1. Michael
Anderson & Aiden Nienajadlo: Malapropisms [Paper]
For
our project we decided to complete a paper-based empirical study on spelling
errors in the English language.
More specifically, we studied malapropisms, which are lexically grounded
errors in spelling characterized by the confusion and replacement of a target
word with one that shares similar homophonous elements. Our hypothesis was that the occurrence
of malapropisms has less to do with competence errors and more to do with the
fact that the malapropisms consist of low frequency words with an academic
register.
To
test this hypothesis we designed an orthographic survey in the form of ten
multiple-choice questions, four of which contained low frequency words with an
academic register and their corresponding malapropisms while the other six
served as a control. Seventy-three
native English speakers either in college or graduated were surveyed.
After
collecting the data, we determined that our hypothesis was correct. On average, those surveyed tended to
choose the malapropisms more often than they would choose misspellings of the
control words. Since this was a
small study, however, further research would need to be conducted to determine
if our conclusions can be seen across the entire English-speaking world.
2. Evan Bradtke & Yichen Wang: Clipping [Paper]
Our research project
examines five clipped forms of words to assess the semantic changes words
undergo when reduced in form. Traditionally, clipping has been analyzed in
terms of its phonological or morphological characteristics. We argue that
clipping is a semantic change used to derogate words and the concepts
associated with them. Drawing on Urban Diction, the Oxford English Dictionary,
and the Contemporary Corpus of American English, we document how the words
homosexual, champion, Democratic, legitimate, and naturally are derogated
semantically by association with contaminating concepts and harsher sounds in
their clipped form. One questions for further research is whether clipping
itself ought to be considered a form of pejoration.
3. Jameson Bastien, Daniel Reilly & Daniella
Torres-Ferreira: Sound change [Paper]
Phonological change in
language over time is every bit as interesting as lexical change, but perhaps
not as apparent. In order to do it justice as a topic, we looked at poetry
(Shakespeare's sonnets) from the era of Early Modern English, when spelling and
sound change in English was in a very flexible state. The sonnets don't rhyme very
well anymore. Looking at literature on the topic of historical sound change in
English, people talk about a uniform shift in vowel pronunciations, but little
else. If vowels moved universally, then these words that rhymed five hundred
years ago ought to still rhyme today, just with a different pronunciation. Our
purpose was mainly descriptive, detailing what sounds have diverged since then
What we found is that some
vowel just didn't complete a shift or shifted in different directions (and it
wasn't our goal to describe conditioning environments) but that in at least two
cases this 'uniform' shifting of vowels fails completely to account for rhymes,
e.g.: eye – memory as a pair and wind(n.) - find. The next step forward would
be to dig deeper into what scholars were writing on language at the time or
perhaps larger bodies of work to analyze and pick out any conditioning
environments that brought about this divergence in vowel pronunciation.
4: Bridget Dorsey & Aila Bretl: Hashtag [Prezi]
For our project, we investigated
the contemporary phenomenon of the “hashtag”, represented by the symbol:
#. We chose this as our topic
because we wanted to look into a specific aspect of social media and how it
affects language. Our research
involved Twitter feeds and a survey taken by college students. The survey asked participants to
identify the common purpose of hashtags and to provide their own examples of
tweets. The most common tweets
involved hashtags of commentary-based phrases rather than phrases that would
connect people. Additionally, we
incorporated credible journal articles and Twitter itself. We discovered that the hashtag is
deviating from its original purpose, to connect users tweeting about similar
ideas, to more of a medium for social commentary. The hashtag has made its way onto other social media
platforms, as well as spoken language.
The popularity of the hashtag reflects peoples’ desire to communicate
efficiently using condensed symbols.
