Date: Wed, 31 Mar 1993 21:27:13 PST
From: John Baugh John.Baugh%STANFORD.BITNET[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]uga.cc.uga.edu
Subject: Re: [hw]
REPLY TO 03/31/93 11:46 FROM ADS-L[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]UGA.BITNET "American Dialect Society": Re:
[hw]
Jack:
I'm glad to see your message, because it gives me an opportunity to
tell you how much I'm enjoying to book on Miles. One of the biggest
regrets of my life is that I never saw him perform live. And, your
book arrived just as I was trying to track down some of his old
recordings (to tape for my collection).
So, I was impressed by your linguistics, but the Miles work is
tremendous, and very worthy of the ASCAP award.
Congratulations, and thanks. I'm a big fan of Miles -- an absolute
genious and artist that was ahead of his time and on time at the
same time . I'm off to Alabama for a conference, and glad to make
contact before I leave town. Take care, and thanks so much. JB
To: ADS-L[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]UGA.BITNET
Date: Mon, 5 Apr 1993 11:32:00 CST
From: Beth Lee Simon BLSIMON[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]MACC.WISC.EDU
Subject: lexical query
Is anyone familiar with _quiet_ in a limited, somewhat technical sense,
as it would be used, for instance, in the following:
"I didn't make an offer to buy that lot because the title isn't quiet"
?
thanks,
beth simon at dictionary of american regional english
blsimon[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]macc.wisc.edu
Date: Mon, 5 Apr 1993 21:19:20 CST
From: Gerald Walton VCGW%UMSVM.BITNET[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]uga.cc.uga.edu
Subject: Re: [hw]
On Wed, 31 Mar 1993 21:27:13 PST John Baugh said:
I'm off to Alabama for a conference....
You did a good job with your presentation at Auburn. GWW
Date: Mon, 12 Apr 1993 21:16:33 -0600
From: Dan Goodman dsg[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]STAFF.TC.UMN.EDU
Subject: heard recently
Terms I've heard recently:
bleeding edge technology. Heard: A computer group -- Minnesota Micro
Technical Forum -- in MPLS; members are largely computer professionals AND
computer hobbyists.
goyische hamentaschen (Fig Newtons). Heard 4/12/93 from Jane Yolen
(fantasy and children's writer/editor), who may be the originator. If she
isn't -- Ms. Yolen is Jewish, old enough to have an adult son, of immigrant
parentage, raised in the NYC area.
Dan Goodman dsg[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]staff.tc.umn.edu
Date: Mon, 19 Apr 1993 11:54:00 CST
From: Beth Lee Simon BLSIMON[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]MACC.WISC.EDU
Subject: lexical query
hi everyone. nice spring, huh? it only stops snowing long enough
to flood.
anyway,
does anyone use _kill_ in the sense of a creek, stream, etc., other
than in a proper name?
thanks,
beth simon at the dictionary of american regional english
blsimon[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]macc.wisc.edu
Date: Mon, 19 Apr 1993 17:34:12 -0400
From: "David Bergdahl (614) 593-2783" BERGDAHL%OUACCVMB.BITNET[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]uga.cc.uga.edu
I don't use -kill- as a small stream but the minnows that live in them
ever were _killies_! I was raised on southern LI in the 40's when there
were brooks with fish in them and woods and all tht good stuff that got
bulldozed for track houses in the 50's.
Now I live in App-a-latch-cha! :-)
David Bergdahl Ohio University/Athens "Gateway to West Virginia"
BERGDAHL AT OUACCVMB.Bitnet-or-BERGDAHL[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]OUVAXA.CATS.OHIOU.EDU
**********************************************************************
Date: Tue, 20 Apr 1993 16:41:50 EDT
From: Ellen Johnson ATLAS[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]uga.cc.uga.edu
Subject: kill
LAMSAS has two occurrences of 'kill' to mean simply creek. NY23B (Saratoga Co.
