RJReyes’ blog

Throughout this blog (and even well before) I've had an interest in the way that one's personal experiences, environment, and other circumstances can shape the way that they interpret ambiguous word pairs, even those which are so far unrelated that the most they share is their phonological structure.  I've just found these little nuances that can create connections in our lexicons so interesting, as well as cases where one's mind will trail towards one facet of a word due to familiarity with that meaning as opposed to the other.  A bit of news I found in the Kernal a few weeks ago would have to be the perfect way to cap off my blog and its focus on this topic.

A while ago there was opposition to the teaching of classes on the Holocaust in British schools, to the point where the holocaust was being taken off the curriculum.  Of course, such a development was newsworthy enough to spread to the internet and soon there online websites and emails reported that "UK classes will no longer be teaching the holocaust."

See where the problem can come in?  I would imagine that a person in nearly every other country in the world, and even some in the United States, would have a very different reading for UK than we as Kentuckians and even those in neighboring states would.  So when the email hit a few inboxes many were displeased that the University of Kentucky would no longer be teaching classes on the holocaust and the rumor ran so out of hand that it had to be clarified by a professor that specializes in holocaust studies that, indeed, the University of Kentucky will still be teaching them.

What I find most interesting about this is the quickness that some people would have to decipher UK as University of Kentucky rather than United Kingdom, and that the initials couldn't stand for the latter seemingly never passed through their head.  Of course, I can't talk, since I have confused the two as well, such as reading a thread on an internet forum titled "All UK students in this topic!" After clicking on it and reading a few lines I came to the conclusion that perhaps this topic was not directed to me.

I do wonder, though, had the headlines perhaps been "UK schools will no longer be teaching the holocaust" would this lead to a different, more correct interpretation.  While a college does have schools for its various facets of education this meaning would not likely be used when directed towards audiences who may or may not be familiar with college terminology, but everyone tends to associate college with classes (How are your classes going?  Are you doing well in your college?)  So tell me, blog readers, do you tink that using a different word than classes would have caused less confusion in this case?

Today in class we talked about conversational analysis, and in particular, turn taking.  In a class I am taking on language acquisition we shortly talked about turn taking and turning over the floor and when children learn to do this efficiently and subtly.  Alongside that we talked about the ways in which children (and even adults) end conversatoins, particularly just how hard it can be do to that.  Thinking back to what we said about this I could definitely see that ending a conversation has its similarities to taking turns in a conversation.  There are, after all, certain points at which it would be rude to immediately end a conversation. 

Even then, there are some times when no one knows how to end a conversation, particularly how to indicate to the other person that you have to go.  The conversation doesn't usually truly end, after all, until you are on your way out the door and off to wherever you need to go.  Sometimes this can be difficult to accomplish, since you don't want to come off as rude to whoever you are talking to, but even then if you are too nice you can end up late to where you need to go, even after warning your friend that "you have to leave in five minutes" five times.  One of the best ways to help further this, to me, seems to be standiny up and preparing your stuff, sort of a non linguistic means of saying "all right, I'm getting up, I'm going, let's get this done." This, however, is very, very tough on AIM, where I seem to have the most trouble ending my conversations.  For example, my attempts to get off the internet to go to sleep may go like this.

Me:  It's getting pretty late, I should probably get to sleep soon.

Them:  All right, it is pretty late.

Me:  I'll talk to you later, of course

Them:  So, later?

Me:  I'm gonna get headed out now, later!

Them:  Later!  Good night!

Me:  You too!  See you tomorrow!

This seems to play out with a mixture of my own desire not to come off as rude by logging off as soon as possible and their own way of ending a conversation, or their idea of what words or phrases are able to end a conversation.  For me, on AIM, later is the definitive conversation ender, but they tend to add a few kind words before I leave depending on the time and context of the conversation.  I, of course, end up feeling obliged to wish the same.  Unfortnately, I don't quite have the same ability to start packing up my things and pushing in my chair on AIM as I do in real life, which does show an interesting little difference with what happens when non linguistic gestures and actions are taken out of conversations.  All I can do is stick around for a few more minutes or just log off for the night after the first "Later!"