5. Deidre
Green, Amanda Rogers & Kristen Blaser: Semantic Change [Podcast]
Our project was on the semantic change of words as they are currently happening. In particular, we studied the words ‘literally’ and ‘cool’. We conducted a survey to get information about what people thought about these semantic changes and if they found them acceptable or not. We found that most people accepted the original meaning of the word ‘literally’. People found it more acceptable to use the figurative meaning of the word in formal settings rather than in informal settings. For the word ‘cool’, there was a unanimous acceptance of both the literal and figurative meaning of the word. We also interviewed some English Professors to get their expert opinion on these semantic changes. We found that they were divided on the informal use of the figurative meaning of the word ‘literally’ but they all agreed that the formal use was not acceptable. They agreed that all forms of the word ‘cool’ were acceptable. All of our data along with the expert perspectives, we concluded that language is a living thing that changes over time.
6. Chelsea Peterson, Kayla Halderson & Diana
Santullano: Britishisms [Paper]
For our project, we wanted
to study the difference between American English and British English. At first,
we were interested in the random differences in spelling, however, our focus
moved to Britishisms and their invasion into American culture. To study this,
we chose popular British phrases and used Google Ngram to track their
progression and use in American writing. We looked for patterns or news events
that significantly increased their prominence in our culture. We also assessed
different linguistic blogs and the opinions of both professional writers and
the general public. We found that we were correct: the use of Britishisms is
continually increasing in our country, with data to prove it. We assessed the
words ‘to go missing’, ‘ginger’, ‘Keep Calm and Carry On,’ and ‘Gobsmacked,’ We
ran into trouble when we figured out that some of our phrases were only spoken
or found in specific types of media (i.e. not in books). To remedy that, we
used Google Trends, which tracks how often a word or phrase is searched. In
all, it is impossible to deny the fact that Britishisms are steadily creeping
into American English.
7.
Mollie Olsem & Shannon Reader: Comparative [Podcast}
For
our project, we researched the understanding and use of the comparative in
English. We conducted a survey with two different sections. The first asked our
participants to choose the best answer to complete the sentence. For example,
one question was “It’s really gloomy outside today. It’s definitely_______ than
yesterday” with “more gloomy” and “gloomier” as the options. The second section
gave sentences with the comparative phrase in bold and asked the participants
to rate how acceptable the phrase was on a scale of 1(never acceptable) to 3
(always acceptable). These sentences included the phrases “most bestest,” “more
proud,” and “expensiver.” We noticed that less common words, like gloomy,
proved a little more difficult than words that are more common, like using
“better” rather than “gooder.” In the second section, we had a slight divide
about “more proud” but nearly all participants said “most bestest” and
“expensiver” were never acceptable, stating mainly that the two are not words.
Through our survey, we found that, in general, people know how to use the
comparative even if they are unaware of the specific rules; they have the
natural linguistic instinct when forming phrases.
8: Rebecca Manis:The Scales of Justice: Balancing
Vagueness and Precision in Legal Language [Lit Review]
The law attempts to
articulate and codify internalized social norms, as well as provide for the
regulation of bureaucratic institutions.
In doing this, there is the expectation that the law will be clear for the
people it governs and flexible enough
to account for different contexts.
My paper examined the issue of vagueness vs. precision in legal
discourse, and some of the consequences that improper application of vagueness
and precision in law can have. I
found that the appropriate level of vagueness versus precision in law is
governed by the function of the law: it should be more vague where we have an
internalized shared understanding regarding social norms (e.g., negligence),
and should be more precise where there is no expectation that such a shared
understanding exists (e.g., tax law).
Negotiating the boundary between vagueness and precision on this
continuum can be a complicated task, but finding the balance between the two is
necessary for the preservation of justice.
