Ologies with Alie Ward - Phonology (LINGUISTICS) with Nicole Holliday — Encore Presentation

Episode Date: December 3, 2019

Alie is delirious with the flu, so it’s an encore presentation of a favorite episode. If you slept on this when it first aired, get into Phonology now. Vocal fry. Code switching. Black Twitter. Valley girls. Culture vultures. WE'RE TALKING ABOUT TALKING. Alie battles traffic to sit down with linguistics professor Dr. Nicole Holliday about intonational phonology: how tones and pitch help us bond with others and construct identities. Inspired in part by former President Barack Obama's masterful linguistic variability, Dr. Holliday's work focuses on how language is used in the crossing and construction of racial/ethnic boundaries. She graciously fielded tons of questions for a fascinating dive into the nuances and strict grammatical rules of African American Language, cultural appropriation, our educational system, honoring your identity, what not to wear in Paris and the roiling debate over who is the best rapper. Also: Alie is maybe a lizard person.Follow Dr. Nicole Holliday @MixedLinguist on Twitter and InstagramA donation went to Initiate JusticeMore episode sources & links Sponsors of OlogiesTranscripts & bleeped episodesSupport Ologies on Patreon for as little as a buck a monthOlogiesMerch.com has hats, shirts, pins, totes!Follow @Ologies on Twitter and InstagramFollow @AlieWard on Twitter and InstagramSound editing by Jarrett Sleeper of MindJam Media & Steven Ray MorrisMusic by Nick Thorburn

Oh, hello. It's all Dad Ward. And I am sick as hell. Uh, it is Monday, the Monday after Thanksgiving 2019, and I had a new episode for y'all, and then I got a little sidetracked by sweating and shivering and holding my head and asking my pillow why, why, why me, why, why. I'm a human being, so I told myself I would take it easy this week and give y'all an encore presentation. There are so many people who have not heard this episode, so if you happen to sleep on it last summer when it first went up, get into it now. This ology doesn't roll off the tongue easily, but it's all about tongues and dialects and the way that we hear language. It is so good. So enjoy this week's episode. I'll be back next week

with a brand new one and a diminished viral load, hopefully. Okay. Here we go. Oh, hi. It's your weird coworker, the one who brings in lemons from their tree, but also sometimes microwaves fish. Alleyboard for another episode of ologies. Okay, so guess what I'm doing right now? I'm using a big glob of fat in nerves that I keep in a bone bowl behind my eyes to make noises to represent my thoughts. And then I beam those grunts to a satellite using invisible data transmission. And then your nervy fat glob is like, totally. Yeah, I get it. So my brain to your brain, it's magic people. So today we're going to be speaking about speaking. I'm pumped as heck about it. But first, let's grant about you. Thank you to everyone who's out there in the

world strutting about in wares from ologiesmerch.com, where you can go if you want a $20 science t-shirt, a tip of the cap to all of the patrons who submit questions for the podcast and support the podcast for as little as $0.25 an episode. My heart is that cheap, $0.25 an episode gets you into that club. And thanks to everyone who tosses some free love my way just by tweeting or gramming about the podcast and getting the word out and for subscribing and rating on iTunes and Stitcher, which is super important and helps so much in getting the show seen. Are you guys ready for this? So this week ologies number six on the iTunes science charts, like up there with like Invisibilia and Radio Lab and Hidden Brain, all like respectable podcasts. Ones that don't use

the F word about neuroscience or talk about ductics as much. So thank you so much for the reviews. I creep them all. I read every single one and to prove it, each week I read one aloud. So this week, I'm going to say thanks Brooke Basone for saying, Allie, thanks so much for making a podcast that makes scientists seem like rock stars. Your interviews are fun and interesting and go into the science while still managing to remain a little goofy. I think she's being generous with that. But okay, let's get into this topic. So intonational phonology, what do those sounds together even mean? So it has nothing to do with international telecommunications. So phonology is a branch of linguistics that deals with sounds. So what are emotional word grunts sound like? And

intonational means the pitches we use to convey different things like ask a question or be sarcastic. So this week, we are taking something that you do every day, which is talk with all the hidden cues and meanings and signifiers and we're breaking it down a little bit. So how do things like gender identity and racial background play a role in how we signal and bond and communicate with other people? It turns out it's fascinating and so complex. So this alleges to has both a bachelor's and a master's in linguistics and has studied the nuances of speech in everyone from pop stars to professors and people in both politics and prisons, which I feel like there's a Venn diagram. Those things are just getting closer and closer together. She got a PhD from NYU with

a dissertation entitled Intonational Variation, Linguistic Style and the Black Bioracial Experience. She's now an assistant professor of linguistics at Pomona College and we set a date for me to come out to her office on campus. It's about 35 minutes away from where I live and because I am very smart and also responsible, I gave myself an hour and a half to get there. I started out driving all was well and then my GPS just kept tacking on more minutes. It was horrifying. Suddenly it was like, you're going to be four minutes late. I was like, shit, I sent her a message. I was like, I'm so sorry. A few miles down the road, my GPS is like, you're going to be 15 minutes late. I was like, what? And then 20 minutes

late and I just kept sending her emails from stop and go traffic being like, dude, I don't, like maybe there's like a dinosaur in the road or a tanker truck exploded. Anyway, I hadn't realized that the Friday evening Los Angeles traffic on Memorial Day weekend would start before noon. So I was in the car for over two hours to go 30 miles and I was just sweating in so many places. So by the time I arrived, I was one hour late. I was the most mortified ever. And I just, I was wishing I had been fitted with a catheter for the drive. So I started rolling tape in the car and just ran into her office. I'm proud to report I went the whole interview without having a potty accident. But thisologist was as gracious as a human being

could have been. And in the 45 minutes we had to talk, she gave me one of the most frank and enthralling interviews I could just ever hope for. I had about 10 hours worth of questions to ask her, but I've included more info on her work at the end of this because we had limited time. And it's also up on my website. So feel free to tenderly stalk her to continue learning about this field. Also, if there's anything language wise I can improve on, feel free to reach out to me. I really wanted to learn more about this work because I knew nothing about it. And I wanted to kind of open up the discussion and just get people thinking about these experiences, both their own and others. So in this episode we cover the origins of our own voices through

socialization, code switching, Obama's voice, Twitter grammar, questions that linguistics hate getting, and how difficult it is to change your identity to fit in. Also, what not to wear in Paris and how I'm a shapeshifting lizard member of the Illuminati. So tell your brain glob to please listen up to the significant and brilliant word machinations of intonational phenologist Dr. Nicole Holliday. Oh god, this is a nightmare. All right, I've arrived at the college. I'm an hour late. This is my nightmare. Oh god, I'm so every, everything is a red zone. All right, I'm parking in some parking lot. It doesn't say I can't. So I'm doing it. Friday afternoon, holiday weekend. I have

to pee so fucking bad. Two hours in the car. I am over an hour late to this interview. This doctor is like, hmm, he's waiting in her office for me on a holiday weekend. Linguistics, okay. Heavy breathing. This building is empty. Dr. Holliday? Good, I'm already rolling. I'm like, we're ready to go. Hi, how are you? Good, how are you? I'm so sorry that you had such a traffic. I'm so sorry. Oh my god, this is so embarrassing. I'm just so sorry. I was like, I started running it in the car. I was like, I'm going to roll in there. I'm so excited to talk to you. I'm glad you made it. I'm sorry, the traffic. No, it's me. I should have left yesterday. I should have left and camped along the side.

