TrueLife - Ann T. Choe - Applied Linguistics & Conversation Design

Episode Date: May 5, 2023

One on One Video Call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_US🚨🚨Curious about the future of psychedelics? Imagine if Alan Watts started a secret society with Ram Dass and Hunter S. Thompson… now open the door. Use Promocode TRUELIFE for Get 25% off monthly or 30% off the annual plan For the first yearhttps://www.district216.com/Ann is a PhD Candidate in Applied Linguistics with a concentration in conversation analysis.She combines insights from conversation analysis and human-centered design to improve human-computer interaction. Her expertise in linguistics, quantitative and qualitative research methodologies, people-centered product design, and conversation design help her create meaningful experiences that empower users.Support the show by clicking on our sponser link below Promo Code: TRUELIFEhttps://www.dayapp.net/Ladies & Gentleman… You know what I despise! Talking to a robot then waiting in Hold! I woukd like to introduce you to the New Sponser of the TrueLife Podcast! There AI technology dials the company’s number, goes through all the stages of interaction, then initiated a callback to you when an operator is connected! Never wait on hold AGAIN!Use PROMO code: TRUELIFEhttps://www.dayapp.net/ One on One Video call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_USCheck out our YouTube:https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPzfOaFtA1hF8UhnuvOQnTgKcIYPI9Ni9&si=Jgg9ATGwzhzdmjkg

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Ann Cho is, she is a PhD candidate, but she may actually be a PhD candidate in the next few days. She may be a PhD in the next few days, so we're excited for her. She's a PhD candidate in applied linguistics with a concentration in conversation analysis. She combines insights from conversation analysis and human-centered design to improve human-computer interaction, her expertise in linguistics, quantitative and qualitative research methodologies, people-centered product design and conversation design. Ann, thank you for being here today. How are you?

Thank you so much, George, for having me. I'm doing great. How about yourself? I'm doing fantastic. And I am really excited to bring to not only the audience, but to learn myself about what it is you're doing. I think it's incredibly important. I think it's incredibly interesting.

And I'm hopeful that if there's a young Ann out there or a young George out there, that you can shine some light on these awesome topics that can help the world be a little bit better. So that being said, Anne, applied linguistics, it's like this big mouthful of sounds, but what is applied linguistics and what can people do with a degree in applied linguistics? Yeah, that's an excellent question. A lot of people wonder, what is applied linguistics to be specifically, right? So linguistics, as we know, is the study of languages.

So if you're talking about someone with a linguistics degree, oftentimes they're sitting down analyzing. examples of maybe made-up sentences looking at the relationship, the structural relationship between words to words and sentence to sentence and even paragraph to paragraph and so on. But for applying linguistics, it's like math and applied math, right? So you have really hardcore math versus the ones that you can actually apply to create something interesting. So apply linguistics is just a study of how language is used or the role of language in everyday live. It could range anywhere from for teachers, language teachers like myself. I'm a language teacher as well. How do we teach better? How do we teach a language better? How do we study how people

learn a language to inform our teaching? So that could be one thing that you can do with an apply linguistics degree. And also my specialization, as you mentioned earlier, in the introduction is that I study conversation analysis. So that's also part of apply linguistics. linguistics in that, but originally the method comes from sociology. So we study how people interact with each other using language. But since then it's been expanded upon to seeing how people use gestures, gaze, and moving around or pointing, sometimes people point not just with their fingers, but also with their face, right, if their hands are occupied.

So it's so interesting, very complex. So my area of studies looking at how people use language and other resources to communicate and get the job done. And other people can look at other things like medical interaction, where they can look at classroom interaction and all sorts of interactions that we're doing everyday life. So that's my area of expertise.

Other than that, there's also language policies. That's like a really higher level where you make decisions that impact how the school is going to have an ESL English as a second language curriculum, or how people teach language in general and all sorts of things that are related to language. So I would say apply linguacy is a very big deal with so many things under it.

It's just very interesting that some people choose more quantitative size, so working with numbers, whereas others may be leaning towards more the qualitative side. So they kind of collect stories that people have to say about a particular situation related to language. and then as analysts, we analyze that kind of data. So it's really fun being a language. Yeah, there's so much in there. And we do it so effortlessly. You and I have a conversation or the people in our family have a conversation

and you're out in society and you're moving your hands and you're talking. Communication on some level comes so easy to us. But on some levels, it's so complex. Sometimes you just get that feeling like you connect to somebody or maybe you get a weird vibe from them. Do you think that that has to do with linguistics and language and body language as well? That's a really interesting question too. Like the kind of like a chemistry, you say the chemistry between you and a person. And I'm sure there's like a scientific way to explain that. And now that you put that into context, I think that would be a really good research project to look at to be

honest. It's like sometimes we just vibe really well with somebody, but sometimes we just don't. So I guess if we really want to analyze those kind of interaction, we can break it down into, oftentimes as conversation analysts, we have to record the interaction and have evidence, right? Report video or audio. Most of the recordings today are done visually, right? Visually and auditory not just audio, but it started out as just audio. And after that, we kind of transcribe the interaction to be seen on paper, basically. So that allows us to look at turn by turn.

You said something, I say something back. You say something, I say something back. But then we try not to fight, right? When we say something at the same time that we're fighting, right? So maybe if your chemistry isn't like viking well with someone else, maybe there's a lot of overlapping. I'm trying to say, and you're trying to like top me, like one up me and so on. So that would be really interesting to look at to see how it's like playing tennis.

I would like to think about this as a metaphor playing tennis. Right. If you hit a ball over to someone, your interlocutor, then they hit the ball back, right? But you can not try to hit two balls at once and everything like that. So if they don't pick it, if they don't hit it back, maybe they don't want to talk to you, right? It's interesting to, yeah, look at how people communicate with each other and across different settings as well. I like that. I like that metaphor.