9. Ben Heins & Ian
Erickson: Clippings [Podcast]
In our project, we assessed
the incorporation of modern, informal clippings originating in spoken and
social media contexts into more formal contexts, such as magazines or
non-fiction books. We looked at a select group of twentieth-century clippings (fridge,
exam, math, lab, flu, vet) in COHA (Corpus of Historical American English)
to determine the process of incorporation. We then looked at a group of
contemporary clippings (sups, awks, totes, perf, def, abbrevs, jell/jelly,
obvi, cray, forevs, peeps, ridic, vacay, adorbs, fav/fave) in COCA (Corpus
of Contemporary American English). Of these fifteen clippings, only six had a
significant presence on COCA (awks, def, cray, vacay, fav/fave). We
found a similar pattern of incorporation between contemporary and historical
clippings, with fav/fave, vacay, and def being the most
advanced in their use in formal contexts (predominately magazines). We drew
some conclusions between historical and contemporary clippings: clippings
should reduce the number of syllables dramatically (typically 4+ syllables to 1
or 2), and the three most advanced clippings did that (3+ syllables reduced to
1 or 2). Historical clippings were typically coined in niche groups and moved
to the general lexicon, where contemporary clippings were familiar words
shortened for economy. We concluded that these words haven't been around long
enough for a convincing analysis of their incorporation, but are nonetheless
gaining acceptance at an increasing rate.
10. Mandy Ezell, Paige Berge & Wonju Kim: New
words [Podcast]
Our project was focused on
new words; specifically, ‘ratchet’ and ‘the cloud’. Both of these words have
multiple meanings, and we were interested in their current, newer usages. We
examined their usage by interviewing different people in our lives from various
age groups. To do this, we used Audacity to record our personal interviews with
them, and then created a podcast that compiled all of their responses and
examples. We predicted that the older participants would not know these words
or would use them incorrectly. This is because ‘ratchet’ is a very new, slang
term, and ‘the cloud’ is highly technological, and not all of the older
participants may be familiar with it. However, we were surprised to find that
our older participants did actually know what the cloud was, and some used it
and the term. This taught us that computers and technology are even more
prevalent than we realize, and that technology is an aspect in many people’s
lives. We found that the older
participants did know the word ‘ratchet’, but not in the slang form. Those who
were younger interviewees did usually know the word ratchet and could sometimes
explain it mostly correctly. This pointed out to us that we are in a fast paced
world, and are very open to new words. Because we are changing and growing, the
words we use change often with us, and we are not strangers to being exposed to
slang.
11. Daniel Dissing: Word Formation World English -
Indian English [Literature Review]
Word formation processes in
Indian English were compared to Standard American/British English word
formation processes. Some examples of these include upgradation, using a different affixing to form the nominal form of
upgrade (v.), filmi, the world film
with a Hindi affix to change the lexical class from N > V. This is used to
describe film art that is Hindi and fulfills a communicative need that didn't
have a vocabulary in either Hindi or English and the suffix adds a slang
element. Clipping is prominently used with words such as sentimental becoming senti. The review found that corpus work
is important to make the distinction between innovation salience vs. whether or
not they are actually part of the standard variety of English in India.
Ø TOPIC: Phenomenon- acronyms commonly used in social media and the pronunciation patterns of these acronyms. (I.E., is LOL pronounced lahl, lohl, lol, or L.O.L., etc.)
Ø OBJECTIVE: to find patterns of pronunciation of acronyms appearing in social media.
Ø ACRONYMS: LOL (laugh out loud), BTW (by the way), BRB (be right back),
ASAP (as soon as possible) FYI (for your information) YOLO( you only live once) TLDR( too long, didn’t read) FOMO (Fear of Missing Out), HAND( Have a nice day)
MOOC(massive open online course)
Ø RESULTS:
1.) Most acronyms are pronounced by naming the letters. These acronyms are considered typical. Examples include DVD and FYI.
2.) Pronouncing acronyms like “words,” logically following, is atypical. This explains why LOL has multiple pronunciations, although the clear “typical” pronunciation is naming the letters.
3.) Studies have shown that naming letters is considered the most unambiguous method of pronouncing acronyms that are not following English phonotactics. One example is CNN.
4.) All the acronyms that follow the phonotactics of English have a potential to have a word-like pronunciation, but the potential is not fulfilled for all acronyms. Both the acronyms HAND (“have a nice day”) and FOMO (“fear of missing out”) had the potential to have word-like pronunciations, but only FOMO succeed in most cases.