Schuylerville) notes it is "1/2 [size of a] river". NY58B (Pittsford, Monroe
Co.) comments "in Delaware", and is thus apparently reporting on usage else-
where. The Schuylerville informant was 74 when interviewed in 1948 and he
was a typical "folk" speaker (IA). Ellen JOhnson atlas[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]uga
Date: Thu, 22 Apr 1993 15:14:33 EST
From: "Betty S. Phillips" EJPHILL[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ENGFAC.INDSTATE.EDU
Subject: social class & surveys
Can anyone suggest a simple question or two to test for social class
in doing a dialect survey? (To avoid having to ask income or
education level.) The current need applies to surveys done by
students in an introductory linguistics class. (One suggestion that
doesn't seem to work, for example, was "Do you have a TV in your
living room?" on the assumption that only families without family
rooms would have the TV in the living room.)
Thanks.
Betty Phillips
English Dept.
Indiana State Univ.
Terre Haute, IN
ejphill[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]engfac.indstate.edu
Date: Thu, 22 Apr 1993 18:58:00 CST
From: Beth Lee Simon BLSIMON[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]MACC.WISC.EDU
Subject: 1st lang gender markings in English
In Wednesday's NY Times, in a review of a movie, (front page, second section)
Vincent Canby (I think) wrote "two male Chicanos".
Interesting. If the two in question had been female, would it be
"two female Chicanos"? or "two Chicanas"?
Has anyone seen how this is being handled?
beth simon
Date: Thu, 22 Apr 1993 19:59:40 -0700
From: "Thomas L. Clark" tlc[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]NEVADA.EDU
Subject: Re: social class & surveys
Your message dated: Thu, 22 Apr 1993 15:14:33 EST
--------
Can anyone suggest a simple question or two to test for social class
in doing a dialect survey? (To avoid having to ask income or
education level.) The current need applies to surveys done by
students in an introductory linguistics class. (One suggestion that
doesn't seem to work, for example, was "Do you have a TV in your
living room?" on the assumption that only families without family
rooms would have the TV in the living room.)
Thanks.
Betty Phillips
English Dept.
Indiana State Univ.
Terre Haute, IN
ejphill[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]engfac.indstate.edu
-------------------------------------------------------
Hello EJP
This is a fascinating question that sociolinguists will jump to
answer with alacrity and absolute certainty. Before All their variety of
of correct answers arrive, I will jump in with two cents' worth.
In Las Vegas, amount of money, types of cars, size of house,
membership in country clubs mean almost nothing in terms of social class.
Each of these can vary with the same people in an amazingly short time.
The type of work helps a bit, but only to separate the lowest, nonworkingclass
from the working class from the lower half of the middle class (most
"regularly employed and educated people"), and upper middle class (money,
cars, college educated, continuous country club membership for two
generations). Beyond that, we got some snobs, rock stars, CEOs, sports
figgers, high roller gamblers...but we got no upper class.
All this is by way of saying that my students in linguistic classes
make their own determination of what class their respondents (what you call
"informants") are. I've found that asking my students to determine what class
each of their interviewees was, and asking them to list their reasons for
the categories, told us much more about the exercise than my giving them
a list of characteristics. Cheers.
Thomas L. Clark English Department UNLV 89154
tlc[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]nevada.edu or BITnet tlc[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]nevada2
Date: Fri, 23 Apr 1993 09:06:45 CST
From: Dennis Baron debaron[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]UIUC.EDU
Subject: Re: 1st lang gender markings in English
Has anyone seen how this is being handled?
beth simon
On our campus a professionally printed poster is advertising Latina/o week.
Dennis
--
debaron[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]uiuc.edu (\ 217-333-2392
\'\ fax: 217-333-4321
Dennis Baron \'\ ____________
Department of English / '| ()___________)
University of Illinois \ '/ \ ~~~~~~~~~ \
608 South Wright St. \ \ ~~~~~~~~~ \
Urbana, IL 61801 ==). \ __________\
(__) ()___________)
Date: Fri, 23 Apr 1993 10:18:15 -0400
From: Bruce Southard ENSOUTHA%ECUVM1.BITNET[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]uga.cc.uga.edu
Subject: social class & surveys
I seem to remember reading somewhere, though the reference escapes me, that
economic class correlated more closely with number of bathrooms in a person's
dwelling than with any other factor. Maybe the fixtures installed therein
would speak to the social status.