We should have thought about the fact that it was Friday. We really screwed it up. Didn't even think about that or the holiday weekend. And I was like, oh my gosh. So first off, so now you are a linguistics professor here now, right? Yes, I am. Now you've been a linguistics professor here pretty recently, right? This is my, actually, I was a postdoc for one year here and then I just finished my first year as faculty. So like a baby professor. That's so exciting. Now I understand that you started studying Spanish in high school, right? Can you tell me a little bit about when you started becoming so interested in language? Yeah, so I was always a kid that was like super

interested in maps and geography. And then I think when I was in fifth grade, we had like three weeks of French or something. I was like, this is so cool. But like, you know, the US kids don't really learn second languages. So it wasn't until, you know, I got to high school, basically, or eighth grade when I started taking Spanish. And I had, was a kid that was good at school, but I wasn't like super good at anything in particular until we started doing Spanish. And it was like, oh, this is the easiest thing for me. Like this must be the thing. Side note, I'm learning Spanish on Duolingo in case anyone wants to be my friend on it. I'm not very good at it. Which means I cheated and made the computer say this.

So when I went to college, I was like, I'm just going to study a bunch of languages. I'm going to study Spanish and Arabic and whatever. So I got into it and I was studying Arabic and it was harder than Spanish, obviously, for an English speaker. Quick question. How much harder is Arabic in English? I was curious from everything I just read about it, it is hella fucking hard. So though there are 28 characters in the Arabic alphabet, the vowels are totally left out or represented as these wee little dots and swishes around the consonants. So in one study, neuropsychologists found that the left hemisphere of the brain, which handles like linear reasoning, like grammar, tends to analyze these intricate little letter freckles and swoops of Arabic writing.

So learning other languages with simpler alphabets like English or Hebrew, the left and the right brain both help you decipher the meaning and the emphasis. But in Arabic, even native speakers, the left brain kind of rolls up its sleeves and is like, oh man, this shit is complex. I gotta analyze this. Also, Arabic has a bunch of pronunciations that are unfamiliar to English speakers. It's got some next level grammar, not to mention tons of regional dialects. So if you can read or speak Arabic, please accept my robust cosmic high fives. That is life in the fast lane linguistically. So Nicole was studying that and then. And then somebody suggested, my friend's dad suggested I should take introduction to

linguistics. I thought I would like it. And I took it and I got to day one and I was like, yeah, this is the thing. Like it was never the languages. It was like the theory beneath the languages that I was interested in. But I didn't really have a way to talk about that because who learns about linguistics in high school, right? Like almost no one. Zero people. Yeah. It's never, it's not something that's thought of even though it's something that we do all day, every day. Yeah. And the way that we teach this kind of anything allied, right, is like we teach grammar, which everyone hates because we teach it so poorly and it's so prescriptive. There's so many rules and so many limitations. And so people are just like, oh, sentence structure. I want to

run away from that. So even when people do hear about linguistics, they're like, oh, you're just diagramming sentences. It must be horrible. I'm like, no, I don't do that at all. I'm actually horrible at that. Tell me what, what about it? Did you love so much? Is it because you love communication? Is it because you love how thought is shaped by language? Yeah. So I like the structure. So some one of my students last semester described linguistics as like language plus math. So there's a lot of, there's a lot of like procedure and theory and like ways that you go, we do problem sets, right? When we're teaching students. So there's like a very orderly way about going, about analyzing this thing that doesn't necessarily seem really like rule governed to us,

just as people who are walking around speaking, you don't think about like all of the things that you have to know in your mind sort of cognitively to be able to use your first or second language. I know. But also socially, right? So we teach, it's a subfield of linguistics called pragmatics that I teach about, you know, when I teach introductory level classes. And I will just say things that strike the students as absurd. So I told that like one of the examples is like, what happens if I walk in here and I'm like, Drake is the greatest rapper of all time. It's like the first thing I say in class today. Like what, and they laugh, right? And I said, why is it funny? They're like, Oh, it's like not appropriate. I'm like, but why do you know, like why? Like,

you know, all these social things that make you know that this is not like a thing that you can do. Right. Right. But nobody ever taught you that. Do you ask them why do you ask them their opinions on why was that not appropriate? Like what are, what are some of the responses that they get? Right. So they get, well, it's not the theme of the class, right? Okay. So they know what class they're in. It's not what they would expect from me as a professor to like come in and talk about hip hop, I guess. Right. So all of these, and also like it's a formal setting, right? We're in a classroom. So it's like not the type of thing that you expect here from a professor in a classroom. So that's why it's comical, right? Because all of these things are unexpected. They expect me to

come in and say today class we're going to do, you know, whatever. And also it's weird because it's the first thing. Like we don't make statements apropos of nothing usually. And when we do, we apologize. Like, oh, sorry, I was just thinking about, right, we have to kind of couch it. Right. And then it does a discussion follow of who the greatest rapper of all time really is. And do you ever settle on that? No, no, they have a lot of opinions. People used to say Nas, but he's like on the blacklist now. So is he really? Okay. He's not good. Okay. So perhaps not Nas. Yeah. Okay. I had to look this up. I was like, huh? So Nas was married to Kalise, a hip hop artist and a chef, two talents, which blended beautifully in one of her hits that we've all

sang despite our personal lactose intolerances. So Nas and Kalise divorced in 2009. But just a few months ago, she divulged that they had a terrible physically and mentally abusive relationship. So Nas, not good. So who is the greatest rapper? I was like, I got to know what is the consensus. So I did some digging and I got lost down a very deep tunnel of opinion and abyss of thoughts. And a lot of people say Kendrick Lamar. And then I found a list on MSN of the top 20 rappers of all times. I was like, I wonder what they say. Just so you know how much I love you all. It was a click through article, 20 slides to get to number one with ads in between. But I still clicked all the way through and it named Nas's number three, Biggie Smalls runner up and at the top,

