Update on the future of this blog and moving to another location

I’m starting to write on this blog again, but there are a few changes that I want to let you know about.

First, I’m moving away from the wordpress.com version of this site. I have a domain for this blog (https://andreadallover.com) which will look about the exact same to you (minus the ads) but will allow me to do more (like have actual tables – seriously, why is it so hard for wordpress to have tables?).

Second, I’m pretty sure none of you that follow this blog will be brought over to the new location. It’s still a WordPress cite, so you should still be able to follow it. But I guess you’ll have to go over there and click the follow button again: https://andreadallover.com. Or use this link to subscribe to the posts via RSS: https://andreadallover.com/feed/. On the other hand, this is your chance to slip out the back without me seeing 🙂

Finally, I am not going to post on this site anymore. I guess I’ll leave it up because it doesn’t cost me anything, but to be honest I haven’t really decided what to do with this site. I know that I won’t be cross-posting articles though. All my future blog posts will be on the new location.

That’s all. I’m looking forward to reviving this blog. I have some cool ideas for new posts and I hope to see you over there at the new location. Oh yeah, and if you want to know more about me, go check out my personal website: https://eviljoemcveigh.com/.

More political scientists doing bad linguistics

There’s a new article out that uses faulty methods to study the linguistic complexity of politicians’ speech. It makes many of the same mistakes that I criticized Schoonvelde et al. (2019) for – and even references that article. But it somehow comes to the right conclusion… for the wrong reasons. I know, it’s strange. Let’s check it out.

Superman and Batman and Language!

I bet you weren’t expecting some tricky linguistic commentary in the pages of SUPERMAN & BATMAN VS. VAMPIRES AND WEREWOLVES! But here it is!

In Issue #4 of the six-part series, our heroes are hanging around making plans and waiting to be attacked by demon-like creatures (as you do). That’s when Jason Blood, aka the rhyming demon Etrigan, senses the creatures’ arrival and says “THEY’RE HERE”:

SUPERMAN AND BATMAN VS. WEREWOLVES AND VAMPIRES #4 by Kevin VanHook (w), Tom Mandrake (art), Nathan Eyring (c), and Steve Wandis (l)

Dictionary.com with some good advice

I don’t know what’s going on over at Dictionary.com, but I like it. They’ve been stepping up their blogging game recently. Gone are the days of word hating (I hope)! Instead, they recently published a post about the problematic nature of some words that get casually thrown around. If you don’t know why it might be harmful to use words like Sherpa, Nazi, and hysterical, you might want to check this one out.

“Stop Using These Phrases in 2020 (Use These Synonyms Instead)” on Dictionary.com

Good job, Dictionary.com. Keep it up!

An awful take on the word “like”

Welcome back, language fans. This time we’re traveling over to Grammar.com, where the grammar is… not so good, Al. Specifically, we’re going to look at a PDF that they’re slinging (for free!) called “The Awful ‘Like’ Word”.

This little ditty is 9 pages of nonsense. I would copy the text and comment on it in this post, but that would take forever. Those of you interested in truly awful language commentary can check out the PDF below. I’m gonna warn you, though. This PDF might be, like, the worst thing I’ve read about the word like. If your face likes meeting your palm, then read on!

Here’s the PDF “The Awful ‘Like’ Word” with my comments. I promise it’s not all snide remarks. There’s some good linguistic commentary in there as well. But snide remarks too.

And here it is without my comments if you want to color it in for yourself.

Technology is also biased against women’s voices

Back in November*, the radio show On the Media did a segment on women’s voices in broadcasting. They took a different angle than we’re used to – instead of talking about the social and political factors used to police and silence women, they discussed the technological factors. Because of course there are also technological things keeping women out of public spaces.

On the Media talked to Clark University professor Tina Tallon about how audio recording and broadcasting technology was specifically designed to favor men’s voices over women’s. It’s a story that sucks, but the interview is interesting and worth a listen. Here’s the link to where you can listen to it: https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/segments/how-radio-made-female-voices-sound-shrill

* You’re not the only one who’s behind on their podcasts, friend.

Christopher Hitchens falls flat on “you know” and “like”

Christopher Hitchens can’t do language commentary, you know

In looking around for something else, I came across an article on language by Christopher Hitchens. For all his skill in analyzing social progress and literature, Hitchens doesn’t seem to have ever even seen the cover of a linguistics book.

