers often follow is more easily remembered and absorbed than its mysterious scientific name George Orwell's dictum to "never use a long word where a short one will do." Despite advising students to avoid using Latinate forms, a study showed that many instructors often unwittingly violate their own rules, and are swayed by writing that contains more Latinate forms, possibly because of the assumption of this type of language being more educated, precise (e.g. spotty vs occasional mean the same thing but one seems more definitive), and prestigious (a chamber is a lot grander than a room). So while the familiar, shorter words are viewed positively, we may assume the longer words are more important, intellectual, and possibly convey a lot more meaning than we can really grasp. A nature term like the flower forget-me-not directly borrowed from German Vergissmeinnicht myosotis (from the Greek for the just as picturesque mouse ear).

This matters, because Latinate words can seem more distant and a little unreal. Ultimately, their meanings can be more easily manipulated and abused without us understanding instinctively what's happened-such as when jargon is used in euphemisms or doublespeak (when it's designed to deliberately mislead) or other circumlocutions. This happens all too frequently in politics, government, bureaucracy, the military, and corporate life-all areas of concentrated social power.

Take these poor, unloved, deliberately evasive and confusing examples of jargon from the U.S. government's own site on plain language:

It's easy to see how the shorter, plainer version may pack more of an emotional punch, something a government bureaucrat or military spokesperson might want to avoid.

How Jargon Can Exclude and Obscure

It turns out that, far from being objective, jargon-outwardly a sober, professional kind of talk for experts from different occupational fields-has always carried with it some very human impulses, placing power and prestige over knowledge. A doctor, for example, might inappropriately use jargon in explaining a diagnosis to a patient, which prevents the patient from participating in their own care. This quality of jargon attracts those that might want to obscure biases, beef up simplistic ideas, or even hide social or political embarrassments behind a slick veneer of seemingly objective, "scientific" language without being challenged.

Latinate forms happen to lend themselves well to new terminology like this, especially technical jargon, for those very perceptions of precision and prestige, as well as detachment. But this detachment comes with a price. The alienness and incomprehensibility of new jargon words we're unfamiliar with might sometimes make us a mite uncomfortable. It can sound inauthentic, compared to other innovative language change, from slang to secret languages. There are all kinds of innovative speech used by certain groups not just to share information easily, or to talk about new ideas, but also to show belonging and identity-and to keep outsiders out.

Jargon, as useful as it is in the right contexts, can end up being socially problematic and divisive when it hides and manipulates meanings.

It's one of the reasons people hate jargon with a passion and have been railing against it for years, H. W. Fowler called it centuries even. "talk that is considered both ugly-sounding and hard to understand." L.E. Sissman is a little more subtle. Sissman defines jargon as "all of these debased and isolable forms of the mother tongue that attempt to paper over an unpalatable truth and/or to advance the career of the speaker (or the issue, cause or product he is agent for) by a kind of verbal sleight of hand, a one-upmanship of which the reader or listener is victim."

Jargon, as useful as it is in the right contexts, can end up being socially problematic and divisive when it hides and manipulates meanings from those who need to receive the information. This negative reception hasn't stopped jargon that apes scientific language from being widely produced, by economists, academics, entrepreneurs, journalists... and probably even poets. Jargon has now become the devil's corporate middle management's language, making information harder to share and receive. It has seeped into almost every facet of a complex modern life, giving us new buzzwords not even a mother could love, with terms like self-actualization, monetize, incentivize, imagineering, onboarding, synergize, and the like. And there's so much more where that came from.

When Jargon Becomes Dangerous

William D. Lutz talks about how jargon and doublespeak can often be carefully designed to cover up embarrassing or secret information. For example, a commercial airline that had a 727 crash, killing three passengers, was able to pass off the resulting three million dollar insurance profit on its books as "the involuntary conversion of a 727," which was unlikely to be questioned by confused shareholders whose eyes would probably have glazed over from the cumbersome legal jargon.

Words aren't equal just because they mean the same thing, especially when the stakes are high. It's not simply a matter of knowing or not knowing the meaning of these words, or if they accurately describe facts, but what Sally McConnell-Ginet calls the conceptual or cultural baggage, the hidden background assumptions the language carries with them, the 'ologies and 'isms that pretend to be something they're not. Most recently in politics, the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings showed how deftly legal terminology can be wielded to avoid or plausibly deny or confuse clear facts. For example, denying knowledge of stolen documents is literally not a lie if you steadfastly assume they aren't stolen, despite textual evidence to the contrary. The statement "I am not sure that all legal scholars refer to Roe as the settled law of the land" literally defers to a fact, the meaning of which is true. The conceptual baggage the statement carries with it, however, strongly suggests the writer does not disagree with the opinion.

Linguist Dwight Bolinger suggests that this is exactly the kind of heinous abuse of meaning that makes linguistic activism critical, shining a spotlight on these egregious cases where lies are hidden by omission or avoidance of the truth in jargon, euphemism, doublespeak, and other linguistic trickery.

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The Tangled Language of Jargon | JSTOR Daily

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What could the many synonyms in the English language possibly have to do with social disconnection? And what does jargon, a kind of language that nobody likes but can't stop, won't stop using, have to do with manipulating meaning? Perhaps nothing at all... or perhaps they can be stark reminders that words aren't all created equal.

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So do only Chinese people get #coronavirus? Asking for the Herald Sun, which said it was a "Chinese virus". If so, I won't worry. I'm not Chinese! Gotcha. But remember when we used to say a disease belonged to a particular group of people? #auspol #wuhan

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So do only Chinese people get #coronavirus? Asking for the Herald Sun, which said it was a "Chinese virus". If so, I won't worry. I'm not Chinese! Gotcha. But remember when we used to say a disease belonged to a particular group of people? #auspol #wuhan https://t.co/rxxNAPvaOD

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So do only Chinese people get #coronavirus? Asking for the Herald Sun, which said it was a "Chinese virus". If so, I won't worry. I'm not Chinese! Gotcha. But remember when we used to say a disease belonged to a particular group of people? #auspol #wuhan pic.twitter.com/rxxNAPvaOD
— Jason Om (@jason_om) January 29, 2020

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So do only Chinese people get #coronavirus? Asking for the Herald Sun, which said it was a "Chinese virus". If so, I won't worry. I'm not Chinese! Gotcha. But remember when we used to say a disease belonged to a particular group of people? #auspol #wuhan https://t.co/rxxNAPvaOD

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.original_text
So do only Chinese people get #coronavirus? Asking for the Herald Sun, which said it was a "Chinese virus". If so, I won't worry. I'm not Chinese! Gotcha. But remember when we used to say a disease belonged to a particular group of people? #auspol #wuhan https://t.co/rxxNAPvaOD

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.text
So do only Chinese people get #coronavirus? Asking for the Herald Sun, which said it was a "Chinese virus". If so, I won't worry. I'm not Chinese! Gotcha. But remember when we used to say a disease belonged to a particular group of people? #auspol #wuhan

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BBC Radio 4 - Word of Mouth, Solving crime with forensic linguistics

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John Olsson talks to Michael Rosen about how he uses authorship analysis to solve murders.

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Focus on the direct and indirect speech, saving face, semantics.

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"Yes, no, maybe. I don't know. Can you repeat the question?"- They Might Be Giants

You'd be forgiven for being confused right now about how we're supposed to navigate the language of consent.

First there was the New Yorker's viral short story " Cat Person," a fictional depiction of an awkward date and all the delicate power negotiations in intimacy that come with it. After that came its real-life counterpart, a breathlessly and clumsily reported story on babe.net of an anonymous young woman "Grace" and her problematic experience with self-proclaimed feminist comedian, Aziz Ansari. For Grace, her verbal and non-verbal signals of discomfort seemed obvious enough that Ansari's persistence in the face of them counts as sexual misconduct. Ansari's subsequent response to the allegations shows he believes the interaction was entirely consensual. The off-the-cuff reactions to this exposé were decidedly mixed, with certain prominent commentators effectively discounting Grace's side for surprising reasons-which are largely linguistic.

In both experiences, crucial signals-both verbal and non-verbal cues-are sent but not received. Somehow, there's a disconnect in the discourse. The question is, was it due to willful passivity, willful ignorance... or something else altogether?

What these two stories share is an all-too-common occurrence. Many may dismiss such stories as making a big deal about a "bad date," or unreasonably requiring someone to be a mind-reader. But the enduring relevance of the #MeToo movement, not so fragile as to be toppled by a mere slip of a story, surely has allowed for conversation about both sexual assaults and really bad dates, even if they're not equivalent. And it all hinges on how consent is assumed to be communicated.

So, how should we, as a society, characterize this gray area, this fallow field of uncertain consent? As International Women's Day commemorates the struggle for women's rights and equality, it's worth unpacking why the discussion of sexual consent has been so unequal and unbalanced, with much of the burden and the blame placed on the person who frequently has the least amount of power in situations that require the most sensitivity and attention-from both participants.

Is "Utmost Resistance" the Only "No"?

There's "no means no" and there's "yes means yes." There's not so much discussion of the gray area in between, where many of these stories lie. Many social commentators have noted that saying yes or no-a direct, clear, verbal cue-is a basic requirement for signalling consent or refusal.

Grace's verbal and non-verbal cues have been criticized as simply not being unambiguous enough. Grace's immediate attempts to negotiate this delicate discourse politely and safely, for many, don't count because she also stayed and participated in sexual activity with Ansari when directed to. If you don't communicate properly, can you really expect hapless dates or potential aggressors to read your mind? Should she have resisted in a more direct and forceful way by saying no, in no uncertain terms, or leaving the apartment if her date persisted? To do otherwise is seen as a failure of character by some.