Tupac. Now, Rekim and Jay-Z were also in the top five. But according to MTV's top MCs in the game, Nicki Minaj, by the way, only female rapper to ever appear on it, Kanye and Drake frequently hover in first and second place on that list. Although some people, especially Pusha T right now, may dispute Drake's ranking. Also, one more thing, if you love beautiful pastries and frosting calligraphy of hip hop lyrics, I highly suggest following the Instagram account, Drake on a Cake, by the wonderful Joy the Baker. I love it so much. But anywho's all's best rapper, big debate, not something you would expect your professor to profess straight out of the gate before laying down the syllabus is the point here. When you really started to go down the line and

get your PhD in this, by the way, congratulations. Thank you. How did you choose what your dissertation subject was, like essentially steer your boat? I think I have an unusual story because I remember the moment when I figured out my dissertation topic. And it was when I was in college. I think I had just decided on my linguistics major and I grew up in Ohio. I was undergrad at Ohio State and I had been in Peru studying abroad. I was initially interested in the language rights of indigenous people in India and South America. And I do some research on that too, like Peru and Bolivia. So I'd come back, but I started to have all these thoughts about like language rights in the United States, right? Like who gets discriminated against, right? And particularly like being black,

thinking about the ways in which that kind of contributes to racism. So I came back and I wanted to, this was 2008 and I wanted to volunteer in the Obama campaign. So I walked into the Obama field office and they told me to like sit down and some guy was going to come talk to me. So I'm watching this guy who reads to me as biracial, which he was, right? Like me too. And he's on the phone presumably with some, you know, wealthy donor, presumably like a white guy. He's like, excuse me, sir, like we really need you. Obama really could use your support and the senator is counting on folks like you to contribute, right? This very formal kind of register. And I guess the guy gave him money. So he hung up five seconds later, like a young black guy teenager comes in and he's like,

what up dog? Like, yeah, yeah, Obama, you know, he could really use your support. We're looking for volunteers to go knock on some doors. And I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. And I said, somebody has to like know about this. Like there has to, I need to read about it, like, because it just was so clear to me. Right. What a moment. And also in terms of the Obama campaign, I think a lot of people observe that Obama is really deaf with that as well, right? Does that click for you as well? Yeah. And I have, maybe not exactly at that point, but I have a few papers about Obama. Obama is also one of my research interests. So I'm just casually in a hotel room perusing Dr. Nicole Holiday's 185 page PhD dissertation I

found online. I was super tickled to see the 44th president mentioned right in the opening paragraph. She notes up top that Barack Obama is a masterful code switcher between mainstream U.S. English and African American language, AAL. So some of Dr. Holiday's other papers, they're great. Influence of suprasegmental features on perceived ethnicity of American politicians, suprasegmental features, by the way, are things like loudness, pitch, length of vowels, et cetera. So she also wrote a paper examining Barack and Michelle Obama's rates of CSD and CSD. Of course I looked that up. No, I did not know what it meant at first. It stands for coronal stop deletion or leaving off the hard D or T at the end of words,

like didn't or hard. Now, if I were to attempt to give a rundown of phonological features of African American language, which some scholars on the subject have also called African American vernacular English, this episode would stretch like into next week. So Nicole's work involves changing the perceptions and fostering appreciation for a dialect of American English that has a super complex and very specific set of grammatical rules as well as a bunch of social and sociolinguistic functions. There are so many nuances to it that the seminal reference book on the matter is called the Oxford Handbook of African American Language was published in 2015. It weighs in at a hefty 944 pages. So the study of the dialect isn't just about

coronal stop deletion or dropping a G at the end of a word. She does a lot of research on code switching. And this is a term that originated almost 70 years ago from a study of Norwegian villages. And it means to switch into different conversational tones, depending on who you're speaking to or to whom you're speaking. And it applies to so many different cultures and languages. I hadn't heard of the term until recently when my bilingual Latina friend, Daylan, told me about it and she was like, yeah, dude, of course, this happens all the time. And while I'm in Detroit, I met up with some oligies listeners and I told them I was working on this episode and one listener, Paul, was raised in England but came to America during

grade school. And he says he switches back and forth between a British accent when he talks to his parents versus his American friends. And another oligite, Ron, grew up in Detroit and said, of course, he switches tones if he's talking to his friends he grew up with or people in business settings. So it happens all the time. But the pressure within ethnically diverse communities is particularly heavy. So either you've never considered this before or you're like, duh, duh, yeah, this is daily life for me. I am, you know, sort of very interested in this idea of what it means to sound black, sort of from the perspective of something that you can perform as part of your identity. But also when people make that judgment, like what are they

hearing? And so a lot of the work that I do, sort of the quantitative work that I do, looks at what people are attuned to when they're making those kind of social judgments about race. And what did you, what conclusions did you come to? If someone asks you in a nutshell, explain your work, explain your findings, where do you start? Yeah, so I study intonation. So it's not exactly an ology, sorry. Intonational phonology. Intonational phonology is an ology. We'll use that one. And so a lot of times when I talk to just people that don't know as much about linguistics, when I ask them, like, oh, what do you think makes somebody, your ability to judge somebody

black? If they, if you can't see them, like, why would you make that judgment? And they usually say they think about the grammar. And, you know, there's a stereotype like they'll say that it's bad grammar or like bad English or something. Even black people will say that. Really? Yeah. There's the racism runs deep. And it's really entwined with language in complex ways. But so they'll say that. And I said, yeah, but, you know, what about somebody like Obama? What about somebody like even Al Sharpton, right? Like they're not, they're people that are known as using actually a very standard kind of grammar, but still like unrecognized, like unmistakably black, right? If you hear Al Sharpton's voice, you've never seen him in your life. You know,

you're like, that is a black guy. So it must be something else. But when I started to look into the literature about this, we don't actually know much what about the voice, what it is about the voice and the tone and the way that the pitch of the voice goes up and down this kind of movement that causes this kind of judgment. So that is primarily what my research focus is on. Really? So is it, so there, I imagine there's two different ways of looking at it. It's the actual physiology of why people's voices sound a certain way, the actual voice box. And then it's also how, how much it's used. Right. So how do you separate that when you are studying? So the social things are kind of more what we're interested in, right? So there's always going

to be individual level variation. And our minds are really good at that. Like when we hear a child and an adult say the same thing, we can process the same information, even though they're vastly different sizes, right? Their vocal tract is actually similar shape, but the scale is really different. So what I'm interested in is the ways in which these patterns are socialized. So one thing, for example, like if we look at pitch, just the numbers don't matter, but like the average man in the United States has a pitch that's like around between 100 and 150 Hertz. And the average woman has one that's between like 200 and 250 Hertz, but only half of that variation can be explained by physiology. Really? And what's really shocking is like, if you look at kids,

like four year olds, right? Four year old boys and four year old girls, their vocal tract is physiologically the same, right? Before puberty, they have the same sort of voice and they're the same size too, right? The girls have already learned been socialized into raising their voice, and the boys have already been socialized into lowering it. So even though there's no physiological differences, you can tell the difference between a four year old boy and a four year old girl because they've already been socialized into it. Oh my gosh. So intonations are picked up socially. Of course, the very purpose of language is to communicate within a social system. And evidently, younger folks and women tend to be the drivers of linguistic trends.