I like the one, I like a little bit more intimate one. Like, I think of it as a dance. Like you can kind of move in and, like, you can kind of move in. and like, okay, it's my turn to, hey, you're not supposed to lead. I'm leading. And sometimes there is that confusion there of things like that. Like you step on each other's. Always in the beginning.

You're always stepping on feet in the beginning. Right, right, right. Yeah, that's interesting to think about it. That's a very nice metaphor too, like dancing with somebody's effortlessly or are you always like bumming heads with each other. So, yeah. Yeah. And, you know, I, you and I had a previous conversation when we talked about different languages.

and you speak multiple languages, and one of the languages that you're good at is sign language. And I'm curious if you can share with people what you've learned by becoming so good at sign language. I wouldn't say I'm super good, but I have taken up to intermediate class in ASL back in New York. And it's just such a fascinating language because, well, sign language is the name such as there's a lot of sign, right? Using your hands to create a picture. and I just remember when I was learning sign language,

everything was so new to me. Like the way they tell stories is very visual. So they would give you the whole setting of the scene they're trying to describe. And I'm going to quote, not quote directly, but I'm going to like reference this snippet of paragraph I read recently about sign language, people studying that. In a paragraph, they describe how a mom was talking to an interlocutor

describing her conversation with her son in the kitchen and then first she gesture out all the things in the kitchen like the stove is here the dishwasher's here and the door is there and i'm standing here okay so now you have a mental representation of all the objects that are essential for you to understand the seeing of the story and then what's going to happen next and after you gesture all that objects out and then she gesture the son who is shorter much shorter so gesture the sun so just to son and looking at the son, talking to the son, and telling him about some things, right? So it's really interesting that you've got to have all the characters in place, and then you can tell the story that it's just very fascinating.

And I remember when I was learning ASL, they always tell us, oh, when you talk about things in the past, you lean back and then describe it here. And then when you talk about something in the future, which is the science future, and you kind of lean forward to describe things here so people can easily distinguish, oh, Did that happen already or is that something you are going to do? So making use of the spatiality in front of you and also your upper body movement to describe the whole scene just to have like the visual image there. That's just like fascinating.

That is fascinating. I bet you if we implemented that in our conversation, if we were taught in schools at a young age, when you're talking about something in the future you move forward or, you know, if we incorporated that body language into our sense. speech, regardless of what language we have, I bet you we'd all be a little bit better communicator. What do you think? Yeah, definitely. I think that's a brilliant idea.

And you know, like kids today, they learn sign language in school, right? Little toddlers, when they don't know how to tell they want more and more each, right? So I think that's really an excellent idea. How can we become better storyteller or better communicator? We can learn from people who do it very well. So sign language is one example. You're right. It's amazing to think about.

let me just ask you this question. Like when we think about conversation analysis, like you and I are doing that now. Like I'm taking in the words you're saying and I'm trying to, okay, well, what does she mean by that? I'm wondering it seems like it's a pretty deep drawer as well when we think about conversation analysis because we each have our own baggage that we have, like our culture, our upbringing, our behaviors, our values. And don't we bring that into conversation analysis? Is there like a standard you do when you start? learning conversation analysis, do you throw that stuff out and then come in with like a really kind of a new standard so that you analyze everybody on the same level? Or what is conversation

analysis that you learn in school and study for? Yeah, that's a really interesting question. So I think I have to backtrack by introducing why personally I like conversation analysis is because English is my second language. And oftentimes when we learn English, English is very rigid and very boring from very boring dialogue. Hi, my name is Anne. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you too. How are you? I'm fine. And you, that's like the very typical, like everybody learn English that way if you're like you're not in the United States. Right. So when I came to the United States, nobody talks like that. Right. It's like, hi. Sometimes they say, hey, how are you? And then the other person just say, hey, how are you? And then they walk away. So they're not necessarily asking,

oh, I'm good and you are stopping, right? So knowing the conversation dynamic, like, it's really important and see how different it is from the English that you learn from the textbook and everything else. Yeah, were you going to say something? Sorry, George. No, I'm just listening. I'm taking it all in. Yeah, so back to your question about how do people study conversation analysis is we,

as analysts, we don't impose any of our preconception about this. piece of data onto the data before we analyze it. So everything is like a bottom up approach. We look at what the people are doing in the particular interaction and then analyze them one line by line, basically. Social action, what kind of things they're doing. Are they apologizing? How is this apology being treated?

Are they being accepted? Is the acceptance delayed? Or is there anything else that can tell us so much about what the person is trying to do? So we try to shy away from saying, saying, oh, that's why they're thinking mentally or anything. We try not to go to the cognitive side of things. We think that all cognition should be analyzable from the interactional perspective.

So there's the common phrase that says actions speak louder than words, right? So as conversation analysts, we look at the social actions, what they're doing rather than what they say they're doing. So that's how you analyze conversations. And I think everybody is a conversation analyst, like you usually. said you have to be able to know, oh, when is it my turn to talk, right? So when I say, yeah, so that's what I think. Yeah. And that's like a closure to what I'm talking about.

And then George can step in and say, oh, my next question is. So there's like a very kind of hidden rules to conversation that you just know by being in it. But as analysts, we analyze what other people are doing. And sometimes when you analyze data from all sorts of different interaction, it's so interesting. because, for example, you can look at classroom interaction, look at how teacher kind of artfully deal with, like, students gossiping rather than doing work, you know, how they do that. And that can be very informative to people who are teaching for the first time, right? If you're teaching for the first time, you're like, how do I do this? Look at what other people have done, especially experienced teacher.