Linguist Susan Erlich calls this the deficiency model of miscommunication. In her discourse analysis of sexual consent, the third parties that judge the guilt or innocence of a defendant in a sexual assault case, such as at a university tribunal, often lean heavily on whether verbal and non-verbal cues were unclear and misinterpreted. If so, the assumption is that the complainants were "deficient" or "inactive" in properly signalling non-consent (not showing the "utmost resistance," or "no means no"). This strongly implies that the defendant has a "sexual prerogative," a right to continue the aggression and that any blame or responsibility rests squarely with the victims for not resisting clearly enough.

In Erlich's case study, what's curious is that, as in the Grace/Aziz story, the signals are also mixed, with one of the victims at one point leaving her dorm room and telling a male friend that she's being taken advantage of. As her friend tells her she's worried about nothing, she gets back into the room with her aggressor and even stays in the same bed. She states "I was afraid to ask him to sleep on the floor. It crossed my mind but I didn't want to get hurt. [...] ((crying)) I mean I was just thinking how to survive that second. I mean I didn't care if that meant getting back into bed with him. If he didn't hurt me I didn't care at that second."

When signals are mixed in cases such as these, under a "deficiency" model, they tend to be interpreted selectively, in favor of any cues that signal consent, even if (as stated by a victim), they were done out of fear or paralysis. Interestingly, legal cases in the past that draw on the "gay panic defense" have assumed that a sexual advance between two men can be automatically considered an attack, in the absence of any signals, deficient or otherwise, enough to justify murder.

Is "Yes" the Only Affirmative?

To many of us, the very words "yes" or "no" are simply so basic we can't imagine language without them. Isn't it easier just to say it plainly to avoid mixed signals? The literal words seem so important that a Scottish man was once held in contempt of court and jailed for 90 minutes for answering "aye" instead of "yes."

Surprisingly, "yes/no" words are not universal. There exist languages that have no words for "yes/no," such as Latin or the Goidelic languages including Irish and Scottish Gaelic, and to some extent Welsh (which uses its words for yes/no rarely)

In these languages then, does the expression of "yes" and "no" become murkier? Actually, the opposite. Often, with no shortcut word, the verb is echoed in response to make it clear and unambiguous, as we see in this Latin example:

Placetne? (Does it please you/Do you like it?)
Placet (It pleases, i.e. yes, I like it)

Even if it's not a case of " Yes, We Have No Bananas," the ambiguity built into English's supposedly unambiguous yes/no is clear in a sentence like "So, you don't like bananas?" A plain yes or no could be interpreted in different ways, such as "Yes, that's correct, I don't like bananas," or "Yes, actually I do like bananas."

With only two forms to choose from (and a couple of "substandard" forms "uh-huhs" and "huh-uhs" that do the same thing), English yes/no has to be used grammatically and pragmatically for more than one discourse function. This can make communicating a little more confusing than it is in a language like French, which has three forms: oui, si, and non. Si is used to contradict a negatively framed question, such as "tu n'aimes pas les bananes, n'est-ce pas?" (You don't like bananas, do you?)- "Si!" (Yes, I do).

Linguistically, "yes" and "no" don't always behave as clearly as we expect.

So linguistically, "yes" and "no" don't always behave as clearly as we expect. There may be multiple pragmatic functions we can use yes for, such as the default affirmation, but also as a pause filler, to get attention, to signal that you've received information and are following the conversation, etc. These words can even change their functions. For instance, Australian English slang is famed for a discourse construction that can confusingly start "yeah, no" (when intending to say "no") or "no, yeah" (when intending to say "yes"). Want to show enthusiastic affirmation in American English? Just say "no... totally!"

Of course, even if yes/no words can be at times befuddlingly ambiguous, they're not the only ways we can signal any of the related functions we often use yes/no for. More direct verbal expressions that consent or refuse are also possible, and yet for some reason, aren't always used.

Beyond Yes and No

Japanese, for instance, uses a rather complex system of discourse in many sensitive situations, to delicately negotiate face-saving, social status, and power, all wrapped in a cozy blanket of indirect politeness. Practically speaking this sometimes results in the bizarre situation of seemingly saying "yes" to something when the intention is to say "no." This leads to cross-cultural misunderstandings, as Richard Nixon famously discovered in 1969, when he demanded through a translator that the Japanese restrict their exports that were flooding the American market. " Zensho shimasu" was the response, which literally means "I'll do my best" or "I'll take a proper step" but which every Japanese person apparently knows, effectively means "no way!" when taken in context. So what was thought to be enthusiastic agreement turns out to be very much otherwise.

Okay, but English speakers can't be expected to read minds with all these indirect cues, right? Except that we commonly read minds all the time. In everyday situations, English speakers are culturally quite attuned to each other's cues (an amazing ability that sometimes seems to disappear when consent is involved). If I ask, rather obscurely, "Is there salt over there?" or "Can you reach the salt?" in a meal-related context most people would not simply respond literally with "Yes" but would divine that I probably want the salt. The comic cliché "I have to wash my hair tonight" is an indirect response that rejects an unwanted admirer politely without hurting any feelings.

These are indirect speech acts, which not only have their literal meanings, but can also have a pragmatic force that causes a performative event in the real world, such as a request or refusal. The fact is, in practice, English speakers are often indirect and non-literal. Very rarely do people, even in positions of power, issue direct commands. Instead, they couch their requests in indirect terms, such as "Do you mind...", "Could you...?", which is often a way to show politeness, because conversation is not just about direct information sharing, but about negotiating social dynamics as well.

A study of legal consent shows how strikingly similar some of the issues are to sexual consent cases.

Peter M. Tiersma and Lawrence M. Solan's study of legal consent (and indeed there can be other types of consent) shows how strikingly similar some of the issues are to sexual consent cases. For those who are relatively powerless, there's a vested interest in staying polite, staying safe, and complying with directions, and so people in these fraught situations tend to be even more linguistically indirect and sound more uncertain. In both kinds of consent there's a linguistic inequality and selective interpretation between those with the most power and those with the least.

For instance, courts tend to hold suspects to a much higher linguistic standard than the police. Tellingly, while judges will accept a pragmatic reading of indirect police statements such as "Does the trunk open?" as an obvious request for consent, they often will take a suspect's indirect statements purely literally, such as "Maybe I need a lawyer" or "I think I might need a lawyer," or "Didn't you say I have the right to an attorney?" If they really wanted a lawyer, they should have said so, by directly and literally invoking their right to one, according to the courts.

Even if those in positions of power use more polite indirect speech, such as "Do you mind if I check your person?" this will clearly be taken by someone with less power as a command with the threat of the law behind it and almost forces an assumption of tacit consent. Suspects, very often, seem to tacitly consent to searches by going along with police direction, even if they know they have something to hide, and even if they have repeatedly refused consent at any stage. Talk about mixed verbal and non-verbal cues. (Interestingly, by the age of three, children also show a bias towards saying yes to questions, even inappropriately, possibly because of the learned social pressure to comply).

Doesn't all this indirect speech get confusing? Yes, it's true that these signals are not always clear, and not everyone can be expected to get them perfectly. Both participants in the conversation have to draw on pragmatic information as well as the relationship and any power dynamics between the parties to understand the performative aspect of what's being conveyed. So in high-stakes situations that are particularly sensitive to misinterpretation, rather than placing the responsibility on more direct, literal communication coming from just one person, the onus is on both parties to take particular care when it comes to figuring out those murky linguistic cues of consent.

JSTOR Citations

By: Susan Ehrlich

Discourse & Society, Vol. 9, No. 2 (1998), pp. 149-171

Sage Publications, Ltd.

By: Orrin Frink

American Speech, Vol. 37, No. 3 (Oct., 1962), pp. 230-232

Duke University Press

By: Danielle Ooyoung Pyun

The Korean Language in America, Vol. 14 (2009), pp. 25-46

Penn State University Press

By: John R. Searle

Linguistics and Philosophy, Vol. 12, No. 5 (Oct., 1989), pp. 535-558

Springer

By: A. John Simmons

Philosophy & Public Affairs, Vol. 5, No. 3 (Spring, 1976), pp. 274-291

Wiley

By: Peter M. Tiersma and Lawrence M. Solan

Law & Society Review, Vol. 38, No. 2 (Jun., 2004), pp. 229-266

Wiley on behalf of the Law and Society Association

By: Mako Okanda and Shoji Itakura

Child Development, Vol. 81, No. 2 (MARCH/APRIL 2010), pp. 568-580

Wiley on behalf of the Society for Research in Child Development

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The Murky Linguistics of Consent | JSTOR Daily

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"Yes, no, maybe. I don't know. Can you repeat the question?"- They Might Be Giants You'd be forgiven for being confused right now about how we're supposed to navigate the language of consent. First there was the New Yorker's viral short story " Cat Person," a fictional depiction of an awkward date and all the delicate power negotiations in intimacy that come with it.

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Join KPCC's AirTalk with host Larry Mantle weekdays for lively and in-depth discussions of city news, politics, science, the arts, entertainment, and more. Call-in number: 866-893-5722

You've likely started a work email like this: "Happy to hear from you!"

Seems friendly, amicable, professional - right?

What about, "Happy to hear from you."

Does that seem passive aggressive or even rude, even though you are ostensibly "happy" to hear from this person, as you've so explicitly written in your email?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyRLFWF2v_U
That's probably because we've gotten so acclimated to using exclamation points over email and text that going sans seems wrong. What was once a punctuation mark meant to relay overwhelming excitement is now just a marker of goodwill. In linguistics it's called "verbal inflation" - the idea that once you express a certain level of enthusiasm you have to keep upping the ante so as not to seem like you're dampening the mood.