So like uptalk started in California, but it's now spread geographically and to men, although they don't like to admit it. And the purpose it may serve conversationally is to convey empathy, just to make sure you're being understood. So as Nicole said in a previous interview, I found she said, you can go anywhere in the world and ask who speaks the quote, bad version of the language. And invariably, it's the people who are marginalized, who are rural, poor, or belong to religious minorities. And now maybe more marginalized groups use nuanced language to bond and communicate for social survival. And then later it spreads to less marginalized parts of the population. I'm just theorizing. Now, if you're like me, you may be

thinking, wait, what is the big diff between a dialect and an accent? Well, I looked it up, as I do. And a dialect has its own unique vocabulary words and grammatical rules, as well as pronunciations. But an accent is just the variation in pronunciation. Now, if you're also like me, you just ate a huge bag of jalapeno cheese potato chips for dinner and hotel room. No, okay, that's fine too. Whatever. Now, is that a little bit where creaky voice is coming from? I understand that like the modern like kind of Kardashian like creaky voice, even vocal fry is a way of getting our voices lower. You did a really good vocal Friday. Yeah. So what happens when our when we have creaky voice or vocal fry is our vocal folds,

we don't call it, they're not actually chords or vote. Yeah, they're folds. So they kind of vibrate together. And they vibrate together periodically, sort of like a wave, right? But when we do creaky voice, they vibrate a periodically. And so what happens is the pitch actually drops out. So we get to the bottom of our range when we do that. And lots of languages, some languages use creaky voice to do actual like grammatical encoding information. But in English, it's stylistic variable. And so recently, it has been sort of associated with young women, like modern young women. But people have had creaky voice on and off and actually men do it. Most of the studies show that men do it as much as women, it's just stereotyped as being associated

with women. And so when women are really creaky, they get this sort of social association that it's a particular style. So we get kind of a bad rap for it. Yeah. And we shouldn't anyway, it's just like a way of moving your vocal folds, like it doesn't mean that you're more or less intelligent. All right, quick aside to address what might be driving the increased prevalence for vocal fry the last few decades. So it may be a way for women to lower the register of their voice, as lower voices are perceived to be more authoritative. So given that women weren't allowed to wear pants on the Senate floor until like the 1990s, we're just, we're doing what we can, we're pulling out all the stops. It's like, what do we need to do for you to treat people

equally? Now, a study by Caitlyn Lee at the University of Kentucky found that participants also rated male and female speakers totally differently. So I'm just going to casually repeat Nicole's statement, quote, you can go anywhere in the world and ask who speaks the bad version of the language. And invariably, it's the people who are marginalized, who are rural, poor, or belong to religious minorities. I mean, until of course, it spreads. And then it's fine. Do you think that the way people have changed, does it goes through trends like that? Yeah, for sure. So there's, it's very complicated. But basically, we language is like social contagion. So we always talk like the people that we talk to, you might have noticed this, like people will

say this to me like, Oh, I went to the south. And like, now I sound like the people in this when I'm in the south, I sound like the people in the south. Right. Because we do actually, this is a thing called speech accommodation theory, we do actually accommodate to the people around us, we converge towards them. If we like them, if we don't like them, we diverge away from them. No way. Yeah. So like, it's contagious, right? So as you see communities in contact with each other that maybe weren't before, like they're going to start to converge and diverge based on the way that people, those communities interact with each other. Um, so one example of this is thinking about like the, the California, like the creaky voice

thing that you're saying people will talk about like the valley girl thing as aspirational, particularly in the eighties. PS, I just went into the wayback machine and I listened to portions of this song, which is supposed to be comedic, but it's incredibly viciously homophobic. And it made me very, very sad. And it also made me reflect on how important social progress and empathy and tolerance are and that it's a battle worth fighting to have a more loving society. Anyway, so you had these girls in the Midwest that were like trying to approximate a California identity because they like it. So they started to sound like California because they were, it was a style that was now available to them, right? Because they could see it, they could hear

it. People were traveling more, they were interacting more. And so they started to change the style. And I imagine that must be true too for like trans continental, like the old movie voice. Like that was an aspirational kind of dialect as well, right? Yeah, it was. I mean, it's really funny because no one ever really talked that way, right? It was nobody's like first dialect. Um, but it is definitely like a style. It's funny. Um, uh, when they were talking about Kevin Spacey's character on House of Cards, he has this kind of like weird aspirational old South thing that nobody really sounds like, but it's an idea of what somebody like that is supposed to sound like. And so when you're looking at this, because I know that you've, you've obviously

studied a lot of people doing this. Do you find that there might be kind of aspirational tones depending on who they're talking to? I started telling Nicole a story I had heard the day before from Michael Yeoh, a comedian who's biracial. He's Korean and African American. And he was about to interview a very famous rapper on the radio and apparently the musician right before he was like, hey, nice to meet you. And then as soon as he got on the air for a radio station, he had a completely different voice. Is that aspirational as well, depending on kind of who you want to connect with? Yeah. So we all have, you know, everybody has styles, right? So you're not going to talk to your doctor and your priest and your mom and your best friend

the same way, right? Right. Hey, mom. Hey, dad. Sorry. I say that F word on this podcast sometimes. I know it's uncomfortable for you. But for some people that have to negotiate moving in between this like mainstream and not mainstream or like this different racialized groups, communities, whatever, the difference can be sort of more contrastive. So I'm presently working on a project with Lauren Squires, who's she teaches English at Ohio State. And we've been interviewing black students there about their experiences on campus with linguistic discrimination and linguistic insecurity there. So like, maybe they don't feel comfortable speaking up in class, right? This was the where we started. And the students will sort of overwhelmingly talk about

like the way that they talk in class, which is this kind of way that they deem acceptable to white people and the way that they actually talk or the way they talk with their friends or they talk at home. So in this way, this kind of commanding of different styles is a social survival strategy for people that have to move between worlds that they see as very different and sometimes incompatible. It's interesting how many layers of adaptability you have to have in your speech every day. Like I was on the phone with someone at a bank today. And my friend was in the room and I was so self conscious because the way I was speaking to this banker was like, yes, fantastic. I'll go ahead and compile the profit and loss statement for my S corp and then