13. Sandy Thao & Liz Xiong: Semantici Change [Podcast]
We were looking at how the
word ‘gay’ has transformed into today’s current meaning, specifically in the
phrase “that’s so gay.” We supplemented our findings with additional words that
we believed underwent a pejorative semantic meaning change, such as ‘fairy’,
‘retard’, and ‘lame.’ We used the OED to find formal definitions of original
meaning and more recent meanings, as well as other websites for the first use
of the words. ‘Gay,’ ‘lame,’ and ‘retard’ all fell into a pejorative class but
we believed that ‘fairy’ reclaimed its original meaning. We conducted an
interview with a queer studies professor here at UW-Madison, Ramzi Fawaz. His
work focuses on queer and feminist theory, and how underrepresented groups
interact with American politics. In the interview, Professor Fawaz also touches
on the word ‘queer’ and his thoughts about the word, and although it was not a
main focus of our project, it has important connections to the word ‘gay.’ In
addition to Professor Fawaz, we found audio clips on the Internet. We found
that some words that represent underrepresented groups may have entered a
pejorative class change. In the future, we’d like to see how words for other
underrepresented groups will change, and whether they will entail such a change
as well.
14. Madeleine Wasek, Sean
Dickinson & Jun Song: Swearing [Podcast]
Our podcast focuses on the
roles of curse words in print media, television, music, and everyday
situations. We primarily focused on the word “fuck”, although that was not our
original intent. Curse words proved to provide a plethora of information to
analyze, so we had to narrow it down to one word. We discuss how certain curse
words we once considered to be the most offensive are now viewed as less
offensive. For instance, “bastard” was once very offensive because society
placed a lot of value on parents and one’s lineage. But we now use that word a
little more loosely because less value is placed on one’s family standing.
Therefore, we can conclude that society gives the vulgar connotations to a word
based on what society deems vulgar. The word “fuck” is still very offensive and
viewed as obscene because it represents explicit sexual themes, and our society
is still very offended by overt sexuality. Perhaps in another century, “fuck”
will be less censored in written and verbal language.
15. Megan Bucher, Anne Werner & Jane Wierdsma:
Idioms [Podcast]
Because the three of us
noticed and were bothered its misuse, our project focused around the idiom couldn’t care less. We were curious to
find out how and why we had heard (what seemed like many) people say could care less. We first looked to
linguistic blogs (such as languagelog.com) and found we definitely weren’t the
only ones peeved by this switch-up of “could” and “couldn’t.” We turned to
Google n-grams, but found that couldn’t
care less is almost always used in written form. With this in mind, we
conducted a survey through PowerPoint of 30 fill-in-the-blank idioms, and each
recorded ten participants (mostly UW undergrads) reading out loud through each
slide, filling in the blank as they went. The idiom of interest read: “After
hearing the reviews, I __________ care less about seeing the movie.” We hoped
that by the time our participants got to this slide, they would have been in
the habit of responding with their first reaction, thus giving us a more
accurate piece of data. After each survey, we had each participant revisit our
idiom and asked them three things: if they had heard people use couldn’t care less and could care less; if either of the two
bothered them; and why they responded with what they did.
After
gathering our data in an excel sheet, we found a surprisingly high figure of 19
participants answering “could” in the blank, seven answering “couldn’t,” and
four participants saying they did not know. To make some sense of these
findings, we consulted their follow-up responses with Steven Pinker’s article
“Words and Rules.” In the follow-up, many of our participants admitted to
realizing that could care less didn’t
make logical sense but said that they hardly ever notice when they say or hear
it that way. This finding was further justified in Pinker’s model of language
acquisition, as he says that irregular forms of language are stored and
retrieved in the mental dictionary as a chunk of information (rather than by a
learned rule). And since, by definition, an idiom’s meaning is understood as a
chunk (rather than its parts making up the meaning,) our main findings stand
valid: couldn’t care less and could care less carry the same meaning
when used by and heard from the speaker.