Some have revolted against exclamation points, scrubbing them from emails once they're written. But it's not just exclamation points that get people agonizing over emails or spending too much time poring over emails received. If you're from an older generation, you might be familiar with the ellipses as a sign off, which once conveyed "let's continue the conversation" but to millennials reads more like a vague and undercutting trail off. Then there's the world of emojis... what they mean alone or in combinations, and whether they belong in the professional world at all.

Do you spend time stressing about over work emails and texts, trying to convey just the right amount of enthusiasm? Have you ever stopped using exclamation points and has it ever gotten you in trouble? What textual tics drive you up the wall?

Guests:

Gretchen McCulloch, linguist who studies the language of the internet; her podcast is " Lingthusiasm," a podcast for people who are enthusiastic about linguistics; she tweets @GretchenAMcC

Deborah Tannen, professor of linguistics at Georgetown University in Washington D.C. and author of the book, " You're the Only One I Can Tell: Inside the Language of Women's Friendships " (Ballantine Books, 2017) which is released today as a paperback

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Textual communication troubles: Are we overusing exclamation points?!!

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About AirTalk® Join KPCC's AirTalk with host Larry Mantle weekdays for lively and in-depth discussions of city news, politics, science, the arts, entertainment, and more. Call-in number: 866-893-5722 You've likely started a work email like this: "Happy to hear from you!" Seems friendly, amicable, professional - right?

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Updated October 30, 2018 07:36:31

For a certain kind of language critic, highlighting errors of punctuation is a sport unto itself.

It is rare for a week to go by without some kind of punc-mark complaint gracing my inbox.

"What has gone wrong with the ABC? Your reporters do not have even basic knowledge of the use of apostrophes," reads one of the latest.

Like most who engage in such jeremiads, this complainant was certain that the inability to adhere to English punctuation conventions was not only newfound, but increasing each passing year.

"You are quite literally contributing to the rising rates of illiteracy within Australia," they concluded.

A heady charge, and one tinged with presentism - people have been making it since at least the 1930s.

What do apostrophes do?

Apostrophes have a few substantial roles in written English, and a host of additional minor ones. Chief among their responsibilities are showing where letters have been omitted, as in don't.

The apostrophe is not needed for this job, and for quite a long time did not do it.

Many contracted forms of English words are only regularly apostrophised from the 17th century onwards.

The Oxford English Dictionary attests are nt for aren't, isnt for is not, youre for you're, and so on.

Dont appears in the writings of William Faulkner. Shakespeare wrote youle and Ile in Much Ado About Nothing.

Another major role for the apostrophe in English is to indicate what's commonly called the possessive case. You recall the schoolyard rules: teacher's pen, the people's case, Morrison's call, but Suetonius' Lives and politicians' interests.

Again: the apostrophe doesn't need to do this in English, and for a long time it didn't.

After pilfering the mark from French typesetters in the 16th century, nobody was quite sure exactly where to put it.

Even usage mavens had a hard time: in a survey of language criticism across the 17th-19th centuries, Bloomfield and McKnight noted possessive constructions without the apostrophe ( in her Maiesties Courte) were relatively commonplace.

So too were genitive pronominal constructions. Bishop Lowth - whose grammar advanced that zombie rule not to end sentences with a preposition - wrote your's, her's and our's.

(Oddly, this is somewhat resurgent practice among the extremely online of Twitter, who might humorously allude to reading many post's.)

Even after conventions were standardised towards the end of the 19th century, the mark still seems to vex.

(You can deduce this confusion from its negative: in the four major revisions made to Strunk and White's Elements of Style in the last 50 years, nobody's seen fit to move apostrophes for possession from the first page.)

For these reasons and more, experts in English have been happy to see the back of this troublesome squiggle.

Robert Burchfield, one of the 20th century's most distinguished lexicographers, said in 1985 that the incorrect use of this "moderately useful device" was evidence enough for its abandonment.

The playwright George Bernard Shaw dispensed with them entirely, referring to them as "uncouth bacilli".Not unreasonably, he also questioned why we write shan't and not sha'n't.

In the introduction to its section in the Penguin Guide to Punctuation, the linguist RL Trask referred to the raised comma as "the most troublesome punctuation mark in English, and perhaps the least useful".

If we did get rid of apostrophes, we likely wouldn't need to replace them with anything.

"Genuine ambiguities caused by omission or misuse of the apostrophe are very infrequent indeed," said David Denison, editor of the Cambridge History of the English Language, in a mid-'90s treatise on English syntax.

Geoffrey Pullum, the grammarian and one-time organist for Geno Washington's Ram Jam Band, has previously stated for the Chronicle of Higher Education that "the level of harmful confusion attendant on dropping all apostrophes from written English would be zero".

Going, going... gone?

The campaign to rid English of apostrophes has already succeeded, at least in some contexts. Don't believe me? Check a map.

Placenames in Australia (and elsewhere) shirk the possessive apostrophe: the Flinders Ranges, Frenchs Forest, Chinamans Beach.

This practice, incorrectly attributed to texting millennials, has its origins in the mid-1960s, when the Geographical Names Board of NSW introduced it in an effort to ensure consistency and ease of retrieval for emergency service databases.

A similar apostrophic absence is underway in the names of organisations, where we have Melbourne Writers Festival but Sydney Writers' Festival, Brisbane Magistrates Court but Melbourne Magistrates' Court.

By now, it's time to ask an operative question: who cares? Lots of people, apparently.

Lynne Truss was able to sell about 3 million books lamenting the "stupidity and ignorance" of people who'd allegedly flubbed their apostrophes, among them greengrocers and the pop group Hear'Say. (Only in matters of language is "zero tolerance" configured as a virtue.)

The unimaginative nature of all this is striking. If the rules have been in flux for centuries, and are more often than not observed in the breach, why is our collective solution to double down on the rules?

As the linguist Anne Curzan has noted, punctuation runs second only to spelling as the most successfully standardised component of English.

In this view the apostrophe, like some typographical Goldman Sachs, is simply too big to fail.

Whatever happened to the spirit of reform? Harry Lindgren, quixotic architect of Narrabundah's Spelling Action Society, spent much of the early 90s imploring the Canberra Times to uniformly represent the /e/ vowel sound with the letter [e]: alredy, deth, ses.

It's not like other languages haven't enacted a bit of top-down change, either: Germany altered its orthography quite significantly in 1996. In the main, people just got on with it.

Last year, when a self-styled "grammar vigilante" told the BBC he spent his nights correcting apostrophes on shopfront signs, public reaction was torrential and he inspired imitators as far abroad as Whanganui.

That Bristol-based sign defacer, pressed to explain why he dressed up at night and painted over the apostrophe in Cambridge Motor's, said misused apostrophes on signs "weren't setting a good example for society".

As an answer, it neatly demonstrates how intertwined notions of standard English and morality have become. More telling, in my view, was his later remark: that correcting apostrophes makes him "feel good".

It's hardly worth sanctioning property damage just so people can feel superior. Lets get rid of the apostrophe.
Tiger Webb is a researcher with ABC Language. A version of this article containing no apostrophes is available upon request.
Topics: english, arts-and-entertainment, human-interest, australia

First posted October 30, 2018 05:30:00

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Updated October 30, 2018 07:36:31 For a certain kind of language critic, highlighting errors of punctuation is a sport unto itself. It is rare for a week to go by without some kind of punc-mark complaint gracing my inbox. "What has gone wrong with the ABC?

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"The famous linguistic relativity hypothesis...has been rejected by most scholars."

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Does the language you speak influence how you think? This is the question behind the famous linguistic relativity hypothesis, that the grammar or vocabulary of a language imposes on its speakers a particular way of thinking about the world.

The strongest form of the hypothesis is that language determines thought. This version has been rejected by most scholars. A weak form is now thought to be obviously true, which is that if one language has a specific vocabulary item for a concept but another language does not, then speaking about the concept may happen more frequently or more easily. For example, if someone explained to you, an English speaker, the meaning for the German term Schadenfreude, you could recognize the concept, but you may not have used the concept as regularly as a comparable German speaker.

Scholars are now interested in whether having a vocabulary item for a concept influences thought in domains far from language, such as visual perception. Consider the case of the "Russian blues." While English has a single word for blue, Russian has two words, goluboy for light blue and siniy for dark blue. These are considered "basic level" terms, like green and purple, since no adjective is needed to distinguish them. Lera Boroditsky and her colleagues displayed two shades of blue on a computer screen and asked Russian speakers to determine, as quickly as possible, whether the two blue colors were different from each other or the same as each other. The fastest discriminations were when the displayed colors were goluboy and siniy, rather than two shades of goluboy or two shades of siniy. The reaction time advantage for lexically distinct blue colors was strongest when the blue hues were perceptually similar.

To determine if words were being automatically (and perhaps unconsciously) activated, the researchers added the following twist: they asked their Russian participants to perform a verbal task at the same time as making their perceptual discrimination. This condition eliminated the reaction time advantage of contrasting goluboy and siniy. However, a nonverbal task (a spatial task) could be done at the same time while retaining the goluboy/ siniy advantage. The dual task variants indicated that the task of discriminating color patches was aided by silent activation of verbal categories. English speakers tested on the identical discrimination tasks showed no advantage for the light blue / dark blue trials.

Recently the Russian blues have been used again to investigate how language influences thought. In the journal Psychological Science, Martin Maier and Rasha Abdel Rahman investigated whether the color distinction in the Russian blues would help the brain become consciously aware of a stimulus which might otherwise go unnoticed. Would salience help a light blue color, or a dark blue color be noticed (i.e., enter conscious awareness) in a situation in which attention is overloaded and not all stimuli can be noticed?