I'll circle back and ping you with the figures for the underwriting team. So speaking in the font of mortgage lender conference call and walking on linguistic egg shells just to be in this like constant high stakes shape shifting mode is so unpleasant. I got off the phone. I was like, I'm sorry, I'm a lizard person. That was weird. And I was like, who am I? But if you find in like in biracial and black communities, how it must be difficult, I imagine, because it's part of your identity. There must be a huge struggle between wanting to hang on to that identity in community, but also having to adapt socially. How do you propose navigating that? Yeah, it's really hard. So one of the things that I teach a lot is about

African American English and linguistic discrimination. So, you know, black children are much more likely to be labeled as learning disabled in reading. And one of the reasons for that that is not that they're learning disabled, but the materials are not designed for them. They're designed for middle class white kids who speak standard, some kind of approximation of a standard English. So it's not that black children can't read. It's that when they are evaluated by white teachers in a system designed for middle class white kids, of course, they're not going to perform as well. It's not made for them. Yeah. So a lot of the movements from teachers, sort of especially back in the day where, okay, well, we need to transition them away from this. We

need to teach them standard English. And it's still a controversy because everybody knows, like if you want to get more economic success, like you do need to command standard English, but you're asking a lot of those kids, right? So the white kids get to speak the same way at home and at school. And now all the black kids have to command two varieties, one for home and one for school. And by the way, the one that they speak at home is constantly devalued every other place in their life. You know, so I have students ask me this sometimes, they're like, well, if African American English is so stigmatized, why does the community hold on to it? Like why hasn't the language just died? And I'm like, because it means something, right? Because it establishes

solidarity because it establishes in group, because it tells a historical narrative of the history of black people in the United States. Like it's not something that people really want to get rid of as much as they know that it's stigmatized. Do you find historically that it has roots or it has connections from a tonal level closer to Southern American English? Yeah. So African American English started in the South. So there's actually a lot of similarities between Southern white and Southern black varieties. It is harder for listeners, people have done studies on this, it's harder for listeners to tell the difference between rural black people and rural white people in the South. Really? Yeah. So it's, and it's because they're kind of more similar, but also

because people have these stereotyped expectations going in, like the, if you sound rural, that's white. Yeah. Right. Even though there's lots of rural black people. Right. But you picture a farmer and overalls who's like an old, an old white guy with a straw hat or something. Yes, exactly. Like the ideas that people have going in. And so, yeah, like all of the black people in the United States were originally brought to the South because we were enslaved, right? So. Side note, if you're like, I could become better educated on the history of American slavery, which I'll wager many Americans fit this category. There are so many good books and resources. There's one HBO documentary, Readings from the Slave Narratives, which features transcripts of first person

accounts and they're read by actors like Samuel Jackson and Angela Bassett and Don Cheadle and Oprah Winfrey. It's on YouTube just there for you, waiting to be watched. We only really got out of the South in big numbers in the last hundred years, right? With great migration. And even then only got out of sort of very dramatic segregated ethnic enclaves even more recently than that. And you could argue that we're not even out of them, right? Because like, look at what neighborhoods look like, not diverse. And so for that reason, it actually has the effect of keeping the language more insulated, right? Because you talk like the people you talk to. Well, if you live in a segregated community, you're going to sound like the people in your community, right? Right.

Exactly. So it's kind of an interesting, like you can look at the language evolution as like the rings of a tree. See the dendrology episode on trees. That tell the, like you cut the tree open and you can see like every layer of the history. Like you can see that in the language too. Wow. I'm so curious what you think of how, especially with social media, how social media has changed maybe spread or appropriated African American English. Because I feel like with there's, I hear that there's black Twitter is a different thing. If you have not heard of black Twitter, by the way, it has its own Wikipedia page. And to paraphrase that it's a cultural identity focused on issues and experience of interest to the African American

community. So issues of social justice are brought to light and amplified with these powerful hashtags like hashtag if they gunned me down, black lives matter, Oscars so white, you may remember. And the community also generates some really great jokes and memes. And I feel like I see white people maybe try to borrow this style. And it's, and I feel like it's, it's almost appropriated by comedians or for comedic casual effect. And how do you feel about that? Yeah, it's really interesting. So there is this thing that's like online imagined black English. So there is a way that black people like on black Twitter, for example, communicate their norms of the community, like just with any community. But also there is a way in which

like that is appropriated by the white gaze, like what people thinking people think is going on. And it's really funny because whenever someone makes the argument like, Oh, African American English is just poor grammar. I try to explain to them that they don't understand the grammar. Those people, if you ask them like, Okay, well, what does it sound like? Like make a sentence for me, they will always be wrong, because they don't understand the grammatical rules. And so like, you know, people that are on black Twitter, like in the community or whatever can tell when the, when it's a parody, because people will break rules that they don't know about. Oh, tell me everything. Yeah. So like, it's even hard for me to do. But there's,

there's a thing in African American English that's optional called zero copula. So if you think about like Kanye, whatever, like that, that is cray, right? You don't need an is there. And that's fine. Um, but you can't just do that with every subject. Like you can do it with a third singular, like that, but you can't really do it with a first person. So you can't say like, I cray. When you get white people, like mocking this, they'll say things like I cray. And you're like, no, no one, no speaker of African American English would ever say that. I was curious about people imitating African American language grammar. And sure enough, I found a tweet posted seven hours ago about someone homesteading chickens with the words,

I cray. Now the user, according to her bio is a blonde holistic doula from Michigan, who gardens? So yeah, Nicole kind of nailed it. I'll see it appropriated and I'll cringe a bit. I guess what are the differences between written and spoken African American English? Yeah, it's hard, right? So actually white people have been appropriating African American English since forever, right? So like the word cool comes from African American English, like over 100 years ago, right? So I started reading up on this topic and I came across an Oxford Dictionary's blog titled, quote, when is lexical innovation cultural appropriation? It was a fascinating read and it was addressing the use of words like shade and yes, and woke. And I scrolled down to

see like, who wrote this amazing piece? And the guest blogger was Dr. Nicole Holiday. Of course, she is the coolest. I mean, we're coolers, so they take things from us. It's fine. I mean, well, in a certain way, right? But I mean, it's also a lot of pressure to always be cool. So, you know, this is a well established like long term trend. It's interesting with the internet because you can't see people or hear them in the same way. So you can't, you don't actually know if the speaker is black sometimes, especially on Twitter, right? You read a tweet and you're like, who is that from? And you have to do like a deep investigation into like, are they black? I don't know. Is it appropriate for them to like, I have this problem on Twitter, right? So that's one way