I find it interesting that, in regards to the politeness, there are some people who seem to be more open to bald requests and even being as blunt as possible to get what you want and tend to be annoyed by politeness, especially negative politeness.  While I do admit that negative politeness is very useful in cases which there is much to risk and speaking to those who hold power over you, especially in formal, highly hierarchical careers.  I imagine that using  negative politeness with those you are familiar with seems to come across as if you are trying to distance yourself from being the same class, to a degree acting what my come across as fake.  Similarly, it can also be viewed as trying to jump around the subject instead of flat out saying it, something many find as annoying.

This does remind me of my past thoughts on the conversational maxims, in that they can seem to be far more lax with those you are familliar or are on the same level of the social hierarchy.  In the case of my stepfather I have a much easier time being as blunt as possible with my requests and about equal chance of getting a reaction from a polite statement and a vulgar statement.  Because I've reached a level of familiarity where I know how he prefers to be addressed I have remodeled the way I tackle politeness in regards to him.

On the subject of ambiguity, I just remembered one of my funnier misunderstandings involving a pair of homophones one would not normally consider to be a source of confusion.

I was at an advisor meeting for priority registration last semester and because of the changes in the upperclassman advisors I was with a new advisor.  During our meeting she was asking me what sorts of organizations I was in on the campus and during this she asked me if I were Greek.  Without pausing a I immediately replied with "no, I'm Hispanic." Completely honest without thinking there was anything odd about the question.  She paused for a second and told me that she was asking if I were in an Fraternities.  Needless to say my answer was not terribly relevant with this new information.

Now that I think about it, Greek (from Greece) and Greek (in a fraternity or sorority) are indeed homophones.  I almost never would think of the second meaning if no prior context was given, and since she spring the question on me spontaneously my first instinct.  If I was reading the Kernal, however, I would have probably thought about the organizations, given that they are a common subject in the editorials section.  For the most part, though, this is a lesson common circumstance.  I had before mused on how experiences can play into which meaning of a word one would commonly use, but also circumstances and context.  I do wonder, however, which of these factors is stronger in determining which meaning a person first jumps to.

As odd as it is, I think I can remember one of, or at least a relatively early, experience with semantics, or particularly one that involved others going against semantics.  Albeit, it was a rather immature way, but still, when elementary school boys are involved what is mature?

In my elementary years, perhaps the most dangerous word to say around your classmates (barring curse words, of course) was thing, things, or any variation on the matter.  You could not say that word without causing anyone else to giggle especially if you, like myself, found yourself amongst the less mature classmates.  Most adults, however, would have little to say about the word thing except that compared to most other words it's pretty informal and, along with words like stuff, probably should be avoided in an essay. 

To those elementary schoolers, however, thing was a sort of stand in for anything naughty, and they would go out of the way to make this known.  I find it funny that this sort of flaunts most of the ways people go when interpreting a word, to use context or to go with the most basic meaning they know.  Instead, in these cases, kids would pay no attention to context and substitue their own, however immature, meaning for "things."

As discussed in class, it isn't completely necessary to follow Grice's principles, since its not as if you would be arrested for not completely adhering to them.  Flaunting them does have its uses, whether it be to create a humorous situation, to hide information, or to simply tell someone to get away.  Flaunting the maxims for the sake of humor, however, is something that should be done with care.

I've began to notice that if you're flaunting quality for the sake of sarcasm or humor in a dry manner and you do it frequently around friends to the point where they've gotten used to it, its important to add some sort of paralinguistic or prosodic clues to it so that they no you are flaunting a mascot.  Whenever I'm sarcastic I tend to say it rather dryly and quickly to sort of add to the effect of it being humorous.  For example, an acquaintance during a two week study was showing off a dance and I, with little change in intonation, asked them if it was the hokey pokey.  They instantly corrected me without giving myself to make a rebuttal, when my close friends or family would tend to suspect such an answer from me.

From experiences like this, it seems like there is less chance of an adverse response if the person is familiar with you and knows that you aren't being completely stupid. Trying to change the subject by bringing up an unrelated point with someone you are not completely familiar with my just cause them more confusion than them knowing to jump to a safer subject.  Of course, when flaunting maxims its also a good idea to make sure that the person you are speaking with is astute enough to catch on, friend or not.

This morning, just as I was about to head off to class a blurb on my door caught my mind:

"Please take note of any suspicious persons"

Seeing this made me think back to the chapter on grammatical semantics, particularly to the sections on plurality on nouns.  To me, person and people seem to have a very close relationship in regards to number.  I've always considered them to be a pair of sorts, with persron as a singular noun and people to be its plural equivalent.  This, of course, fails to account for the plural of person that appears in the above quotation.  So, could there be more going on between people and person?