The task selected to investigate this is the "attentional blink." This is an experimental paradigm frequently used to test whether a stimuli is consciously noticed. Research participants are asked to monitor a sequence of stimuli, displayed at high speeds (typically at least 10 per second), and to press a button every time they see a certain item. The searched-for item can be a letter amidst a sequence of numbers; or that target can be, for example, an emotion word in a sequence of neutral. Participants are very good at detecting the first target they see, but if a second target follows immediately after the first, or with a lag of two to three items, the second target can be missed. It is as if the brain's attentional system "blinked." The reason for the missed item can be understood intuitively: the brain was busy processing the first target and didn't have attentional resources to spare to detect the second target.

In the decades since it was discovered, the attentional blink has been used in myriad ways to document what stimuli have an advantage in capturing attention. For example, imagine that you are asked to monitor for instances of proper names in a stream of rapidly displayed nouns. You do not miss your own name even if it occurs after a prior target. Researchers conclude that the salience of your own name protects it from the attentional blink.

Would the salience of a blue color contrast, using the Russian blues, protect a stimulus from the attentional blink? The authors tested whether colored triangles could be detected more easily when the triangles were made visually salient by being positioned against a contrasting color. For example, a dark green color against a light green background is harder to see than a dark green color against a dark blue background. Green against blue is easier to see because of the strong color contrast between dark blue and dark green provided by linguistic categorization. What if the colors were goluboy and siniy? For Russians speakers, contrasting light and dark blue should be as salient as the contrast between dark green and dark blue (always being careful to keep perceptual similarity between contrasting stimuli comparable).

Maier and Rahman designed stimuli that were geometric shapes positioned against a light blue circle. The task of research participants was to press a button when they saw either a semi-circle or a triangle, ignoring stars, squares, diamonds and other shapes. Distractor shapes were plain gray shapes against a light blue background. As noted, the targets, which were triangles or semi-circles, were colored in ways that allowed their visual distinctiveness to be precisely varied. The least salient triangle was a light green triangle against a dark green background. This was not salient because the two green colors are in the same linguistic category. A highly salient stimulus was a green (either light or dark green) triangle against a blue (either light or dark blue) background, because the colors were in different linguistic categories. A stimulus which would also be highly salient for Russian speakers was a light or dark blue triangle positioned against a circle with the differing blue color.

The attentional blink task contained a sequence of two to six stimuli to be ignored (nontarget shapes), then a colored semi-circle (target 1),and then, followed by a lag of either three or seven items, the second target, a triangle. At lag 3, when participants' brains were busy processing target 1, how difficult would it be to detect the green triangle?

The results supported the hypothesis that the linguistic distinction of the Russian blues helps stimuli enter conscious awareness. That is, the least salient targets, green triangles on green backgrounds, were missed the most. The easiest target to detect was the blue/green contrast. But importantly, the contrast between goluboy (light blue) and siniy (dark blue) was a stimulus that grabbed the brain's attention centers more than the light green / dark green contrast. Interestingly, these results were also found in a study of Greek speakers, as Greek resembles Russian in having separate lexical items for light and dark blue. German was used as the "control" language since like English, it has only one word for blue. For German speakers, detection rates of the blue/blue and green/green trials were identical.

What is occurring in the brain during this visual task? The authors monitored scalp potentials during the attentional blink task. When blue contrasts were detected (meaning the blink was avoided), an event related potential occurred that is known to accompany the stage of early visual processing. This neural signature was not present for the light green / dark green stimulus, indicating that the brain processes the light blue / dark blue differently, for speakers whose language makes a lexical distinction.

The current study is an important advance in documenting how linguistic categories influence perception. Consider how this updates the original Russian blues study, in which observers pressed a button to indicate whether two shades of blue were the same or different. In that study, it seems likely that observers silently labeled colors in order to make fast decisions. It is less likely that labeling was used during the attentional blink task, because paying attention to color is not required and indeed was irrelevant to the task. All observers had to do is try to detect a triangle in a rapid sequence of diverse shapes. It is thus a powerful finding that the incidental contrast of dark blue triangle against a light blue background helped push the triangle into conscious awareness.

What arenas of perceptual-linguistic interaction remain to be conquered? The current finding indicates that linguistic knowledge can influence perception, contradicting the traditional view that perception is processed independently from other aspects of cognition, including language. This is most famously seen in the case of visual illusions, which are mostly impervious to knowledge about the illusion. Hmm. One wonders: Could the Russian blues be recruited in altering a visual illusion that depends on color shades?

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Does the language you speak influence how you think? This is the question behind the famous linguistic relativity hypothesis, that the grammar or vocabulary of a language imposes on its speakers a particular way of thinking about the world. The strongest form of the hypothesis is that language determines thought.

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* A rising tide floods all houses.

* A bird in the hand is worth more than it used to be because they're going extinct.

* She vanished into oddly thick air!

* Stop and smell the flower.

* One man's trash is everybody's trash because it all goes in the same enormous landfill.

* It happens only once in a blue moon, and that's pretty frequently because now the moon is all sorts of weird colors.

* She's a real force of almost entirely decimated rain forest.

* A rose by any other name would wilt and die without water, which we're running out of.

* She's so hot and cold, like the month of January.

* When it rains, it acid-rains.

* Can we please address the elephant in the room? Why has this elephant been displaced from Africa? It doesn't belong in New York City.

* Ugh, she's giving me the tepid shoulder again.

* There's got to be at least one other fish left in the sea.

* Let's save it for a rainy day-and by that I mean let's never, ever do it.

* You can lead a horse to a dried-up reservoir, but you can't make it drink dirt.

* Every cloud has a silver lining, but that's something we really ought to investigate because, much like the weirdly colored moon, clouds aren't supposed to be silver.

* Who let the cat out of the bag? Please be more careful with her. She's our last cat.

* It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas. (It's June.)

* You're on thin ice, buddy. In fact, we all are. If there's a part of the world that still has thick ice, we need to know about it immediately.

* You killed two birds with one stone! Unfortunately, those were the only two birds we had left.

* Don't put all your eggs in one basket-it's unclear if we'll be able to find any new eggs. As I just mentioned, all the birds are dead.

* Curiosity killed the cat-oh, wait, no, we killed it for food.

* You catch more flies with honey-here, let me show you how to catch flies. That's dinner right there.

* Don't eat a dead horse. Not until we've eaten this cat, at least.

* It's not rocket science. You know, rocket science? The only type of science that matters anymore because we need to find a new planet to live on?

* Let's cross that bridge when we come to it, as we escape this raging fire and sprint for dear life toward the rocket ship.

* She's really got her head in the clouds, which makes sense because our rocket actually is currently in the clouds.

* Time flies when you're travelling at the speed of light to escape the now uninhabitable Earth!

* You only live once-specifically, for the remainder of this spaceship ride because it's unlikely that we'll find another planet with potable water.

* Shoot for the moon, and even if you miss-damn it, we missed. Well, humans had a good run. Better luck next time.

* The world is just that one oyster. Go forth and repopulate, little one. ♦

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A rising tide floods all houses. * A bird in the hand is worth more than it used to be because they're going extinct. * She vanished into oddly thick air! * Stop and smell the flower. * One man's trash is everybody's trash because it all goes in the same enormous landfill.

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Here’s a poem which illustrates how stupid the English language can sometimes be.

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Here’s a poem which illustrates how stupid the English language can sometimes be. https://t.co/Us2oaZ2OSY

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Here’s a poem which illustrates how stupid the English language can sometimes be. pic.twitter.com/Us2oaZ2OSY
— Brian Bilston (@brian_bilston) January 24, 2019

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Here’s a poem which illustrates how stupid the English language can sometimes be. https://t.co/Us2oaZ2OSY

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Here’s a poem which illustrates how stupid the English language can sometimes be. https://t.co/Us2oaZ2OSY

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Here’s a poem which illustrates how stupid the English language can sometimes be.

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Earshot program

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From the first time we step into an English class, we're told that the rules matter, that they must be followed, that we must know when it's appropriate to use a comma and what it means to employ the subjunctive mood. But do these things really matter? Outside of the classroom, what difference does it make if we write "who" instead of "whom" or say "good" instead of "well"?

It does make a difference, at least sometimes. In order to determine when those times are, the question must be asked: For whom are you writing? Take that last sentence, for example. As Joan Acocella wrote recently in The New Yorker, "Every statement is subjective, partial, full of biases and secret messages." The above sentence is no exception. Its ostentatious structure and secret message says, "I am one of you." It also says even sneakier things like "I'm educated, an authority," and "You can trust me about language usage." The average New Yorker reader recognizes the effort the sentence exerts to maintain grammatical correctness, and in recognizing this, the reader bonds with the writer. "I" becomes "we." We share a secret now. We're a team.

But how different would things be if I walked into the sports bar down the street on a Sunday afternoon and asked, "For whom are we rooting today?" The wording would not be likely to win me many pals at the pub. The most likely response from the collective would be banishment to a far corner, a shake of the head, and an astonished, "What'd ya mean, who're we rootin' for?"

Why did it go so wrong? In short, different audience, different dialect. The key to linguistic acceptance is recognition and adaptation. Know thy audience, know thy friends. It's not a matter of which sentence is "correct"-"for whom are we rooting" versus "who are we rooting for"-so much as which sentence is correct for the given situation.

All of the complex linguistic theories of language acquisition and whether grammar is universally hardwired or learned through practice don't matter one bit in practical everyday living. If "correct" is only a matter of situation, then what we should really be asking is why we need to be able to use both versions of the sentence. Why should we bother to learn prescriptive English-the grade-school rules-if it isn't our natural dialect?