in which social media is like really throwing people for a loop because you can't contextualize people online the way that you can in real life or at least make educated guesses about them the way that you can when you see them in person. But I also think like, yeah, there is some kind of cool cache like teenagers are cool, right? But teenagers are also in a certain way like more free to violate like mainstream language norms because we expect it from them because they don't have to use their language as a commodity to make money in the same way. So they have to use it in school for that kind of economic advancement. But they're a little bit more free to actually sound how they sound adults, right? Who are once in a working world, particularly black folks who

have to work in majority white communities all day, right? And then raise kids who they want to have like a kind of standard style are always under this pressure to sound respectable quote, unquote, but teenagers don't have that. And all of this stuff on the internet is driven by young people, right? So there is this kind of freshness, this coolness that gets adapted. But I do think that, you know, just like with every other kind of appropriation, people in the community get frustrated, particularly with people using things wrong. So I was talking to a reporter from NPR a couple of weeks ago. I don't know if she ever ended up writing this, but she was talking about thirst trap. Okay. And like the meaning of thirst trap. Okay. So originally, what it meant is like

a picture that you would put up to like kind of get comments like that you were sexy or seductive or whatever, right? So that's it's a particular type of photo that you put up like for that reason. Right. Also just see Instagram in general. You can have a whole Instagram account. That's a thirst trap, I guess. But what she was saying is like somebody had written a thing about James Comey in the interview that he was giving and was like, James Comey is a thirst trap right now because he was like seeking attention in these interviews. Oh, it's really transformed meaning and as a linguist, it's funny because I'm like, well, words are allowed to change meaning like especially online, they change meaning really quickly. Right. But also like that very clearly

came like from African American English, like from, you know, black Twitter, black communities online. And now you've just ruined it. Right. I think is, do you think Urban Dictionary ruins all of the good like all of the good kind of like insular terminology? I mean, by the time it gets to Urban Dictionary, people aren't using it though. Like that's the thing. So we're thinking about this as sort of as adults, like if you have to look it up in Urban Dictionary, like it's already over. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. If you're ever on Urban Dictionary, which I have been. It's like, there's nothing more embarrassing than like, then taking your, your, for me, like my old white ass to Urban Dictionary, like, what does this mean? By the by, I looked up Urban Dictionary's

history and it was created by some white guys and they don't moderate super racist and sexist stuff on there. So that's awful and fuck them very much. I feel like when you get older, you, you look to cues from younger people to be like, what, what is everyone talking about? Yeah. And it's like, it's hard for me because like, first of all, I'm a linguistics professor, but I'm also pretty young and black. So I'm like, I'm cool. Like I should know, right? And the students here say stuff to me that I'm like, oh my God, I have no idea. Like I, like I have to look it up in Urban Dictionary. And I'm like, yeah, 30 years old in the world of slang is ancient. Like I haven't been qualified to speak on it in like seven or eight years,

probably. Oh my God. And how, how has it changed since you started studying linguistics? Because you used at 30, which is super young to have a PhD and be a professor, but you've, you've been studying it for a number of years. Have you seen terminology change even in how we talk about it? I feel like ebonics was a word people used for a while. And I feel like that is not an okay word these days. People still use it, but it does seem like antiquated to me. How, how is the conversation changing? And how shouldn't we talk about it or how or what, or what things are already ancient and embarrassing? Ebonics actually was a word invented in like 60s, 70s. And it's actually a cool word. It's ebony plus phonics. But linguists don't use it. We stopped using it like

in the 90s because it had such a bad connotation. Right. So now we say all African American English, right? Which is not as much fun to say as ebonics. It does give it sort of a more like, right, we have a scientific term. I think this idea of code switching is much more widespread. Like people know about it more than they did even, you know, when I started studying like 10 years ago, maybe when I was in college, when I started studying linguistics, people that I talked to out in the world that are not linguists will talk about code switching in a way that's like very informed. And I don't think that people had a kind of meta awareness of it before. So that is good, right? People having this awareness that they command different styles and that they have to do the

work of it, right? And, and also just being able to talk about kind of what I was explaining to you. Like we're asking so much of these kids to command two styles. We ask that of some kids, but not others, right? I think definitely in the realm of education, teacher training, I've had met so many teachers that now have had some linguistic training like in their master's degree or something like that, which obviously makes it more equitable for their black students in the classroom. And I mean, other students too, but that's definitely a positive thing. The internet is really interesting because you do get all of this like moral panic about like the kids are ruining English. But they were saying that in the 1600s. People have been saying the kids are

ruining English since the, you know, invention of English. So no, like there's no, you know, for linguists, like there is no ruining, like language is alive and it moves and changes. It's like saying like, you're ruining the galaxy. Like, you know, like it's just a thing that exists and we describe it. And it's going to change. And that's a natural part of it. And it changes in response to social stimuli. I know like when it changes because of oppression, like we have a problem with that, but it's not because of the language changes because of the oppression. So my sort of hope going forward is that people will learn to be like more linguistically tolerant in the way that they are allegedly learning to be more like tolerant of variation and race and gender. But those things

are connected, right? How does it, how should curriculum change? Yeah, well, it's hard at the sort of, you know, fifth grade level when we're talking about teaching kids to read, I'm not like qualified on that exactly. But I think when we teach grammar, quote unquote, as such, like in, you know, middle school or whenever fourth grade, whenever people have that, they should learn it as linguistics, like kids in other countries, like when I studied abroad in Peru, like the Peruvian kids that I was studying with had learned some basic linguistic stuff when they were in elementary school. So one of the very first things that my students learn in day one is like language has variation. Variation is conditioned by social factors. It is not a problem. Like variation is

not a problem. Variation is a feature. Just to emphasize that again, variation is not a problem. Variation is a feature. And language, of course, is elastic. But we teach kids in school right now, like this is proper English, everything else is bad. And by the way, not only is everything else bad, it's a sign of like a moral failing if somebody uses ain't like heaven forbid, right? But then we're so hypocritical because then we go on Twitter and we say ain't for stylistic reasons and whatever. So I think we could be less dogmatic, but I also think we could teach kids the science of how language works as opposed to just a set of rules that scare them into conforming linguistically. And if you had to break down the difference between grammar

and linguistics in a nutshell for someone who is not not schooled in it, what is the difference? So we talk about linguistics as descriptive rather than prescriptive. So sometimes like, I'll go to a party or something and I'll tell people that I'm a linguist and they're like, oh my God, I have to watch my grammar around you. I'm like, actually, I am the person that you least need to watch your grammar around because I'm not here to judge. Like I understand Rach. I, I ain't, you know, I've been socialized here just like everybody else, but I aim to be like more understanding of the variation that I encounter rather than jumping to the conclusion like, oh, somebody said, ain't like they must not be educated, right? That's the prescriptive thing.