The whole article is a hot ball of gobbledygook, but I want to focus on one thing Hitchens talks about in it. He starts his article by disparaging Caroline Kennedy for the number of times she uses you know in two interviews.

The grammar of “With great power must also come great responsibility”

What is the subject of this sentence:

With great power must also come great responsibility!

It’s either with great power or great responsibility.

Think about it again. Are you sure of your choice? Did you change your mind?

I asked Twitter and was surprised at the results.

Hey, #linguistics and #language twitter, what's the subject in this sentence:
With great power must also come great responsibility!

— Joe McVeigh (@EvilJoeMcVeigh) November 12, 2019

I’m in the minority here. In my opinion, the subject is with great power. Let me explain. *Thwip*

Is “nerd” still an insult?

On the one hand nerd can definitely still be an insult. Consider this clip of the Philadelphia Flyers player Travis Konecny chirping the Pittsburgh Penguins player Evgeni Malkin last year (the relevant bit comes around 38 seconds in):

Travis Konecny is a legend. pic.twitter.com/w92WJe1MaX

— Ryan Gilbert (@RGilbertSOP) March 6, 2019

(I can neither confirm nor deny whether I like watching Penguins players getting chirped)

Konecny clearly uses nerd as an insult. Yes, he qualifies it by saying “ya fucking nerd,” but he also calls Malkin just “you nerd”. Now, despite what you may think of Penguins players, Malkin is probably the opposite of the traditional definition of a “nerd” – he’s an elite athlete. (But maybe he’s a hockey nerd???)

On the other hand, might not be using nerd to be an insult much anymore. Earlier this year, Dr. Lisa Davidson tweeted about whether geek and nerd are humblebrags.

A while back you mostly disagreed w/my discomfort with 'geek' & 'nerd'. On @theindicator podcast @titonka was also uncomfortable, but b/c she considers it a humblebrag! I want you all to know I'm working on updating my lexical entries to get with the times, k? #LanguageChanges https://t.co/VGyCp2sMuq

— Dr. Lisa Davidson (@lisa_b_davidson) September 4, 2019

This led to some discussion which you should check out. The idea is that maybe the word nerd has changed from something that is definitely negative into something that is maybe positive. Before you confirm your intuitions, keep reading. I thought checking a corpus would be good to answer this question (you know, because I’m a corpus linguist). I decided to check the iWeb corpus because it is unedited and so should give us an idea of how nerd is used “in the wild”. The iWeb corpus is very large (14 billion words) and contains language from websites in 6 English-speaking countries (US, Canada, Ireland, the UK, Australia, and New Zealand) from 2017. There are 38,554 instances of nerd in the corpus. So I took a random sample of 500. Go here to automatically search for “nerd” on the iWeb corpus, and here for an overview of the corpus (PDF).

Here is my sample of nerd instances in the iWeb corpus as an .xlsx file. (The corpus sample only gave me 499 for some reason, so I went and grabbed the first result in the listings to make my list 500.)

1 Idea You Are Literally Beating to Death

Look! Up in the sky! It’s bird shit… It’s acid rain… It’s another garbage article about Words You Shouldn’t Use™!

Ugh.

Ok, so this one’s from way back in 2013. Excuses? Maybe. But it was linked to by an article from 2019, so maybe it’s still relevant? I don’t know. Thick as thieves, these bad linguistics posts, I guess.

Anywho…

The article is called “9 Words You’re Literally Beating to Death” and so you already know it’s going to be the worst. It’s by renowned linguist esteemed language scholar revered language expert some dude named Rob Ashgar. Let’s have a little look see at Rob’s linguistic brain farts, shall we? (Scroll down for why all this is important)

Right off the bat, we’re deep in La La Land:

A few people can shift from a chatty and casual tone to a formal and professional one. But most of us can’t. We import our worst habits from everyday chattage to a formal job interview, a sales presentation or a eulogy.

“A few people”? What, like 3? Maybe four or five? You got any evidence to back this up, Robbo? Remember there are over 500 million L1 English speakers. If only a few of them can shift from a chatty and casual tone to a formal and professional one, why don’t you tell us their names? Oh right, because you’re making this up.