And you look at, oh, this is the practice that they do. And I can use that, too, in my classrooms. So it's really interesting. You're always learning something new about each and every conversational situation, like even having a podcast. I don't think anyone has done this yet, but if they analyze, like, for example, Joe Rogan, it's very like, I have a big collection of data, right? So if somebody gets to analyze what he's doing, how he starts a conversation,

like, or how he transitions from one topic to another, or how he stops someone from talking when he's still talking, right? He says, just give me a minute. Let me finish this. So that's all the practices that as a podcast interviewer can do to have a good podcast, right? So something to think about. I love that. Yeah, we should, maybe we should work together and we can figure out.

We could probably teach a class. Like if you used applied linguistics and podcasting, that could be something that other podcasters use to make their podcast more effective and efficient. It's kind of an awesome thing to think about. Yeah, I think you have a lot of great ideas. So I'll be happy to collaborate and be your research assistant. Yeah. We'll be a team.

We'll be a team. We'll be a team and we can work on something. I have a question that I think about. I love words and I find myself thinking about different words and their meanings and ways to place them or ways you can decorate conversations and things like that. And I'm wondering, sometimes the word analysis can be interchanged with judgment. And I'm wondering, like, how do you define those two and how do you define those two and how, and how do you keep judgment from getting in the way of analysis? Ooh, that is a really tough question.

Yeah, right? I can speak about what these two words mean in my area of studying. Sure. So I guess the things that came into my mind right away when I heard the word judgment, within linguistics and apply linguistics, we do have this experiment, like experimental instrument that you give out to your subjects or people, participants, it's called grammaticality judgment tests. So basically, yeah, it's like you're testing people how they judge grammar, right?

And you can also say their acceptability, their grammaticality. So what you do is you give them like, for example, 10 separate isolated sentences. John is very happy. John is very happy that Mary is here. all like keep on adding and it depends on what you're looking at, the linguistic aspect or element that you're looking at. You make sentences based on that. Some of them could be grammatically incorrect.

Some of them could be acceptable. People say it, but it's not correct. It depends on what you're looking at. So they give out this grammaticality judgment test to people and then ask, maybe you're a native speaker or maybe they're interested in a non-native speaker. It depends on the population. And then they will fail out, I'll check like, oh, this sentence sounds grammatical to my ears, this sentence does it.

Okay, this one is grammatical, this one also grammatical. So in the end, they have a collection of data based on what the population have selected to see, oh, this sentence, even though it's incorrect, many native speakers think it's okay to say that, something like that. So that's where judgment, the word judgment comes from in apply linguistics and linguistics. And for analysis, analysis is more like grammaticality, judgment, test is more like the people who are doing the test judging the grammar, right? But analysis is more like researchers doing the analysis. So you can have discourse analysis, quantitative analysis,

and so on. So I think when analyzing a piece of data, I would say we, of course, abide to the rule of analysis rather than putting our own judgment onto it. But of course, if you're analyzing something, you've got to have some kind of judgment, right? And you always always. We also need to have knowledge of the previous literature to back up your saying. So this is a really interesting question. I don't think I have a 100% correct answer, but I'm just thinking out loud here. And for conversation analysis, there is a key analytical question that everyone asks is, why that now? So the phrase why that now?

I almost want to get a tattoo at why that now. Because when we look at a particular turn, we say it's my turn to say something, right, we look at the turn and think about, okay, why is she saying that? And why is she saying it that way? She can say it by pointing or say one word or two words, but she kind of chose to say in different ways that it is. set, right? So, yeah, so why then now is the analytical question that we ask when looking at a piece of data. I hope that I answered your question. I don't think I answered it, judgment and analysis. That's a tough question. I have to think overnight. It is a tough question, but I think you answered it beautiful. I really admire the way in which you're able to put those, hold those

two different ideas in different lights. I think that's difficult to do. I know that for me, I slip into this world of judgment sometimes, but then I'll just tell myself I'm analyzing, you know, or it's an easy way to feel good about making value judgments when maybe that's none of your business, you know what I mean? Like I do that all the time. So, yeah, what do you think is some of the most challenging part of conversation analysis or applied linguistics? Woof.

Challenging part. To be honest, I am really enjoying every day. what I do. Good. I feel very privileged and blessed that I, my circumstances allow me to pursue what I'm interested in. I think the most difficult, let's talk about conversation analysis. The most difficult part to me, I guess writing the whole paper,

like putting your research findings into like a document and have it published. That can take a very long time. Yeah, I don't know if you're aware, but you have other PhD candidates on the show, too. So you probably know that oftentimes in our field, it takes about two years from start to finish to publications, from collecting data to publication, to have something tangible that you can share with the world. So I think what's hard for me, I guess, is being able to accept the fact that what I did today won't be shown to the world until two years later. Yeah, so it's already like, oh, I found something that's so exciting. And by the time it's published, it's like, oh, that's like two years ago. So a little bit late.

But I guess with social science, like being late is not so much of a big deal compared to like medicine, right? So yeah, yeah. So that's the hardest part for me is to write a paper from introduction to references. And it should be a good paper, not just like you. rush it, right? So yeah, I think getting things to publish has always been the most challenging part of research. Yeah, it sounds like, it sounds challenging, but it also seems to me that it can be incredibly rewarding. Like when I see you moving forward or I see other people that come on and they talk about all the hard work they've done to get somewhere and then they finally reach this area where

it's like accepted and then promoted. And I think it's going to be, I'm really excited for you and I'm thankful that you're doing what you're doing. I think the world needs more people that are working hard to make sure that we understand each other better. I think it's a really noble move forward. And I'm glad there's people like you doing it out there. I have another question that I was thinking about. And with this emergence of chat GPT, and it seems that some people in applied linguistics are using their knowledge to help train chat bots and things like this. And there's no right or wrong answer to this coming question.