And that's the thing that we teach people. Like, you know, you must follow this set of rules. Don't end a sentence with a preposition, which is like everyone does anyway. Like everyone does it. We all do it. And it's weird when you doubt sometimes. I know that is a thing up with which I will not put like no, no, no. We're gonna look back and be like, people spoke like that. Like no one, I think we look back on, on, on ancient texts or and we look at it, we're like, this is so awkward. And so, I mean, yeah, a language is elastic. So it's going to change and it changes as we use it. But like, why can't that be okay? Like, why do we have these crusades about like, no, we have to preserve this, you know, like, we're still spelling through T H R O U G H.

There is no reason for that. No reason for it. It's too many characters. Don't even get me started. So linguists are really interested in speech, but like, don't even get me started on writing because like the writing system of English is a nightmare. It's I imagine it makes it a harder harder language to master as well. Yeah, in terms of writing, right? So actually, people think, oh, English is so hard to learn. It depends on the language you're coming from. So your first language determines the difficulty of the second language, the relationship between the first and second. So sort of the farther away they are, the harder it might be for you. But also, the writing system is really bad, right? So French is also very hard to learn to write in,

like for the same reason. Spanish is so easy to learn to write in because like, there's a sound and letter correspondence. So like, you don't get this thing in Spanish where like, oh, could be 800 vowels. That's a good point. Yeah, you see an E and an I in the same word. You don't know what's going on. Yeah. And so are there any, I always ask this of all theologists, are there any anything in media that addresses what you do that you really like or you really think misses the mark? I always think about that key and peel sketch. One of the first key and peel sketches I ever saw, I was like, Oh, my God, is it when they're on the phone? Yes. Yeah. Okay. So for everybody listening out there, yeah, I teach with key and peel a lot

because I'm interested in biracial people and they're just so on the market. So this is a, this is a skit in which key is like on one side of a street and peels on the other and they're like walking towards each other about to pass each other and each of them's on the phone and they don't know each other because you're my wife and you love the theater and it's your birthday. Great. And they're talking in a very sort of standard way. Like, yes, okay, I'm going to go to Whole Foods later. Like each of them is talking like this. And as they get closer, they speak more African-American English. So then he's like, the orchestra is already filled up, but they do have seats that are still left in the dress circle. So if you want me to get them theater tickets

right now, we'll do it right. I'm about five minutes away. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Cool. No, they're all good singers. They all good singers. Yeah, son. Nah, man, I'm about, I'm telling you, man, I'm about to cross the street. I think Peel gets to the other side and he's like, oh my god. Christian, I almost totally just got mugged right now. So they were so standard. And then they felt this need to like perform African-American English when they passed each other. But then he bought into like all of these white ideologies like at the, it's crazy. Are there any questions that you cringe when you get asked in what you do? Like, how many languages do you speak? Never ask a linguist how many languages do you speak? Really? You're like, you speak a few though,

to be fair. I know, but it's like not important. Like I could, you know, sometimes I joke with people and like zero. Like clearly English is my first language. And I studied Spanish for a long time. I have a degree in Spanish and I studied Bolivian Ketua for a while and Arabic for a while, but I don't speak super well, right? So in asking Nicole her least favorite question, I asked Nicole her least favorite question. I'm the worst. I know a lot of things about a lot of languages, but we're not, that's not what linguists do. Like sometimes people think we just go around collecting languages, like their stamps or something. And like we don't, like we care a lot about the structure of the thing and I'm a sociolinguist by training. And so like I care a lot about the

people, right? I care about the language in as much as I need to understand it to be able to understand what's going on with the people there. So all of the stuff about inequality that I mentioned earlier, like when I went to Peru, well, I needed to know some Ketua to be able to see the ways in which this prejudice like operates, right? I need to know something about African American English because I need to be able to see the ways in which this operates. And of course, like these are my first language, this is my first language, so it's fine. But like when we talk about studying other languages, we are often using them to answer our scientific questions, not to be like especially communicative. So if you're hanging out with a linguist that, you know, has studied French,

like that doesn't mean that they're going to help you in Paris. They'll tell you all about like the structure of old French, but they will not be able to like help you order a coffee. You're like, don't get subway directions from them. Yeah, no, don't do it. Side note, if you ever go to Paris, two things, let old Uncle Ali help you out. Don't wear athletic sneakers unless you're actively participating in a triathlon. Also, just learn how to apologize in French. It's literally the most useful linguistic tool to have in your pocket, just groveling, ashamed to be American-ness, and then everyone's so nice to you. They're like, oh, you're cute, you're like a sad dog. And do you find yourself from on a personal level, do you find yourself

code switching? Do you, are you more aware of that in your own life and in your friend's life? Yeah, I can't even like control it. It's hard to, it takes a lot of cognitive load to be able to understand what you're doing at the same time as you're doing it. So when I interview people, they're like, yeah, code switch. And I'm like, what do you change? And they're like, I don't know. And I feel the same way, like I know the things that people change, like because I'm a scientist, but it's like I have my voice that I use with my grandma, or like I'm in a historically Black sorority ski resort. And when I'm there, I have a style, and it's different than the style that I have with my white students or with my white mother or things like that. But to say exactly

what it is, like, yes, it's in the intonation, probably, but I can't even really tell you what is. And normally I run through listener questions, but because traffic, I'm going to run through the most popular one I got. Yeah, we have 10 minutes. Good. But before we get to your Patreon questions, we're going to hear a little bit about sponsors who make it possible for us to donate to a different organization or charity each week. We didn't get to do this the first time around with Nicole Holidays. So I texted her this morning and I said, hey, we get to donate to a charity. What do you choose? And she said, awesome. And she chose initiate justice. Initiatejustice.org is an organization that partners community members and the formerly incarcerated to address

mass incarceration in California. Their mission is to end mass incarceration by activating the power of the people directly impacts. So they organize members both inside and outside of prisons to advocate for their well-being and change criminal justice policy in California. And that is initiatejustice.org. So a donation went to them this week. Thanks to sponsors that you might hear about right now. Okay, back to your questions. I think the most popular question I got, because we had a lot of questions, but is what happens to me when my accent comes out when I'm drunk? What is going on there? I love that as a question. That's the most popular question. Yeah, what happens when you're drunk? A couple things. There's some lowered inhibitions that

happen with alcohol, right? So say that you are a speaker of a stigmatized variety. Like, you are from the South and you sound Southern and you are in California. You probably do some work in your mind, maybe not even consciously, to sound less Southern because you get tired of people either making fun of you or just commenting on it even. You're like, no, I'm just going to sound like a California and so I can like order my stupid coffee and not have to like have a conversation about where I'm from, right? People do that. But when you drink, your cognitive abilities decline. So you actually can't necessarily manage that at the same level that you would if you were sober. Like, your brain is slower, right? So you can't do it as well. The other thing is your brain is

