Silence
Town Hall Audience Member - Key & Peele
Play videoDon Kulick's "No" paper reminded me of this classic Key & Peele sketch, in which the camera and audience at a town hall follow Jordan Peele's character while a member of congress is talking about gay rights. In this case, the camera and audience are calling Jordan Peele's implicitly straight character into being as a gay subject, which Peele attempts to circumvent by refusing to linguistically acknowledge the attention and instead scurrying around the room to hide. I think this is a (non-violent) example of the same phenomena Kulick talks about, since Peele's character evidently believes "to have to utter that ‘no’ oneself is to be forced to produce oneself as a non-masculine subject," which in this case means he can't just say he isn't gay.
empathic language model
An language model that detects the emotional state of the speaker and responds accordingly. Interestingly, the model will use certain features, including ones we've studied in class like derhoticization, to indicate certain emotional states. It likely also has learned, inadvertently, to detect/classify human emotion by paying attention to these variables.
An open question is how language models like these will affect language change, if at all.
Interruption, conversation, and perception
An article on a study of both American English conversational styles and how they and other variables affect perceptions of conversational "interruption" or simultaneous speech. Found not only differences in perception from people of different linguistic styles but significant differences in survey respondents' perceptions of the actions, speech, politeness, and intellect of men and women. [Published on 22018]
Keye & Peele - Text Message Confusion
Play videoThis comedy skit, called “Text Message Confusion”, shows the potential pitfalls of non-verbal communication. Text communication can lack tone and lead to confusion. This skit showcases two friends texting back and forth about evening plans. Though they are reading the same messages, the context (the person’s overall mood) for each friend is different. One is relaxed and the other is on edge, leading to two very different interpretations of the same written words.
The Onion & Women's Speech
The Onion takes a shot at joking about some features commonly criticized about women's speech in this piece. Some things that jump out are the descriptors, "high-pitched, kind of childish-sounding voice", "slower-than-average delivery and tendency to trail off at the end of long sentences" and "inflection that makes it hard to tell if she’s making a statement or asking a question".
Another part that struck me was the similarity between the end and Mendoza-Denton's point about silence and gender in the Anita Hill proceedings, "When reached for comment, Kushnick told reporters she was considering going back to her old habit of stoically saying nothing throughout the school day when she was simply judged by others to be a stuck-up bitch". [Published on 10-05-2015]
Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas Hearings
Play videoA clip from the 1991 confirmation hearing of Supreme Court Justic Clarence Thomas, which shows Senator Arlen Specter questioning Anita Hill.
I use this with the reading: Mendoza-Denton, Norma. 1995. "Pregnant Pauses: Silence and Authority in the Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas Hearings."