Episode 48: Who you are in high school, linguistically speaking - Interview with Shivonne Gates
A new episode of Lingthusiasm!
High school is a time when people really notice small social details, such as how you dress or what vowels you’re using. Making choices from among these various factors is a big way that we assert our identities as we’re growing up. For a particular group of students in the UK, they’re on the forefront of linguistic innovation using a variety known as Multicultural London English.
In this episode, your host Lauren Gawne interviews Dr. Shivonne Gates, a linguist who wrote her dissertation on Multicultural London English and is currently a Senior Researcher at NatCen Social Research, Britain’s largest independent social research agency. We talk about her research on accents in the UK, doing collaborative research with young people, and linguistics research jobs outside of academia.
This month’s bonus episode is about pangrams! Pangrams are sentences that contain all of the letters of the alphabet, like the famous “the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” and the more obscure “Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow!”. In this episode, Gretchen and Lauren get enthusiastic about pangrams and the further questions that they raise about the structure of various languages. How short can you get an English pangram without becoming incoherent? Which characters are hard to include in different languages? Do accented characters count as separate letters? What kinds of using-every-symbol writing can you make with non-alphabetic writing systems? Help Lingthusiasm stay ad-free and get access to over 40 bonus episodes by supporting us on Patreon.
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We also have exciting new merch colours! Our International Phonetic Alphabet scarves and masks, notebooks, mugs, and socks are now available in Raspberry, Mustard, and Lilac with white IPA symbols.
Here are the links mentioned in this episode:
Shivonne’s research on ethnicity and language variation in the context of multiculturalism
Devyani Sharma’s paper on Stylistic Activation in Ethnolinguistic Repertoires
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Gretchen is on Twitter as @GretchenAMcC and blogs at All Things Linguistic.
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Lingthusiasm is created by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our senior producer is Claire Gawne, our editorial producer is Sarah Dopierala, and our music is ‘Ancient City’ by The Triangles.
Here’s the link again to Episode 48: Who you are in high school, linguistically speaking - Interview with Shivonne Gates
Thanks for listening, and stay Lingthusiastic!
Lauren & Gretchen