Repugnant as it may be, the simple answer is that we need to learn prescriptive English because that's the way the people in power communicate. As far as daily survival is concerned, it doesn't matter whether the origins of this linguistic power structure are racist, classist, or élitist, or whether they're based on the whims of dead white males. This is how the system works right now, today, and in order to best get the attention of those in power, to begin to effect change, we must be able to use their dialect. We must know their rules.

People who say otherwise, who say that in all situations we should speak and write however we'd like, are ignoring the current reality. This group, known as descriptivists, may be fighting for noble ideas, for things like the levelling of élitism and the smoothing of social class, but they are neglecting the real-world costs of those ideas, neglecting the flesh-and-blood humans who are denied a job or education because, as wrong as it is, they are being harshly judged for how they speak and write today.

Furthermore, as David Foster Wallace points out in his essay "Authority and American Usage," it's not at all clear that "society's mode of expression is productive of its attitudes rather than a product of those attitudes." In other words, Wallace continues, it's bizarre to believe that "America ceases to be elitist or unfair simply because Americans stop using certain vocabulary that is historically associated with elitism and unfairness."

This is not even to mention the descriptivists' dirty little secret. When it comes time for them to write their books and articles and give their speeches about the evil, élitist, racist, wrongheadedness of forcing the "rules" on the masses, they always do so in flawless, prescriptive English. Ensconced behind a mask of noble ends, something obscenely disingenuous is happening here. How easy it is for a person who is already part of the linguistic élite to tell others who are not that they don't need to be. Or, as Joan Acocella puts it, the descriptivists will "take the Rolls. You can walk, though."

These do-as-you-please linguists imagine themselves to be fighting for the common man, but they don't practice what they preach. Playing the game and being able to deploy the rules has afforded them the luxury of a good education, a steady job, and decent income. It has allowed them to have their noble voices heard in the fight for linguistic equality. But they fight from a good, safe distance. They're not on the front lines, naked and exposed.

For the individual looking for a higher education or trying to secure a decent job, what seems more humane: Admitting that, ugly, élitist, and unfair as it is, prescriptivism is currently the dialect of power and being able to manipulate that dialect can help you get ahead, or pretending that utopia is at hand, that everyone is a revolutionary, that linguistic anarchy will set you free? The choice to use our natural dialects whenever and wherever we please, to live in a world free of language-based racism and classism, may indeed be a worthy end for which to strive, but it's also worth remembering that individuals don't live in the end. They live now.
Photograph by Carl Iwasaki//Time Life Pictures/Getty Images.

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Inescapably, You're Judged By Your Language

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From the first time we step into an English class, we're told that the rules matter, that they must be followed, that we must know when it's appropriate to use a comma and what it means to employ the subjunctive mood. But do these things really matter?

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Move to Melbourne, and one of the first things you'll learn (maybe besides how to read a tram timetable) is how to say some of our tongue-twister suburb names.

If you've come from the US, you'll learn it's Mel-BEN, not Mel-BORN - same goes with Gisborne.

Those from Perth and Adelaide will be quickly shut down while trying to make Prahran sound posh; "It's Pr-AAN not Pr-AHN!" the black-clad, latte carrying Melburnians will cry.

But where did all this come from? Who decided how these names get pronounced, and was there a decision at all?

Not really, says Professor John Hajek, a linguist from the University of Melbourne.

"People who live in a specific location say the name of the place where they live very often, and so they they get used to a particular way of saying the name, and over time the name tends to shorten or take on specific characteristics," Professor Hajek says.

He says it's hard to know whether there's something about Melburnians that made the names evolve differently than they would have in other Australian cities.

"Australian English is very similar across the country because we're relatively young and very mobile, but I have no doubt that in each city there are place names that only locals know how to pronouce."

Prahran

According to the state government's register of geographic names, Vicnames, the way this southern hipster enclave got its name was all a bit of an accident.

"Named 'Pur-ra-ran' by George Langhorne, Missionary to Aborigines, 1837. The name was a compound of two aboriginal words signifying, 'land partially surrounded by water,' and was given, orally, by Langhorne to Mr. Robert Hoddle, the surveyor," the site states.

"Mr Hoddle wrote it in his notebook as 'Prahran,' and in that form it appeared on a plan of surveyed, but unsold, lands in 1840."

Professor Hajek says the two syllables - Prah-ran - quickly became shortened to one - Pran.

"Part of the reason is there are two Rs in there, so it confuses people and can be a little tricky to pronounce," he says. "You actually get that in other words like February and library where you get two Rs close together and you tend to get rid of one."

Reservoir

This one trips up even long-time residents, but those in the inner north know it's Reser-VORR, not Reser-VWAH, Professor Hajek says.

He says though the suburb was named for the water reservoir within it, people didn't know how to say the French word.

"We have a bit of problem saying 'wah', it's not something we usually have in English," he says. "People who didn't use the word, they might have called it a dam or a water tower, they see this word and they're not entirely sure how to pronounce it."

Hence, Reser-VORR.

Lalor

The suburb is named for Peter Lalor, the leader of the Eureka Stockade rebellion in 1854, so the pronunciation should be the same as his name - LAW-ler - right?

"Everyone who's from there, from the north, will tell you it's LAY-lor," Professor Hajek says.

Similarly with Prahran and Reservoir, it was easier to say - so eventually that's how everyone said it.

St Albans

If you head west and say "St Albans" and start the "Albans" part with an "Al" as in pal, you'll quickly be told it is actually "All" as in Paul.

And if you're a real local, the two words will merge to become "Sn'Albans", Professor Hajek says.

"You say these words a lot; the faster you say them, they get reduced and you end up with something much shorter," he says.

Malvern

Vicnames shows the suburb, formerly called Gardiner, was named after an estate in the area called Malvern, which was named for a town in Worcestershire in England.

There are actually three ways this one gets said - MOL-vern (that's the right way), MAUL-vern and MAL-vern - though the first two are more common, Professor Hajek says.

"People look at the spelling. Part of the problem is the A-L, there are three different ways of pronouncing it in English, so they've got to make a decision," he says. "The local pronunciation becomes commonplace, and then it's a question of whether people from outside know about it."

Melbourne

Most Aussies know how to say Mel-BEN and not over-pronouce the "bourne" part, but lately, locals are adding another twist to the name of our city, Professor Hajek says.

"We're increasingly pronouncing it as MAL-BEN," he says. "Not everybody does it, but it occurs often enough by Melbourne speakers that outsiders notice it, but it doesn't occur often enough that it's completely regular."

He says some Melburnians also have trouble with names such as "Ellen" and "Allan" mixing up the way they are pronounced, but Sydneysiders don't seem to have the same problem.

"It doesn't occur in NSW, but there's some evidence to suggest it's starting in Brisbane as well," he says. "It's got to do with the L after the vowel."

A local's guide to Melbourne suburb (and other Victorian place) names:

Beaumaris: Beau-MAURICE, not Beau-MARRIS

Berwick: Berrick, not BER-wick

Cranbourne: Cran-BURN, not Cran-BORN

Doncaster: Don-CASTER, not Don-CASS-TER

Jan Juc: Jan JUCK, not ZHAN ZHUKE

Kallista: Kal-LIS-ta, not KALL-is-TA

Lalor: LAY-lor, not LAW-ler

Maidstone: Maid-stone, not Maid-ston

Malvern: MOL-vern, not MAUL-vern or MAL-vern

Melbourne: Mel-BEN, not Mel-BORN

Moorabbin: Mor-ABB-in, not MOO-rab-in

Murrumbeena: Murum-BEE-na, not Moo-RUM-beena

Narre Warren: Narry (As in 'Harry') Warren, not Nara Warren or Nar-ray War-REN

Niddrie: Nid-djree, not Nid-rie

Northcote: North-CUT, not North-COAT

Ormond: OR-mond, not Or-MUND

Prahran: Pr-AAN, not Pra-RAN or Pra-RAHN

Reservoir: Reser-VORR, not Reser-VWAH

St Albans: St ALL-bans, not Saint AL-bans

Travancore: Travan-CORE, not Trav-VAN-core

Truganina: Trug-A-NINE-A, not Trug-A-NINA

Vermont: VER-mont, not Ver-MONT

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A definitive guide on how to pronounce Melbourne suburb names

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Move to Melbourne, and one of the first things you'll learn (maybe besides how to read a tram timetable) is how to say some of our tongue-twister suburb names. If you've come from the US, you'll learn it's Mel-BEN, not Mel-BORN - same goes with Gisborne.

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Compared to British, American, Canadian, New Zealand

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This is an article from Curious Kids, a series for children. The Conversation is asking kids to send in questions they'd like an expert to answer. All questions are welcome - serious, weird or wacky!

Dear Conversation people, why do Aussies have a different accent to Canadians, Americans, the British, New Zealanders, etc? Thank you in advance - Kiana, 11, Switzerland.

This is a great question, Kiana. The short answer is that the accent you have depends on the people you grew up with and the history of the place that you live in. If you grew up in Australia, your accent is shaped by the history of Australia's European settlement; if you grew up in New Zealand, your accent is shaped by a different history, so it sounds different.

It's automatic for us to talk in a similar way to the people around us and this feature is really strong in kids. Friends have the biggest influence on accent. Sharing an accent helps to show that you are connected to your friends - that you belong to the group. This is also how new accents begin. Kids are very important in creating new accents.

Read more: Curious Kids: How do scientists work out how old the Earth is?

The Aussie accent started with kids

It's important to remember that the Aboriginal people had been using their own languages for thousands of years before the Europeans came to Australia so English was a foreign language to them.