Regards,
Bruce Southard
English Department, East Carolina University
ensoutha[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ecuvm1.bitnet
Date: Fri, 23 Apr 1993 10:17:03 EST
From: "Betty S. Phillips" EJPHILL[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ENGFAC.INDSTATE.EDU
Subject: anti- etc.
I have a student who wants to do a study of the different
pronunciations of words like anti-, multi-, diversity [i] vs. [ai].
Does anyone know of work on this or have an impression of what the
likely variable here is? We'd appreciate any pointers.
Please respond directly to me: Betty PHillips
ejphill[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]engfac.indstate.edu
Thanks.
Date: Fri, 23 Apr 1993 12:55:29 -0500
From: 00v0horvath%BSUVAX1.BITNET[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]uga.cc.uga.edu
Subject: Re: social class & surveys
Instead of (or in addition to) asking students to determine by themselves the
social class of the respondents, why not have them ask directly "Which of these
social classes/groups do you feel you belong to?" (and then give the respondent
a brief description of social class categories they have in mind)
In a 1992 article in Language in Society (I can dig up the exact references if
anybody needs it) Milroy & Milroy argue (quite convincigly to me) that what
really matters is how people *feel* they belong to, rather than "objective"
criteria such as income, education, number of bathrooms, etc.
If so, relying on respondents' self-classification should work better than
anything else.
Vera Horvath
Ball State University
Department of English
00V0HORVATH[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]BSUVC.BSU.EDU
Date: Fri, 23 Apr 1993 11:28:39 -0700
From: letticia DEFINED IDDLG%ASUACAD.BITNET[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]uga.cc.uga.edu
Subject: Re: 1st lang gender markings in English
It needs to agree...so it's 2 female chicanas....chicanos is used to encompass
the whole ethnic population both male and female but is used to agree with gen
der...male chicanos/female chicanas.....hombres chicanos o mujeres chicanas....
that's it.....from a Chicana-tejana sociolinguist.....Letticia Galindo.
IDDLG[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ASUACAD
Date: Fri, 23 Apr 1993 19:48:59 -0600
From: Dan Goodman dsg[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]STAFF.TC.UMN.EDU
What gender is a tractor?
What gender is a cow?
Dan Goodman dsg[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]staff.tc.umn.edu
Date: Sun, 25 Apr 1993 18:00:39 PDT
From: "John W. Du Bois SPR2JWD%UCSBUXA.BITNET[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]uga.cc.uga.edu " SPR2JWD%UCSBUXA.BITNET[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]uga.cc.uga.edu
Subject: Re: social class & surveys
Horvath's suggestion that respondents should self-classify is intriguing --
do you have a set of "brief descriptions of social class categories" worked out?
Jack Du Bois
Linguistics
UCSB
Santa Barbara, California 93106
dubois[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]humanitas.ucsb.edu
Date: Mon, 26 Apr 1993 01:28:00 -0500
From: 00v0horvath%BSUVAX1.BITNET[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]uga.cc.uga.edu
Subject: Re: social class & surveys
Jack Du Bois asks if I have "a set of "brief descriptions of social class
categories" worked out."
No, I don't. This was just an idea.
But I think it wouldn't be hard to come by such descriptions in
the sociological literature. I vaguely remember having seen one that I liked;
it presented "prototypical" members of social groups.
Maybe respondents could be asked to pick up the "prototype" which they feel
best represents their social environment.
Since the original question concerned a class assignment, maybe the students
could come up with some "brief descriptions" as a pre-exercise before they go
out to fieldwork.
At any rate, I'd like to hear what the readers of this list think about my
suggestion and what kind of "brief descriptions" you would use, if any.