It's just your opinion of what you think. So it seems to me that sometimes where we're moving, the conversation is becoming a little bit more mechanistic. Like we're using these chat bots. You ask it this question and then it gives you this answer, you know, versus like it's kind of stripping the emotion out of there. And it seems to me like the emotion and the feeling is such a valuable part of our conversation. There's so much emotion in there, but sometimes emotion clouds judgment.

Sometimes emotion clouds the conversation. So what do you think, first of all, I guess it's a multifaceted question. Do you think that chat GPT and these chat bots are stripping emotion away from the human connection and conversation? Ooh, that's a really good question. A million dollar question. Is this a multiple choice? Can I choose? Or can I call someone for help?

It's just an opinion, you know what I mean? It's just an interesting thing to think about. So does AI tools strip away emotions from human communication? Yeah. I guess it depends on what you're asking, right? I think everyone has the same access to the same tool, but people use it a different way, and some people just do it a lot better than others, right?

Some people ask simple Google-level questions while other people are actually building something with this technology. So emotion, I guess you can also train chat GPD and say pretend you're a therapist. And I want you to put a little bit of motion, but not too much. And respond to me, respond to following questions, right? So I think it depends on how you use the tool. So stripping away emotion, yeah, I think it depends on who uses it. Like, for example, if I want to get like a quick answer to some technical question, like, how do you put this, how do you do this in CSS or HTML?

It can spit out the answer really quickly, and that's what I want. I don't want you giving me any smiley faces in between. I don't need that. I need quick answers, right? So it depends on what you're using it for, but if you're using chativity for, like I say, like psychotherapy or other purposes, you need like a friend, then some kind of emotion expressed in the message would be nice. When you ask this question, I almost thought about the movie, Her, right? That she is full of emotions, and that could be really scary for a chatbot to do, right?

So I think it depends on where civilization, human civilization, wants AI tools to be in the future. Do you want it to be a companion or do you want it to make sure that it needs, never gets to human level emotions because by then it can introduce a whole slew of new problems, right? So what like who do you think? Who's training who? Are we training the AI chatbot or is the chatbot training us? Like it seems like you have the programmers that make this thing, but then that thing speaks volumes

to tons of people and it's kind of training them in a way. And then, you know, it just seems like maybe it's the dance that we talked about earlier. But do you think that one of them is more influential? Is the human more influential on the chatbot? Or is the chatbot more influential on the populace? Oh, I think it's currently as of now is human over chatbots. But I can't say like, oh, in a few years or even next month. Who knows?

They come out like with chat. It would be like 5, 6, 7. Then I definitely can't think that far. But it is scary to think about it, right? So I think it's important to put some kind of. the regulations, the development is so fascinating, but to be honest, myself included and other friends I've talked to, you're like, oh, I feel like we're trying to catch her breath. You know, everything is going a little bit too fast. Yeah, the rate of change is so fascinating to think about because you really don't have time to catch your breath.

By the time you slow down, there's someone else, you know, working on another project that's maybe already solved a lot of these problems. But at the same time, that makes me think that people are moving so fast, they're forgetting about things. And that may be an opportunity for those who feel left behind to come in and do some of the, maybe some of the understanding, understanding and then rebuilding what people left behind in a weird sort of way. Yeah, yeah. Definitely need people, everyone, of every talent to join this. Yeah, we've got to protect ourselves. But at the same time, we've got to move forward. So, yeah, it's exciting.

It is exciting. You know, you and I had spoken previously about using transcripts while in conversation analysis and applied linguistics. I was wondering if you could share with the audience what the role of transcripts are in some of the work that you do. Okay, so transcripts is very important. When we get a piece of data that we collected, that we want to analyze, We watch it multiple times. I'm just going to tell you the whole process of being a conversation analyst. It's a really, really exciting job where you get to analyze.

It's like eavesdropping on people's conversation, which I like to do. I can do it legitimately as a researcher. So what we do is if we're interested in a particular setting, like the interaction there, for example, I want to analyze all of Georgia's podcast with. like his interview with all kinds of different interviewees. So I would zoom in on this particular setting. We call it the institutional contacts or institutional interaction because what we do here is quite formal, right?

It's not just mundane chatting about gossiping about other people. There's an agenda. There's a business agenda we're trying to accomplish here. So if I'm zooming on Georgia's podcast, I will collect the data right from YouTube. I would download them and I would start reviewing all of them because it's a large quantity, right? So I will review them and then start identifying what phenomena I want to look at. For example, it could be when George uses gesture.

When does he do that? And then I can look at the guest returned the gesture, so something like that. I can also look at transition from one topic to another. I can look at all sorts of things that that's prominent in your data. So that's just naturally occurring that shows that, oh, this person does this a lot. I can have a whole collection of similar instances where I can build a collection,

and that makes my argument very strong if I have a large collection. So I would do that. Identify the phenomenon of interest, and I can abandon it is a phenomenon or add more later. But right now I'm setting on this particular. let's just say transition i want to look at transition between topics okay so what i do is i go back to all the data video data clips that i downloaded from youtube and then i look through them again so i watch them again looking only at this particular lift enough transition between topics so

every time george is transitioning between topics i mark it down and then i mark down the time and then make a collection of things and then i will go and transition that all these mark time stamp mark instances I want to transcribe that and usually transition between topics it should be only like a few seconds right when you when you have the guests on your podcast transitioning companies they shouldn't take too long but within one podcast you can have multiple instances so I would transcribe all of them and the process of transcribing is just you listen and then you type down what the people in the data say and using a special convention

called Jefferson 2004. So, Gail Jefferson is one of the pioneers who created conversation analysis along with Harvey Sacks and Emmanuel Shere Gloves. They're all UCLA professors. So Gail Jefferson came up with the system, kind of like conventions, where people have higher pitch. For example, you use like an arrow before the word

is that high pitch, lower. pitch, right? Like a lower, and so downward error and the period, it's like a falling intonation. Whereas when you have a question mark, it's like, oh, how are you? How are you? How are you? Yeah, how are you? Yeah, how are you? Rather than how are you. Right. So she has all these symbols ready for you to use when transcribing. They are very systematic and quite genius because it's very simple and easy to follow. So yeah, you transcribe using those conventional. And then what we do is we pick out if you have a chance. We usually go to data sessions.