The Aussie accent, as we know it today, started more than 200 years ago with the children of the convicts, soldiers and other European arrivals. The parents spoke with all different kinds of English accents because they came from many places in England.

But their children born in Australia formed friendship groups and started to talk in ways that were more like each other and less like their parents.

Over the years the children's accent was carried on by each generation and became the main accent of English across Australia.

There are lots of different kinds of Aussie accents

In 1965, two linguists named A.G. Mitchell and Arthur Delbridge wrote that there were three distinct accent types in Australia: broad (think Steve Irwin), general (think the hosts of an Australian morning TV show like Sunrise, for example) and cultivated (a bit more British-sounding, like Cate Blanchett).

But it's actually a lot more complex than that.

The Aussie accent has been changing gradually for over 200 years as the Australian society and people have changed, and now there are lots of different types of Aussie accents.

There are Aussie accents from the city, from the country, from older and younger people, from different places in Australia, from Indigenous Australians, from people whose families came from Lebanon, Greece, Italy, Vietnam, China, India and lots more too.

These different Aussie accents are all Australian.

But the Australian accents are different from the accents of America, or Canada, or New Zealand because those accents were created from kids growing up in those places with different communities and histories.

Read more: Curious Kids: Why do people get the hiccups and how do you get rid of them?

Accents are all about the people we spend time with when we are young. People who grow up in Australia usually spend lots of time with other Australians and that's why they speak with Aussie accents and not American, Canadian or New Zealand accents.

The different kinds of Aussie accents also help Australians to feel connected to Australia. Accents help to give people a sense of belonging and a feeling of home.
Hello, curious kids! Have you got a question you'd like an expert to answer? Ask an adult to send your question to us. They can: * Email your question to curiouskids@theconversation.edu.au
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Please tell us your name, age and which city you live in. You can send an audio recording of your question too, if you want. Send as many questions as you like! We won't be able to answer every question but we will do our best.

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Curious Kids: Why do Aussies have a different accent to Canadians, Americans, British people and New Zealanders?

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This is an article from Curious Kids, a series for children. The Conversation is asking kids to send in questions they'd like an expert to answer. All questions are welcome - serious, weird or wacky! Dear Conversation people, why do Aussies have a different accent to Canadians, Americans, the British, New Zealanders, etc?

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Why the Aussie accent is so hard | Did You Know?

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Updated March 12, 2019 01:00:17

Should souvenirs featuring one of the most profane words in the English language be sold at a family-oriented market?

It is a debate polarising Territorians following a Darwin Council alderman's promise to put forward a motion Tuesday night that could see the Top End's unofficial tourism slogan banned from items sold at the Nightcliff Markets.

NT Official launched the "CU in the NT" slogan, along with the tagline "The Top End. Different from the bottom end" on its website in 2016, to mixed reviews.

It now features on a range of souvenirs, which are sold at shops and market stalls.

It seems the slogan has remained just as divisive.

While some told the ABC it was taking the region "down the sewer", others claimed it was among the "most creative and intelligent" things they had ever seen.

'The Territory should grow up a little bit'

Speaking to ABC Radio Darwin Monday morning, Mick from Malak said it was totally inappropriate to feature the slogan where children could see it, and recounted when he had seen a man wearing a "CU in the NT" shirt as he looked after his children.

"There's a place and time for all that sort of thing. Maybe if he's at the pub it's different," he said.

"But walking to the shops with his own kids, maybe they wouldn't question it, but I think it's pretty poor taste.

"I reckon the Territory should grow up a little bit."

Geoff from Berry Springs agreed, saying he found it quite offensive even though "I've spent my life in mining and road transport and knocked around some pretty rough areas".

"That sort of promotion is just taking us down the sewer," he said.

"I thought we were trying to promote an image of being a little bit more sophisticated than some people might think we are."

'Snowflakes melt in the heat'

But the controversial tagline also had its fair share of supporters, with one person saying it had done more to put the Top End on the map than the NT Government's $1.5m "Boundless Possible" campaign.

Steve from Palmerston said it was in line with the famous headlines from Territory newspaper the NT News, and caught the attention of out-of-towners.

"I had a friend that come up from Melbourne and he could not get enough of [the souvenirs]," he said.

Born and bred Territorian Ross said it was one of "the best things in the Northern Territory".

"It's one of the most creative and intelligent things I've ever heard," he said.

Asked about people opposed to the slogan, he replied: "Snowflakes melt in the heat."

Pete called in from a yacht on Darwin Harbour, saying the whole debate was a storm in a teacup.

"Get on with something more important," he said.

Tuesday night, Darwin Council alderman Robin Knox will put forward a motion to seek legal advice on whether it could ban the sale of items featuring the slogan at the Nightcliff Markets.

That could eventually see the slogan banned, depending on the result of the motion and the legal advice.

Topics: lifestyle-and-leisure, tourism, industry, government-and-politics, darwin-0800, nt

First posted March 11, 2019 16:32:35

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'Snowflakes melt in the heat': Push to ban 'CU in the NT' slogan draws mixed response

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Updated March 12, 2019 01:00:17 Should souvenirs featuring one of the most profane words in the English language be sold at a family-oriented market? It is a debate polarising Territorians following a Darwin Council alderman's promise to put forward a motion Tuesday night that could see the Top End's unofficial tourism slogan banned from items sold at the Nightcliff Markets.

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Faith Salie on speaking with 'vocal fry'

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I was 17 when I moved from a small country town to the big smoke of Melbourne in the early 1990s. I was a bundle of awkward innocence cloaked in sensible chino slacks (pleated, with an ironed crease down the front, of course), pearl earrings and smart, bobbed haircut, eager to start my course majoring in piano at university.

Within six months, those conservative threads were cast aside for a paisley op shop dress; the uni course was ditched for an arts degree; and the hairstyle went from Jackie McDonald on Hey Hey It's Saturday to a feeble attempt at copying the mysterious lead in the French art house movie popular at the time, Betty Blue.

I can blame this radical life transformation on many things, but Primal Scream's record Screamadelica had a firm hand in leading me astray.

My innocence was corrupted at my first house party. My first home away from home was an inner-city terrace house, sharing with two of my brothers and a friend. I had the dingy small room at the top of the stairs up the back, with only room for a single bed, lava lamp and a few sticks of Nag Champa incense burning on the windowsill.

My first house party required a soundtrack, so I took my hard-earned cash from my waitressing job at a pasta restaurant to a renowned record store. I perused what seemed like endless shelves with both excitement and shame. It was overwhelming. Growing up in regional Victoria, pre-internet, the only way to find music was from two radio stations, commercial and ABC, and one record store that mostly played country music and the soundtrack to Top Gun - so this inner city Melbourne record store opened up endless possibilities.

I landed on Primal Scream's Screamadelica. Perhaps I was attracted to the almost pop art cover image? It looked like a splattered egg with crazy eyes - which I now interpret as a portrait of singer Bobbie Guillespie on acid, which the band were obviously all on at the time.

I thought I recognised some of the songs from listening to my newly discovered radio stations Triple J and Triple R. Either way, I struck gold. The album was a musical melting pot that combined indie, house, acid, gospel, retro and dub and reeked of party. Familiar yet unfamiliar. It was the future and the past. It was loose. It was a revelation.

The night of my first house party, Screamadelica ruled. Mainly because the only other CD I had was the one that EVEYRONE had: Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit. No one cared about a lack of variety in those days. CDs were expensive so we had long attention spans.

I swanned around the party, surrounded by people dressed in chambray or flannelette shirts and button up fly Levi 501s. We smoked cigarettes indoors and drank Sub Zeros. I underage drank a beer or four, which I'd found courtesy of a sneaky party goer who had stashed them in the clothes dryer in the laundry out the back. I never told my housemate that was the reason his dryer never worked again. Sorry Baz.

Screamadelica was the musical gateway drug to the new me. It offered musical forms I understood, mixed in with futuristic acid house beats. A new life began unfolding that was far less prim than the one I'd imagined. I thought I was so cool, waving my arms above my head as I yelled along " we wanna be free, to do what we wanna do, and we wanna get loaded and we wanna have a good time ". Clearly those stolen beers I'd imbibed helped too.

I'm not really one for too much nostalgia. Sometimes listening to records from my past makes me slightly uneasy because they remind me of a not yet fully formed me, wide eyed, enthusiastic, desperate to understand the world. Memories of me in a cheesecloth shirt from Ishka and a wooden necklace that smelt of manufactured jasmine, getting all earnest and maudlin over Jeff Buckley's Grace make me giggle (even though the music still stands up). I took some things and myself VERY seriously in those days.

But I can still listen to Screamadelica today without cringing. In fact, it gives me joy. It reminds me of that not fully formed blank canvas, but in a good way. It makes me feel both old and young, but mostly alive. Still. And that is the point of nostalgia, surely?
* Myf Warhurst hosts lunch on Double J, which is celebrating the 90s through June
Topics

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Primal Scream's Screamadelica defined my 1990s - my musical gateway drug | Myf Warhurst

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I was 17 when I moved from a small country town to the big smoke of Melbourne in the early 1990s. I was a bundle of awkward innocence cloaked in sensible chino slacks (pleated, with an ironed crease down the front, of course), pearl earrings and smart, bobbed haircut, eager to start my course majoring in piano at university.

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Australia may be a continent but when it comes to the English-Australian accent, it's pretty much standard across the states.

Researchers from the University of Melbourne say it's less to do with geography and more to do with history.

"For instance you can tell when someone's from the south of England or north of England, you can tell when someone's from Wales; you can tell when someone's from Scotland" says Professor John Hajek from the School of Languages and Linguistics at the University of Melbourne.

"But we have a lot of trouble identifying reliably whether someone's from Brisbane or Melbourne or Sydney or Perth."