Vera Horvath
Date: Mon, 26 Apr 1993 08:32:14 EDT
From: Bill Kretzschmar WAKJENGL[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]uga.cc.uga.edu
Subject: Re: social class & surveys
Vera Horvath suggests that asking speakers about their social class is a good
idea, following the Milroys in *LinS*. I agree, but one would also want to get
the hard information about education, age, and so forth. Perception, or
"feelings", about social class is indeed important information, but we should
also be able to make independent judgments about social characteristics.
On LAMSAS we have tried to recover information about quite a number of
characteristics (not always successfully) from our records: type, generation,
and cultivation judgments by the fieldworker; sex, age, education, occupation,
race, residential locality type (urban/rural). We couldn't get income info.
and we may eventually go back and try to get religion, parents' origin of
residence, and other characteristics. One never knows what in future will
suddenly seem relevant, and so it is best to get a good biography for any
extensive interview. For ephemera like class projects, I would suggest
creation of a simple standard framework in advance, where the important thing
is universal easy application by students rather than accurate social
measurement. You can always try to replicate an earlier experiment, in which
case you would want to use the categories of the earlier work. There is some
idea of the LW, UW, LM, UM Labovian categories at the end of his "Sex and
Social Class" article in *Language Variation and Change*.
Bill Kretzschmar 706-542-2246
University of Georgia FAX 706-542-2181
Date: Mon, 26 Apr 1993 08:20:00 CST
From: Larry Davis DAVIS[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]WSUHUB.UC.TWSU.EDU
Subject: Re: social class & surveys
The first study that I know of which used self description to determine social
class was Ray O'Cain's U. of Chicago diss. (c. 1969) on the speech of Charles-
ton, SC. O'Cain also asked subjects to rank OTHER subjects as well and then
compared these impressionistic results to those obtained using more traditional
methods. I recall that the two methds complemented each other rather well.
Date: Mon, 26 Apr 1993 09:57:37 EDT
From: Ellen Johnson ATLAS[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]uga.cc.uga.edu
Subject: Re: anti- etc.
We have in the LAMSAS files pronunciations for 'genuine' and 'iodine' that
might be interesting to compare on the /I/ - /aI/ question. It's interesting
that the /aI/ pron. of 'genuine', like 'Italian',is stigmatized but with
'iodine' it's the commonly accepted variant. We don't have these on computer
yet, but can make copies of the list manuscripts upon request.
Ellen Johnson atlas[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]uga
Date: Tue, 27 Apr 1993 00:39:13 CDT
From: "Donald M. Lance" ENGDL%MIZZOU1.BITNET[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]uga.cc.uga.edu
Subject: Re: anti- etc.
Eye-talian doesn't seem to be stigmatized these days in Missouri. It is very
common in the speech of Missouri students, and when I bring up the matter none
of them have ever been "corrected" for this pronunciation. At first they
don't quite understand my question. Genu-wine, I suspect, retains a rustic
flavor from Westerns and thus remains stigmatized.
DMLance
Date: Tue, 27 Apr 1993 12:38:00 EDT
From: "James_C.Stalker" STALKER[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]MSU.EDU
City born and bred response: tractor=neuter; cow=female, most of the time,
sometimes used generically for bovines collectively.
JCStalker
Michigan State Univ.
Date: Tue, 27 Apr 1993 18:51:41 -0600
From: Dan Goodman dsg[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]STAFF.TC.UMN.EDU
On 27 Apr 1993 12:38:00 -0400 (EDT), James_C.Stalker wrote:
City born and bred response: tractor=neuter; cow=female, most of the time,
sometimes used generically for bovines collectively.
I think _some_ city-bred people would consider a tractor female -- ones
used to working with certain kinds of machinery in their jobs. I don't
know of any studies done of such things. As a nonprofessional, I don't
know what to look for such studies under -- if anyone has information on
such studies, I'd be interested.
Dan Goodman dsg[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]staff.tc.umn.edu
.