Social and Triangles

This week's readings brought out a very social aspect of Linguistics and its relationship socio-culturally. The Kingsumner reading reiterated the point we covered right at the beginning of the quarter with Praat about standard voices, and the "typical female voice" and how it is easier to understand. The comparisons between GA and AAVE were particularly counter-intuitive to me, and as I read I tried to relate them to the cultural geography of the world and what dialect interpretation means for international relations today. Moreover, I was particularly intrigued by the aspect of immediate processing in the experiment, because I think the results of the study would be starkly less pronounced if the processing being considered was not immediate.

This makes me wonder whether the idea of a standard voice persis across languages, and if each country's standard voice is different, then do natives from each language/voice have different ideas of Standard? Further, what role do movies/social media play in influencing this idea of standard, for example, how much would a hyper-famous Australian celebrity impact a fan's understanding of the familiar or standard? This is furthered by Lupyan's stidy, which brings out an extremely philosophical aspect of the study of linguistics by relating it to the geometrical aspects of a standard, or normal triangle. I found this study harder to follow, but extremely enlightening nevertheless. The idea of three test claims and tree sides of a triangle was particularly interesting.

The Rickford article brought me back to the idea of social linguistics and the role history has played in shaping the way we perceive langauge today. The "unequal partnership" between researcher and researched echoes to a large extent how historically colonial powers had an attitude of taking from these nations under the guise of providing. The relationship to AAVE and community dialect is something I find both unusual and intriguing, as it raises a social issue where negligence is common. The guidelines proposed for British Black English was something I found particularly enlightening as he idea of empowering research and I look forward to learning more about its consequences.