So what this means is that each week we present our piece of data. We bring this piece of data, transcribe data, along with a video clip, to this gathering that we call data session. And everyone else is a conversation analyst. And then we all sit around the table or even through Zoom. We'll just start analyzing this piece of data. piece of data. It could be like a 30 second piece of data, but we can talk about it for two hours. So we do individual analysis and then we share this is what I think is happening based on my knowledge

of previous literature about the setting or about this use of this particular particle or something else. And everyone reached a consensus about what's happening. So it's kind of like a norming session, right? We have this agreement, you sit down together and look, oh, I think this is what she's doing, because you see the next line she said blah blah blah so everything is evidence based rather than oh i think it's happening because because i know nothing like that they have to base their argument in strong very strong evidence so after that it's pretty much set because you have multiple eyes pairs of eyes to look at the same data for you then you can be more certain that what you're looking at is uh kind of legitimate legitimate or accurate so

that's what we do as conversation analysts. Like with the transcribed data, it becomes our data. Yeah, there's video data, but then there's a transcribed data that allows us to break things down and look at it in detail, especially the timing of things and what the words, if they're speeding up, they're slowing down. That could all mean something in a conversation. It's so fascinating to me. I love it. Let me ask you this.

Are these rules cross-cultural? because I know that different, like sometimes there's tonal languages and sometimes some languages aren't tonal. So are these rules and the systematic system of the up arrow and the down arrow and the period? Are these things that are cross-cultural? Yeah, that's an interesting question. I mean, conversation analysis has been applied to study many different other languages. So I'm sure the conventions work well. But I see what you mean because I only know so many languages.

Take Chinese. take Chinese as an example, it's like a tonal language, right? You have up and down. So it's really hard to say, is this person, is that person raising pitch? Or is it just the way the word is sound, right? So that does introduce some kind of complexity into the data, and which is why we need data session to have multiple people looking at the same piece of data for you and then make correction.

Oh, this person can say, oh, I heard this here instead of, that. And then you can have negotiation just to make sure while you transcribe, it's also accurate. So I'm going to shift gears a little bit here. Like as we're talking about this, I got all these, my brain is just racing. And I started thinking about the problems in language. And primarily for me, I speak English and a little bit of Spanish. So my knowledge of multiple languages is very limited. I should probably learn more and I should apologize. I should be better at language, everybody. I'm going to work. I'm going to get better. That being said, when I think of some languages, they have this thing called like honorifics.

And it kind of denotes, I guess, an honor to it. And I'm wondering, have you ever known there to be a language? Like, let's say English for a little bit. Would it be possible to fundamentally change the English language by adding like a prefix and a suffix that denote honor? Like, wouldn't it be better if we had contract law in English? If you could just add like a like a EG to the front of every word. And that would mean that, okay, this is a contract in honorific A English. If you sign this contract, you're doing it in honor,

and now you can never get out of this contract or something like that. You know what I mean? Like, is it would be possible to change a language just by adding a prefix and a suffix to it? I mean, I guess we can do all sorts of things with language, right? So I can even ask chat GPP to create a language by adding EG. Sure, you can do that. Yeah. It's kind of ridiculous.

Yeah, I mean, anything is possible, so it would be fun to look at how this language evolves because languages are always changing. Right. That's interesting to think about too. When we look at it as a living language, and we, even today, we can see the way that words have changed from 100 years ago. Is that something that conversation analysis takes into account is like that it's a living language and definitions, are always changing? Right. So things are always changing and people, the norms are changing too. So I would say conversation analysis is really interested in what people do normally, like asking what the general public does, what is considered as socially appropriate and what is not and so on. So if the norms are changing, then definitely we're going to see some differences in terms of how people interact with each other.

Right. When I think of the way it may be applied, sometimes I think of for everybody's seen the movie where like the guy goes in like maybe the guy's a criminal and he goes in to be, have like two investigators and they start talking to him and they're looking at the way his eyes move and stuff like that. Is that a field of applied linguistics as well as sort of, not confrontation, but when people are being questioned, like when you question a suspect, is that a form of applied linguistics? Oh yeah, I think that would fall under like forensic Oh, okay. Which could be like a subcategory of applied linguists.

And actually those are really interesting. I always like to watch a criminal investigation. Like you know they're lying and how can you tell? Only knowing backwards that like working backwards, all that person for sure got like convicted and stuff like that. So yeah, those would be really interesting. That's something I would personally want to explore more, yeah, forensic linguistics. Yeah, I know that sometimes in, on kind of an interesting

darker side of language, I know that there's some sort of advertisement companies that study people like Charles Manson or Jim Jones because they're really curious about how someone can be so charming in a way. And they probably study the mannerisms, stuff like that. Are you familiar with the study of conmen or the study of charismatic leaders in the world of language? I'm personally not familiar, but I watch a lot of those videos and I find them fascinating. So, yeah, they're usually very charismatic, right? That's how to get people to believe them. Yeah.