slower, but also like you might just not care anymore, right? Whatever, I'm from the South and I'm just going to do it, right? I am this way with dancing and karaoke, but it's not all mental. There's another thing sort of physiologically, right? So alcohol can cause sort of a loosening of some of the pieces of your vocal tract. So that's why you get slurred speech, right? You lose some control. So if your speech is kind of slurring or something like that because you're really drunk, then you'll sound different. I tried to find a good movie clip with a drunk Southerner here, but I just started going down rabbit holes of drunk people like barfing on YouTube and it started making me sad. Anyway, I wanted to ask her so many more questions, but she had a hard

out and LA Memorial Day traffic is the devil's evening board game and I'm so sorry. What do you think my last two questions are always the thing that you hate the most about your job? What do you hate about it? Is it commute or hours or certain prejudices you face? Like, what irks you the most about what you do? Yeah, it's really hard to be an expert on language because language is a thing that everybody has, right? So if I was like a geologist, I always dream of like my alternate world in which I'm a geologist and I study rocks and people leave me alone. They don't ask me how many rocks I have, but people assume that you're an expert, right? They're like, oh, you know way more about rocks than me. So like when you come across rocks

in the wild, they're like, hey, geologist, tell me about this rock. And you're like, cool, I will because I'm an expert. When you're a linguist, everyone wants to tell you about the thing that you're wrong about. And I'm like, I am actually an expert in this thing. And what's maddening is every native speaker is an expert about their language. Like people know things about language that I don't know, but I do have some scientific training that you know, I wish people would like give me credit for. So I have had people like straight fight me when I say like African American English is rule governed. They're like, no, it's just bad grammar. I'm like, I have a PhD. So that is the thing. And to get that PhD, that must have required so much data collection. And

did you have to do sentence structuring? I mean, did you have to come out with formulas? Yeah. So I spent five years in grad school, which is not even that many, um, comparatively. Side note, average time to get a PhD looked it up 8.2 years. Now the average length of an American marriage 8.2 years. So someone please write a dissertation on how long a person can withstand something difficult yet illuminating. And I had to study every aspect of linguistic analysis. So like I study tone and social factors, but like I had to study the way that sounds are put together, the way that words are put together, the way that sentences are put together, like meaning in a logic theory kind of context. I get to study so many things about the nature

of language that I don't necessarily use every day now, except for when I'm teaching. But also, just thinking really deeply about the nature of sound, which is the thing that I do and the nature of like how language works to do social things. Like we use it to accomplish social things. So even if, you know, it's not necessarily that like having the PhD is the big thing. The thing is that I've spent like years and years reading and thinking and talking and writing about these things. So I feel, you know, somewhat qualified to speak on them. It's great that you're talking about talking. Yeah, talking about how we do is talk about talking. And then what's your favorite thing about it? What just like gives you butterflies? I really like teaching students. So, you know,

I teach in a liberal arts college and it's undergrads and people are like, Oh, you don't want grad students. I'm like grad students are a pain. Have you ever met a grad student? I was the worst grad student. I don't want people like me. I love teaching undergrads because I will walk in to like day one of intro to linguistics and be like, I am about to blow your mind. Just with even some of the things that have come up here about like, you know, what happens in the educational system, like the ways in which language is prejudice, the ways in which people that are trying to mock African American English get it so wrong, right? The physiology stuff, the things about like kids exaggerating gender differences, like the way that the vocal tract works, like

I am a big nerd, but all of this stuff is super cool to me. And it tells us a lot about the social world that we inhabit. So my favorite thing is just like watching the eyes light up and be like, no way. Whoa. They're just seeing like light bulbs go off, like illuminating. Right. Oh, that's got to be so exciting because you've had so many light bulb moments like that coming to do what you do. Oh my gosh. And then is there anything you think people who are more curious about this, like anywhere to see your writing or any resources you think people should look down, anything people should do or be more aware of? Because I could sit here and ask you questions for 10 hours. Like I'm so pissed at traffic right now because this is so fascinating,

but anything you can point to, any do's or don'ts. Yeah. So I will say, if you like podcasts, which you might, there's one that's called Lingthusiasm. It's really good. It's got a lot of sort of introductory topics on linguistics. There's a few language podcasts. There's also one Lexicon Valley, which is hosted by John McOrder at Columbia University's Linguistics Professor. So I'll put links to those on my website, alleywar.com, slash allergies, as well as links to some books Nicole recommends about linguistics and discrimination. I recommend a book called English with an Accent by Rosina Lippi Green. It talks a lot about sort of language and social issues and social justice. I teach with it in my linguistic discrimination class,

but there's a lot of good stuff out there. So those are some beginning recommendations. And where can people find you? I'm on Twitter, regular Twitter and Black Twitter. I'm mixed linguist on social media. And I like to respond to inquiries from people. So get at me on the interwebs, I guess. Cool. And we'll get you out of here. Thank you so much. You're welcome. It was really fun. Oh my God. So to continue learning about and exploring intonational phonology, you can look into Dr. Nicole Holiday's work. She's brilliant. And I want her to give like 50 TED Talks. And for links to books and documentaries that we talked about, you can go to alleywar.com slash allergies. I'll put a bunch of links there. You can also

join up in the allergies podcast Facebook group. And thank you to my, my dear sisters, Hannah Lippo and Erin Talbert for being admins of that. Allergies is on Twitter and Instagram as allergies. And I'm on Instagram and average white lady Twitter as alleyward with 1L. And thank you as always to the patrons who support the show. You allow me to pay my wonderful editor Steven Ray Morris to chop this all together. Hi, Steven. And thank you. If you'd like an allergy shirt or a pin or a tote bag, allergiesmerch.com has you so covered. Thank you, Shannon Feltes and Bonnie Dutch for managing that. The Allergies theme song was written and performed by Nick Thorburn of the band Islands. And if you listened to the end of the episode, have you guys been doing that?

Do you know that? You know, I tell a secret at the end. And this week, the secret is that my face was like, Hey, I know you have some shoots this week. What if you want a big blemish on your face on your chin? And I was like, that sounds great. I read somewhere that you can use a hemorrhoid cream to decrease the size of under eye bags or a blemish. And I didn't research it ahead of time. I just happened to be at the drugstore and I purchased them. And then I put it on my face. And now I'll research whether or not that was a bad idea. But I want you to know, as I recorded all these asides, in this hotel room in Michigan, I have butt cream on my face. I'll let you know how it goes. Okay, bye bye.

Oh my God, I just saw a squirrel that doesn't have a tail. That was worth the drive.