While Indigenous Australians had developed over 250 different languages at the time of European colonisation, he says Australia is a relatively young country in terms of white settlement.

"It's limited mainly because we're a young country, we're only settled a couple of hundred years ago by Europeans in terms of English and the fact that we are incredibly mobile".

Leith McPherson, Senior voice lecturer at the Victorian College of the Arts describes how easy it is to get the Australian accent wrong.

"I think one of the things that foreign speakers tend to get wrong about the Australian accent is that they key into the sounds that you'll hear in a (British) cockney accent. There are qualities of 'cockney' that are present in the Australian accent. But it's quite distinct. So if you're doing a word like 'laugh' - aagh -- aagh - it's that "A" sound that happens in the middle of the mouth - laugh - whereas like 'laugh' -- if I'm talking like that - it's a position that's much more open in the back of the mouth."

Speaking 'proper'

"If you listen to television and radio recordings from the 50's, 60's and 70's it's quite striking how British it sounds" says Professor Hajek.

"But the announcers are all Australian and it really was a model that we tried to emulate and if you listen to older speakers , particularly of a certain social class, they definitely sound much more British and they're what we call 'cultivated' Australian English speakers."

But, he says those days have gone.

"The broader your accent you're more likely to have lower education; the more cultivated your accent the more likely you are to have elevated levels of education, the more likely you are to have wealth - in fact there's a whole tradition that's basically disappeared of Australians trying to sound more upper class, more British by doing speech and elocution lessons."

"So my mother's generation, my grandmother's generation spent a lot of time in school learning how to speak 'proper'" says Professor Hajek.

As for contemporary Australia, he cites the hugely successful TV series 'Kath and Kim'.

"There's the two contrasts - Prue and Trude - who've this upper class Australian accent, if you listen to them you can hear how different they are from Kath and Kim."

"They've got very distinctive speech mannerisms and sound a bit more British whereas Kath and Kim really play on the broader Australian accent - so the whole joke, you know - she doesn't say 'nice', she says 'noice' - you know the vowel changes that we associate with a much broader Australian accent."

Migrant experience

Dr Debbie Loakes, is also from the School of Languages and Linguistics, University of Melbourne,

Among her projects is a 'Super Diversity Project', looking at whether Irish and Chinese migrants are adopting features of Australian English.

"It seems so far that people who've been here around ten years may be adopting certain features. But there's also potentially resistance. So people might not want to sound like the group that they're moving towards and they might like to keep their own accent and they might be very conscious of it and in that way we've got those factors of identity being involved in someone maintaining their own accent."

"In the case of a second language they're probably more motivated to start sounding like the group that they actually arrived to. It depends on where they're from, if it's a second dialect, a second language, whether they believe their accent's prestigious in the first place.

There's also an element of cross-cultural influence .

'Ethnolect'

Dr Loakes says children are especially influenced by the way others speak - and that can include their migrant parents.

"Linguists call that an 'ethnolect', when it's either a first or second generation of people" she says.

"For example with Lebanese parents, or in Melbourne it might be Greek or Italian, they might have a different accent which may be from features that their parents had in their first language that have translated to their English."

"So it's likely that, especially in a high school, if there's a large proportion of kids who are from a Lebanese or Greek background, it's likely that they might be the prestigious group in that school and then mainstream kids might take on some of the features from their accents because they like it. So there is that whole idea of accents being either prestigious or someone looking to someone else and then being more likely to imitate them."

Professor Hajek says regions, however, are beginning to show their own identity.

"There's evidence that we're getting Melbourne starting to show itself to be distinctive and it's because of one vowel. And even the way we say the city name so many people in Melbourne refer to it as MAEL-bun - so they open the vowel.

"And that's what outsiders often identify as characteristic of Melbourne speech. We're starting to find the same thing in Brisbane now. Because of the movement, mass media etc things change very quickly."

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Why hasn't Australia developed more diverse regional accents?

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Australia may be a continent but when it comes to the English-Australian accent, it's pretty much standard across the states. Researchers from the University of Melbourne say it's less to do with geography and more to do with history.

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Identifying and using a range of conjunctions and connectives | Student assessment

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Cooperation

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We all know that unpleasant feeling when we're talking about something interesting and halfway through our sentence we're interup - "Wait, what's for dinner?" - pted.

But was that really an interruption? Whether or not one person interrupted another depends on whom you ask, according to new research from Stanford's Katherine Hilton, a doctoral candidate in linguistics.

"What people perceive as an interruption varies systematically across different speakers and speech acts," said Hilton, who is also a Geballe Dissertation Prize Fellow at the Stanford Humanities Center. "Listeners' own conversational styles influence whether they interpret simultaneous, overlapping talk as interruptive or cooperative. We all have different opinions about how a good conversation is supposed to go."

Using a set of carefully controlled scripted audio clips, Hilton surveyed 5,000 American English speakers to better understand what affects people's perceptions of interruptions. She had participants listen to audio clips and then answer questions about whether the speakers seemed to be friendly and engaged, listening to one another, or trying to interrupt.

Hilton found that American English speakers have different conversational styles. She identified two distinct groups: high- and low-intensity speakers. High-intensity speakers are generally uncomfortable with moments of silence in conversation and consider talking at the same time a sign of engagement. Low-intensity speakers find simultaneous chatter to be rude and prefer people speak one at a time in conversation.

Hilton also found a gender disparity among survey participants. Male listeners were more likely to view women who interrupted another speaker in the audio clips as ruder, less friendly and less intelligent than men who interrupted.

Stanford doctoral candidate Katherine Hilton examined how people perceive interruptions in conversation. She found that those perceptions are affected by the listener's own conversational style as well as gender.

Previous research on interruptions has primarily focused on analyzing recordings of natural conversations. But their results could not be generalizable because every study defines an interruption differently, said Penny Eckert, a Stanford professor of linguistics.

"Katherine's experiment really pulls apart the whole notion of interruption," Eckert said.

When a woman asserts herself in a conversation with a man, is that speaking up or interrupting?

For example, when a woman asserts herself in a conversation with a man, is that speaking up or interrupting? While other studies have shown that women tend to be seen more negatively than men if they speak up or interrupt, no one has measured those perceptions quantitatively before, Eckert said.

"Gendered ways of talking and interpreting matter, and they have many consequences, including political ones," said Rob Podesva, an assistant professor of linguistics and Hilton's adviser. "Katherine's research shows that there are systematic gender disparities in how we interpret interruptions. Being aware of these disparities may be the first step in figuring out how to address them in the future."

The differences in conversational styles became evident when participants listened to audio clips in which two people spoke at the same time but were agreeing with each other and stayed on topic, Hilton said.

The high-intensity group reported that conversations where people spoke simultaneously when expressing agreement were not interruptive but engaged and friendlier than the conversations with pauses in between speaking turns. In contrast, the low-intensity group perceived any amount of simultaneous chitchat as a rude interruption, regardless of what the speakers were saying.

"However, these two categories represent extremes on a spectrum," Hilton said. "In other words, most people are likely to be somewhere in between the two conversational styles."

Hilton also found a significant gender bias among study participants when they listened to audio clips considered highly interruptive by almost all participants. In those clips, interrupters did not just talk at the same time as another speaker, but they also changed the subject or raised their voices.

Male listeners were more likely to view a female who interrupted as ruder and less intelligent than if the interrupter were male

Male listeners were more likely to view a female speaker who interrupted as ruder, less friendly and less intelligent than if the interrupter were male, although both male and female speakers were performing identical scripts in the audio clips, Hilton said.

However, female listeners did not show a significant bias in favor of female or male speakers.

"Finding this gender bias wasn't as surprising as the extent of it and the fact that it altered perceptions of a female speaker's intelligence, which we don't think of as related to interruptions," Hilton said.

Hilton was curious about how conversations work well before she started studying linguistics. She described her family as incredibly talkative, so growing up, she got used to a high-intensity conversational style.

"During my family gatherings everyone would be talking all at once, and it could get pretty chaotic," Hilton said. "I had to figure out how to navigate that, and I was always interested in who gets to speak when. Who gets to tell their stories and opinions? And who doesn't? It fascinates me how people can manage all of this complexity without any explicit rules for conversation."

Hilton said she is excited to contribute research that helps shed light on the cognitive, social and cultural aspects of human interaction.

"People care about being interrupted, and those small interruptions can have a massive effect on overall communication down the line," Hilton said. "Breaking apart what an interruption means is essential if we want to understand how humans interact with each other."
Looking for more writing about Stanford's cutting-edge research from the Stanford News Service? Try these links:

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Why do people interrupt? It depends on whom you're talking to

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We all know that unpleasant feeling when we're talking about something interesting and halfway through our sentence we're interup - "Wait, what's for dinner?" - pted. But was that really an interruption? Whether or not one person interrupted another depends on whom you ask, according to new research from Stanford's Katherine Hilton, a doctoral candidate in linguistics.

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Why Hedging Language Undermines Your Writing | Grammarly

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Today, we're spotlighting a new Grammarly Premium check that's designed to help you show more confidence in your writing.

What Is Hedging?

Take a look at some of your recent emails. What phrases do you tend to use when you're making a suggestion or asking a (potentially uncomfortable) question? If you're like most people, you may use a lot of phrases like "I think we should . . ." or "I feel like . . ." or "It would be great if . . ." All these phrases are forms of hedging-they're little qualifiers that undermine what you're saying.

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Why Hedging Is a Problem

There are a few reasons a writer might hedge. Hedging makes your statements less direct, and sometimes that feels more polite, especially if you're expressing disagreement or criticism. Hedging can also feel like an escape hatch. If you turn out to be wrong, well, it was just a random thought you had . . . But the feeling of safety you get from hedging is only that: a feeling. In reality, hedging makes you look uncertain and unconfident.