It would be interesting to look at what are the tactics of all these, like, cult leaders. Yeah. Yeah. I enjoy watching people that have the ability to make other people see the same things that they do. And I think that that is one reason why when you start looking at politics and people in positions of authority, they're always like cautious, like, well, this is a very charismatic person. But that means so much more, right? Like when we use this word charisma, like it means that someone has this really unbelievable ability to lead people,

which leads me to my next question. What do you think is the role of storytelling and linguistics? Like, what is the relationship there? Storytelling, wow. Storytelling is from apply linguistics, like conversation analysis. Yeah. There's a topic that we look at.

It's called storytelling, right? We look at how people tell stories all the time. But your question is the role of storytelling in apply linguistics. Is that right? Well, it can be anything to do with storytelling and language, whatever you, like, however you want to take that angle. Okay. So I guess two things that come to my mind immediately.

One is studying storytelling as a subject. The other one is being a science communicator, right? So nowadays we see a lot of researchers, particularly in different fields. They're trying to communicate science to the general public. So, and that to me is very important. important because if we study the subject, we know so much about it, but we don't share with everyday people, we don't apply it, right? We don't let the general public know, then it's kind of like a waste, right? So I think we do need to do a better job at communicating science

with people so they get to know more about what like the findings are saying, even like with medical research, right? You want to know, has cancer been cured? You know, we want to know that. So same as apply linguistics and any other field, I think it's important to, you know, reach out to more people and interview them, have podcast interview, and kind of just spread out, spread the information to the general public. It's important. So storytelling is, of course, a big part of that. A lot of people may be very good at researching, but they're not good at talking to

people, especially telling stories. So that's something I think all academics can benefit. from is to practice how to be a better storyteller. And on the other hand, we analyze storytelling as a subject, too, in conversation analysis, and we do look at how a story begin, how to initiate a storytelling, and then how to maintain the telling without other people interrupting you, and how to terminate the telling. So when you say something, you're expecting them to react in some way, right? So how do you deliver that story?

It's very interesting. There's a lot of research done on that. And also a lot of research done on recipient as a person who's listening. How do you react to a telling? So you are not showing your emotion before something important and said or too late after something has already been said. So, yeah, storytelling is a story. and of itself is very interesting to look at. I'm often curious about like the evolution of language.

And sometimes, you know, when we look at the plant kingdom, like describing different plants has like it's almost its own language. Like when you start thinking about, oh, well, this particular plant has ovate leaves and it has like its own jargon that comes with it. And it seems like that is something that happens in different parts of the community. community, like science has like its own technical jargon. Medicine has its own technical jargon. Even though it's technically all English, sometimes it seems that the splintering of one language becomes so specialized. It's very difficult for some people to know what people are talking about. Is that something that happens throughout all languages? Or is that something that's unique to the English language?

Sorry, can you, can you? Yeah. Another example. Yeah. So it seems like specialization. Like if I tell you that the patient has a tear to the meniscus of their right, I don't know, the right femur or something like that. Like if you get deep into the world of medicine, like it has its specialized language. If you get deep into the world of law, you could say that, well, citing George. versus Ann 1975 and we have this precedent but that may be something that someone who is a mechanic

that talks about carburetors and stuff it just seems to me that each every language can be so specialized it's difficult to understand it sometimes do you think that's just a level of education or is that the splintering of languages I'm not sure if my question makes sense

but maybe you can find something in there I guess, yeah, languages, it's constantly changing too. Right, right. So that's probably evolves from several groups of language. You have another language, sometimes Pigeon, sometimes, you know, Hawaiian Creole. So things are always changing and become more specialized. And it's changing for the convenience of people who are using it. I always think things come out of people's desire to make things more convenient for

that right like the invention of cell phones to make sure that everybody can call you at any time right so languages too like why are some sounds present in some languages but not the other and that's really interesting because the people in that particular region need the sound or can produce the sound to get things done right or even like um yeah vocabulary definitely you have long words too like you borrow words from other languages so it's It's constantly involving and it does become highly specialized in the sense that sometimes we say, oh, I want to describe this word, but I don't have, I don't know what's what is called in English. So a lot of time when I'm talking to my Korean colleagues, I know a little bit of Korean, they will say, oh, you know, it's nunchit, you know, there's no direct translation. There's just no words to describe that. Like you can say it's witty or it's something else.

It depends on the situation. So it does get specialized in that way. I think that's what's cool about. Language is closely connected to culture. So if something is present in one culture but not the other, then we can introduce highly specialized vocabulary that's only pertaining to a particular culture. So I find that really interesting.

That's super interesting. Sometimes I get worried that when we lose, like there's some things called like dead languages where people no longer speak them right and when we lose those languages then we lose those things like nonchi that you said like we lose in some ways when you lose pronunciation is probably horrible but when you when you lose those languages sometimes you lose those concepts in those languages and it's like we're losing education we're losing ideas when that happens is that something that you guys ever think when not you guys, but is that something that applied linguistics takes into account or tries to

try to work on? Yeah, that's something both areas of linguistics and apply linguistics. They're working really hard towards language documentation. So languages die just like people, many things also die, but new languages are also born just like people, right? So in order to conserve a language, there's been a lot of efforts done, especially at UH. I think once a year they have the language documentation conference. and I also attended a couple workshops where to talk about the new technology that can be used to conserve a language.

Yeah, where was I going with this? We were just talking about languages that were dying. What are some new languages that are being born? New languages are being born. I'm not very well-versed in this topic. So the only ones I can talk about is from like the internet language, right? I'm on the internet. Like young people today say a lot of words that, wait a minute, I need to look this up, right?