To me, persons seems to place more importance on the possibility of there being different human beings in a place, and that you should take note of suspicious individuals as compared to taking note of whole groups.  Had the sheet said "take note of any suspicious people" I could have interpreted it the same, or I could have also interpreted it as "take note of any suspicious groups/gatherings/etc." Using persons does not imply any specific number of suspicious individuals, but seems to lean more towards the lower numbers than groups.

Peoples, however, tends to strike me as an odd construction.  I could imagine it being used to describe a gathering of different groups of ethnicities, races, or sort of divisions of persons, but in the same vein I could think of many other words I would use before using peoples.  Then again, peoples has also been closely associated with Soylent Green due to that famous line, so I find it tough to think of peoples without thinking of food made from humans.  There even seems to be a bit of redundancy with peoples in that you're pluralizing a word which seems to be inherently plural, which is enough to throw off anyone who hears it.

A few classes ago the example of "hot pants" came up in class and, after our studies of compositionality and the unique ways we can use words, I couldn't help but notice how this selection stood out to me.  It is a well established scientific fact that is agreed upon by many children that shorts and pants are opposites, or at least in some sort of odd relation of antonymy, even if I could understand some saying that the opposite of pants are shirts.  Hot pants does not describe tight pants, nor does it describe short pants (which would be capris).  Rather, it describes shorts that are extremely short, to the point where you can't even be sure if the thing has legs.

Its an interesting little construction in which pants become shorts.

Then again, it has me wondering, why not hot shorts?  Could the name hot pants be a construction of the time they were fashionable and the attitudes of the wearers?  This is the case of Daisy Dukes.  If it weren't for the TV character who made them famous there's no way this name could have came to be, barring any other crazy coincedences.  Perhaps some circumstances came that popularized the term hot pants? 

Either way, it is interesting to see how the addition of hot, in some odd manner, changes pants to shorts.  Do any of you know any other circumstances and words that can perform similar acts of magic?

In another one of my linguistics classes I learned that opposites are easier for children to learn, making them one of the first concepts they grasp onto.  This does make sense to me, though, that they would learn opposites before they learn synonymy, as children tend to run on the assumption that words only have one meaning, something they potentially would find untrue as they grow up.

I'm still not sure, though, if the opposites that children understand at first encompass all forms of antonymy or just a few.  In fact, I would imagine that many of the opposites children learn (happy/sad, up/down/ big/small) are not fully developed into their respective form of antonymy, but perhaps a more simplified binary oppositions which develops later as they learn more words and morphology which would allow them to develop on their knowledge of the world.  Of course, it also depends on what the parents teach them and what age the child is at, but still, its nice to bring together language acquisition, one of my strong interests, into this class.

During a talk with a coworker about random things from the internet my mind began to wander to the linguistic applications of the internet, particularly of all of the new terms that have come to use to describe it as well as while using it.  Of course, myself being an avid internet surfer, I find the words used on the internet more interesting.  What makes me curious, however, is the way in which new terms and abbreviations on the internet come to rise and what can (and cannot) be lexicalized to make one.

Of course, words on the internet are more typographic than linguistics, since linguistics tends to deal with spoken word, but I can see semantics still having its applications.  Wordplay on the internet, however, does tend to involve just as much typographical word play as it does involve word play based on their sound.

What I found most curious, though, was what could be lexicalized or abbreviated to create new internet lingo, chatspeak, etc.  Why, for example, do we abbreviate "be right back" and "laugh out loud" but not, say "see you tomorrow" (into SYT).  Obviously, a very uncommon phrase or a less basic and versatile phrase ("need to walk dog" to "NtWD), and it seems that there do not need to be too many abbreviations to express one meaning so that there is not a break down of communications (one way of saying G2G would suffice better than twenty different abbreviations for "good bye").  And, of course, how does a piece of internet lingo become mainstream?  LOL had to start out somewhere, so it makes me wonder did one person in a chat say it and it spread, was it established by AOL even?

Who knows, in twenty years there may be classes on internet Sociology, Psychology, and Anthropology...  I myself think one based on Internet Linguistics would rockz0rz