We believe in empowering everyone to communicate clearly, effectively, and confidently. We're just getting started. https://t.co/KerzWLzbuG

- Grammarly (@Grammarly) March 14, 2018

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Hedging can become such an ingrained habit that it's hard to even notice yourself doing it. Our new check alerts you to phrases that undermine your message and offers you clear and confident wording to use instead. Curious to see what it can do? Read on.

Hedging: I think we should set up a meeting.

Confident: Let's set up a meeting.

2 I feel like . . .

Hedging: I feel like we could find space for one more person.

Confident: We could find space for one more person.

3 It would be great if . . .

Hedging: It would be great if you could turn in your application by 5:00 p.m. tomorrow.

Confident: Please turn in your application by 5:00 p.m. tomorrow.

4 Should be able to . . .

Hedging: I think I should be able to finish the research phase this week.

Confident: I can finish the research phase this week.

5 Basically . . .

Hedging: Basically, I'm still waiting for Tim to answer my questions.

Confident: I'm still waiting for Tim to answer my questions.

When you show confidence in your own ideas, others are more likely to support them, too. Although writing without hedging phrases can feel awkward and abrupt at first, it gets easier with a little bit of practice. Plus, you don't have to go it alone. We're here to help!

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Grammarly Spotlight: Why Hedging Language Undermines Your Writing

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Today, we're spotlighting a new Grammarly Premium check that's designed to help you show more confidence in your writing. Take a look at some of your recent emails. What phrases do you tend to use when you're making a suggestion or asking a (potentially uncomfortable) question?

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'Ass' is the most complicated word in English

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'Ass' is the most complicated word in English

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Ismo: Ass Is The Most Complicated Word In The English Language | CONAN on TBS

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How the Irish gave Australian's their Slang

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How the Irish gave Australian's their Slang

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Updated March 16, 2018 07:45:32

Australian English decidedly finds its origins in British English. But when it comes to chasing down Irish influence, there are - to paraphrase Donald Rumsfield - some knowun knowuns, some unknowun knowuns, and a bucket load of furphies.

The origin of the Aussie 'larrikin'

The first Irish settlers, most of whom were Irish language speakers, were viewed with suspicion and derision. This is reflected in the early Australian English words used to describe those who came from (a blend of Paddy and Land).

The Irish were guided by paddy's lantern (the moon); their homes adorned with Irish curtains (cobwebs); and their hotheadedness saw them have a paddy or paddy out. These Irish were said to follow Rafferty's Rules - an eponym from the surname Rafferty - which meant "no rules at all".

More than a few Irish were larrikins.

In his book Austral English, EE Morris reports that in 1869, an Irish sergeant Dalton charged a young prisoner with "a-larrr-akin about the streets" (an Irish pronunciation of larking, or "getting up to mischief").

When asked to repeat the charge by the magistrate, Dalton said: "a larrikin, your Worchup".

This Irish origin of larrikin had legs for many years, and perhaps still does. Unfortunately, here we have our first furphy, with more compelling evidence linking larrikin to a British dialect word meaning "mischievous or frolicsome youth".

But if larrikin language is anything to go by, these youths went way beyond mischievous frolicking - jump someone's liver out, put the boot in, stonker, rip into, go the knuckle on and weigh into are just some items from the larrikin's lexicon of fighting words.

With the Dalton furphy, though, we see evidence of something called "epenthesis", the insertion of extra sounds.

Just as Dalton adds a vowel after his trilled "r" in a-larrr-akin, many Aussies add a vowel to words like "known" and "film" ( knowun and filum) - and here we see a potential influence of the Irish accent on Australian English.

Calling all 'sheilas'

In contrast to larrikin, the word sheila is incontrovertibly Irish. Popular belief derives it from the proper name, Sheila, used as the female counterpart to Paddy, a general reference to Irish males.

Author Dymphna Lonergan, in her book Sounds Irish, prefers to derive it from Irish Gaelic síle, meaning "homosexual", noting Sheila wasn't a particularly popular Irish name as it began to appear Down Under.

Significantly though, St Patrick had a wife (or mother) named Sheila, and the day after St Paddy's Day was once celebrated as Sheelah's Day. So, Sheila was something of a celebrity.

Irish infiltrates Aboriginal languages

Barrack is another likely Irish-inspired expression. A range of competing origins have been posited for this one, including the Aboriginal Wathawarung word borak, meaning "no, not", and links to the Victorian military barracks in Melbourne.

But the most likely origin is the Northern Irish English barrack, "to brag, be boastful of one's fighting powers". The word has since sprouted opposite uses - Australian barrackers shout noisy support for somebody, while British barrackers shout in criticism or protest.

Perhaps surprisingly to many, the Irish were the first Europeans some Australian Aboriginal tribes encountered.

This contact is evident in the presence of Irish words in some Aboriginal languages. For instance, in the Ngiyampaa language of New South Wales, the word for shoe is pampuu, likely linked to a kind of shoe associated with the Aran Islands in Ireland, pampúta.

Is 'Didgeridoo' Gaelic?

Lonergan argues that more attention should be directed to this sort of Irish Gaelic influence.

Lonergan points, for example, to archival evidence linking the origin of didgeridoo to an outsider's perception of how the instrument sounds, questioning the degree to which the sound corresponds to the word.

As a counter-argument, she notes an Irish word dúdaire,meaning "trumpeter or horn-blower", as well as Irish and Scots-Gaelic dubh, "black" and dúth, "native".

She observes that Irish and Scots-Gaelic speakers first encountering the instrument might well have called it dúdaire dubh or dúdaire dúth (pronounced respectively "doodereh doo" or "doojerreh doo").

Counting your chooks

Similar arguments are made for a number of other words traditionally viewed as having British English origins.

The Australian National Dictionary sees chook (also spelled chuck) as linked to a Northern English/Scottish variation of "chick". However, Lonergan notes this is phonetically the same word (spelled tioc) the Irish would have used when calling chickens to feed ( tioc, tioc, tioc).

Your 'shout'

Another potential influence also comes from the transference of Irish meaning to English words. For example, the Australian National Dictionary is unclear as to the exact origin of shout, "to buy a round of drinks", but Lonergan links it to Irish working in the goldfields and an Irish phrase glaoch ar dheoch, "to call or shout for a drink".

Lonergan posits that Irish miners translating to English might have selected "shout" rather than "call" - "shouting" could easily have spread to English speakers as a useful way to get a drink in a noisy Goldfields bar.

Good dollops of Irish in the melting pot

Irish influence on Australian English is much like the influence of the Irish on Australians themselves - less than you'd expect on the surface, but everywhere once you start looking.

And those with a soft spot for Irish English might feel better knowing that some of their bête noires are in fact Irish ( haitch, youse, but, filum and knowun).

As Irish settlers entered the Australian melting pot, so too did a hearty dose of their language.

Howard Manns is a lecturer in linguistics at Monash University. Kate Burridge is a senior fellow at the Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies and a professor of linguistics at Monash University. This article was originally published on The Conversation.
Topics: community-and-society, languages, australia, ireland

First posted March 15, 2018 06:12:52

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Where did we get the words 'sheila', larrikin' and 'furphy'?

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Updated March 16, 2018 07:45:32 Australian English decidedly finds its origins in British English. But when it comes to chasing down Irish influence, there are - to paraphrase Donald Rumsfield - some knowun knowuns, some unknowun knowuns, and a bucket load of furphies.

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GERARD Healy is stunned his Gold Coast Suns "slip of the tongue" went viral, but the Fox Footy AFL expert can at least see the funny side of it.

The 1988 Brownlow Medallist said he was more concerned with the fact he'll be covering a Gold Coast Suns game in a couple of weeks - and hoped he wouldn't slip up again.

Previewing the Melbourne Demons and Gold Coast Suns clash on Sunday, Healy accidentally combined the words "Coast" and "Suns" on live television, generating worldwide reaction on social media.

Watch Healy's slip-up in the video player above (warning: language may offend)

"I didn't know when I left the ground the magnitude of what was to come but it didn't take long," Healy said during his weekly live chat on foxsports.com.au.

"When I got home after the match my two youngest daughters were sitting around the table, replaying it on social media, and debating with Lisa my wife as to whether she was mad at me.

"They resolved that it was if anything very funny, in particular Huddo's reaction that "threw me under the bus". How Spud (Danny Frawley) kept a straight face was a miracle."

While many believe Healy may have combined "Coast" with "Hunt" - in reference to Suns midfielder Karmichael Hunt - the man himself says it was a mixture of "Coast and Suns".

"I always thought Karmicheal Hunt was going to be the trap for commentators but for me it was a combination of Coast and Suns," he said.

"It was a classic slip of the tongue, although despite everyone hearing one word I'm pretty sure it was a combo of Coast and Suns, rather than Coast and Hunt.

"Either way, it's taken off around the world as a classic blooper that I'm sure will be seen for a few years to come.

"The mobile phone has been going into overdrive with so many texts from family and friends from all over the country, Bali, the USA and UK letting me know they've seen it and people are laughing at this Aussie commentator who called one of their teams, the Gold C...s.

"The good news is it's given Gold Coast plenty of exposure. The bad news is I'm doing another Suns game in a couple of weeks which is already making me nervous."

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GERARD Healy is stunned his Gold Coast Suns "slip of the tongue" went viral, but the Fox Footy AFL expert can at least see the funny side of it. The 1988 Brownlow Medallist said he was more concerned with the fact he'll be covering a Gold Coast Suns game in a couple of weeks - and hoped he wouldn't slip up again.