Right. There is suss, like, suspicious. But we look at all the time now. So, yeah, like, back in the days, we say like L-O-L-B-R-B a lot. But nowadays, if you say that, it's like, which generation are you from, right? So a lot of things are always changing. even in Chinese, like I read articles in Chinese, but I've been away from Taiwan for a long time.

So there's a lot of new words that I actually have to learn from my friends and I have to ask, even my mother knows some of these words better than me. So I ask her, like, what does this mean? Even though it's in my native language, I don't know what it means. It's fascinating to think about, you know, I'm often fascinated by the different kinds of language is like when I look at some of the languages, like Chinese language has these characters in there. And it's interesting to me, because I have no idea how to understand the symbolism of that character. Is there a relationship between symbolism and the Chinese characters?

Yeah, that's an excellent question. Even though I'm not a Chinese linguistics major, I can answer that because as a Chinese, we all know characters that. usually represent it's like a logo it's like a picture you know so for example of the character people people it's called rhen it's just two strokes like this yeah so that's almost like someone's walking like this so that's human ren yeah and then every time you see like a side uh character that has horse ma that has to do with a horse right so or with like a oh my favorite one One is busy, mom, busy. So busy, the word mong is made out of heart on the left hand side, a heart.

And then on the right hand side, what happens to your heart when you're busy? Can you take a guess? It starts beating fast. Beating fast, but when you're super busy. It expands? Like super, super busy. When it's super busy, my. My heart is beating fast.

It's getting big. It is expanding. It's filling with blood. Oh, that's very scientific way. In Chinese, it's just heart and death. Your heart dies when you get too busy. So the character for Hmong is heart death. Wow.

So, you know, like, it's very imaginative. You can, like, it's like a component adding this. We can add it out to the right, add it to the top, to the bottom, and it just changes like, oh, this word means this because back in the days, people used to do this way. Yeah, so it's really interesting. Well, I think that that's so beautiful, too, because maybe it's saying, like, hey, maybe you shouldn't be too busy over here.

Maybe you shouldn't be working too hard on this thing. You could die. Yeah, because you, like they say a busy bee has no time for sorrows, right? William Blake. So it's like, you have no time for. sorrow or feeling happy because you're just too busy. Yeah, your heart is dead. And I love it. You're quoting William Blake. What's your take on poetry? I mean, is that something that applied linguistics looks at? Like, maybe that's the only real way to communicate is the idea of poetry,

right? Because if I say a beautiful poem, sometimes I can make your face flush and you get goosebumps and you thoroughly understand the meaning of what I'm trying to get across. What do you think about that? I love poetry. And actually, a lot of people. people in applied linguistics have a very similar background as me, which is English literature, English language and literature. I did it as a BA. And during that time, I quote William Blake, because he's the only person that's quotable to me. I don't know anyone else is. I definitely love him. I love his artwork and all his portrait. It's just like when I was 20, I think I was 20 at the time. I was young, right? I was like, I care about things that I don't.

care about today, like dressing up nice and going out to hang out with friends, you know, going home late and not really paying attention in class, aka. But one day I went to class and the topic was on William Blake. And all of a sudden, I just have this epiphany. I just sat there and something just hit me. And ever since that day, I started working hard because his poetry really touched from heart. He talks about reason and energy. And to me, that's very like an Eastern way of conceptualizing life, like In Yang, Yang, you know?

So I don't know why, like, Will and Blake, it just speaks to many. I know people who love him to as, like, from Asia. So I feel like it's like Carl Jung, right? He draws up to analyze, like, psychotherapy and stuff. But for William Blake, I think his level or perspective on life, it's really similar to the oriental way of viewing life. So I don't know why it just hit me. And then ever since then, I became like kind of addicted to his poetry.

I also like Greek mythology too. But William Blake is more like, wow, I admire this person. Yeah. So, so yeah, poetry definitely can add beauty to our lives. And I personally enjoy making poetry myself as well. And I think it's like art, right? It's very subjective. And everybody can be an artist.

everybody can write a poem. So, yeah. Yeah, so that brings Carl Young, William Blake, Alfred North Whitehead, probably one of my favorite philosophers. You know, I'm curious to get your opinion on this. It seems to me that, at least in the Western world, we have this idea that linguistics and is almost a higher order of thinking than mental imagery.

But if you look at like Carl Jung's Red Book or you read the word, of William Blake, you are presented with this mental image. And, you know, when we, sometimes you'll hear critics of artists say things like, oh, well, this artist is very gifted it at tapping into their inner child or something like that. But it's so, I think it's almost disrespectful to say that someone is tapping into their inner child when they're able to create these incredible mental images. Do you think that mental imagery is just as important? as the linguistic side of representation?

Like if I can get you, if I can put a mental image in your head using my words, isn't that just as important as linguistics? Or what is your take on mental imagery versus linguistics? Yeah, that's a really great connection. I mean, I think they have to coexist. Yeah. When I look at a picture and it gives me some kind of feeling, maybe I have a few words that pop into my mind and vice versa too, right?

When you say something and I create a whole, mental image in my head and that kind of reminds me of nowadays with chat jpt at mid journey like the i generated art you do need both right so with mid journey you got to type something type of text like type how you imagine things and then it will spit out while you imagine right so i think that's really interesting definitely a strong connection and we cannot live one without the other so Yeah, it brings up this other idea, too, of meaning to me. And when I think about those people whom we're speaking about, this idea of meaning comes up to me. And I'm curious to get your thoughts on, like, if you and I were to sit down and watch a brilliant play together.

Like we watched like the death of some Greek tragedy maybe, like Persephone and Demeter and the child dies. you and I are sitting together and we're watching this. We're not speaking, but we're watching the same thing and we see this child die. Like you and I go through that experience together. And in a weird way, it's being communicated to us, this tragedy, without any words. And you and I, even though there's no words there, Anne,

you and I probably have the closest will get to the same meaning. And isn't it interesting to think that without any words were conveyed the same message. Because if I try to explain to you my meaning of that child dying, it could be radically different than your meaning of it. But at that moment, you and I are being given the same sort of meaning there. And it just brings up this idea of meaning and, like, I can't think of the right words, like rituals, I guess, is something that's happening that conveys meaning to us.

And that's not something that we do in linguistics. We don't have rituals in linguistics, but we don't have rituals in linguistics, but we do when we're outside communicating. I'm not sure there's a question in there, Anne. But I guess what do you think about the idea of meaning and watching something collectively? Yeah, I think when you mentioned that example, watching something and like both of us feel sad after,

I think some emotions are universal, right? Some are just, some could be unique to a particular culture. Well, a lot of like happiness, sadness, they could be universal. So I think brilliant works like in theater or books or even like you said, charisma, charismatic leaders, they know what these universal emotions are and how to manipulate them to accomplish what they're trying to accomplish, right? Yeah. There's a, I know, are you okay on time?

I know we're kind of coming up on time. Yeah, yeah, I'm fine, yeah. Okay, good. Because I have this author that I've been reading named Ian McGilchrest. And he's written several books. And the first book that he's read is called The Master and His Emissary. And the second book is a two-volume set. And it's called The Matter with Things.

And while the book says a lot of things, the premise of the book is that the left hemisphere of the brain is like the emissary. And the right hemisphere of the brain is like the master. And so it's saying that the left hemisphere of the brain is like a scalpel. And it takes the situation and it cuts it up into finer and finer. details and we need that. But the right hemisphere of the brain acts as someone that sees the world in poetic metaphors that sees this mental imagery. And I'm wondering, is that something that people talk about in implied linguistics? Is there theories about the left brain versus right brain,

the analytical scalpel versus like the overall part of the brain that sees things as a whole and how they work together? They do, but it depends on what sub-discipline. I think what you mentioned, what's going on in the brain will fall more towards neuro-linguistics, like neuro-pcience, right? Yeah, yeah. When it's applied linguistics, we don't really talk about these things, but we can make assumptions based on grammaticality judgment type and other experiments as such. In phonology, when we talk about pronunciation, I remember learning about this process called lateralization. So lateralization is like when you're like the language part of your brain

and I can't remember it starts on the right or left. I don't quote me on this you have to look it up, but I know the term is called lateralization. So it changes from one side to another around the age of 12. So that means that that's why a lot of people have these kind of like a myth thinking, that whenever you learn a language, it's best that you learn it before the age of 12. Have you heard that before? I have, yeah. It's easier to pick up the new language and less likely to have like an accent, for example. And we call that a critical period for language learning.

Okay. So usually happens around age of 12. But, you know, some people, with research, there are always people trying to overthrow your argument and stuff so people say oh it doesn't happen at 12 it happens much earlier or much later or it doesn't happen at all but the common kind of knowledge on this topic would be there is a critical period and it's due to lateralization what happens in the brain so i remember learning that in some of my classes but it hasn't been like a main research focus for me or anyone else that i know throughout me.

There's so much, like I'm hopeful that there's a young, someone younger, younger than us watching this or maybe, maybe even you, like, you could do it or other people could do it, but I'm so thankful that there's so much to explore in this world of language. I think that we are just, we think we're really good. And our language is good, but I think it could be so much better. And we start talking about these different theories of lateralization and left brain, right brain. And it's so fascinating to me to look on the horizon and hope that in the future we're able to convey meaning on a level that is almost uncontroversial. Like wouldn't that solve so many problems if we could just communicate effectively? Right.

Communicating effectively is to me very important. You're right. And knowing how to say what at what time, how to respond cordially, you know, like emotion management. All these are really fascinating topic, and I think the world would be a much better place if all of us know a little bit of applied linguistics when we talk to people. That's so well said. I think that's an awesome place to leave it right there, and I really admire what you're doing. And I'm really thankful that you've got to spend some time with me,

and hopefully in the future we can come back and have like a bigger conversation. Maybe we could bring more people into our conversation, and we could bounce more ideas off each other. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, but before I let you go, is there a message you want to leave people with? Do you want to point people in any direction where they could maybe look for your work in the future? Or what do you want to leave people with? What I want to leave people with. I think what I said is before.

But I don't remember how to say it again. But yeah, I think if you have interest in pursuing something that you like, just do it and worry about the job later, right? because right now I'm job hunting kind of and you know a lot of the majors don't allow you to be as hot in a dark market as others but I don't regret doing a degree in apply linguistics. It's been a really nice journey and not only because I could learn from really great experts, but I think learning just helping to become a better person too. So more empathetic to other people and to, you know, not just think about what I want to do, but what other people, what you can do together with other people to make this well a better place. So I'll leave us back. That's beautiful.

And I think the world of applied linguistics is just getting warmed up. I think that that is something that people who are getting ready to go into school should be taking a really hard look at. I think that that is the bridge that can bring people together. And I think it's just getting warmed up. I think that in combination with psychedelics, I think there's going to be a lot of crossover there. And I would recommend people look into both of those things because I think that they're harmonious

and that they can work well together. I'm stoked for people like Anne that are going to be building our future. So that's all we got for today. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for spending time with us. I hope you enjoyed this as much as we do. This was really fun. and that's all we got. And hang on for one second.

I'm going to close this out in the live stream, but I wanted to talk to you for one more minute after this. And that's all we got. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for your time. Aloha.