Georgetown linguists gave 6 talks and 2 posters at New Ways of Analyzing Variation (NWAV) in Ann Arbor last week! We're so proud of all the hard work our amazing linguists have done! #linguistics #NWAV53

#nwav53

Me with my poster. It is called "How do we evaluate what we don't know?"

Me presenting. The slide reads "What are the surface distributions of these forms?" I am describing "negated ra-" but "negated" is crossed out. Under it is written "most instances are expected and socially unmeaningful / only a few instances are unusual." I am comparing it to "g-" which is "always unusual."

I presented at #NWAV53! An honor to present work coauthored with Jean Paul Ngoboka.

Materials available at theycallmezeal.me/publications

Can I just say...I cancelled lecture and discussion this week because I and my GSIs were going to be busy with NWAV, but let students recover the attendance points as extra credit by showing up and selfie-ing at #NWAV53 and these photos are all kinds of delightful.

I could not make it to #NWAV53 BUT a student of mine was there and just emailed me "That was one of the most amazing experiences of my life." This is how you know you did a conference right, @jessgrieser.com !!! All the claps!

Me in front of my project launch poster at NWAV 53. I’m white, mid twenties, male, with brown and blue-green hair; wearing some brownish blazer, green-brown vest, white and blue checkered shirt. I am smiling but a bit in a silly way, posing with my name tag. My poster’s called “zines as anti colonial ethnography: engaging students through personal narratives in community-based adult ESL classrooms”

Me lying on a bed, covering myself basically fully with my 48 inches by 32 inches poster, akin to a blanket.

i know i’m almost never here but since so many of y’all are (!!), i’ll post:
here’s to #NWAV53 which was so fun, even though i am so sleep deprived! truly inspiring, encouraging, exciting, definitely educational — i got so much from this conference!

lots of linguists smiling in a group pic in the conference ballroom

uw linguistics at #nwav53

A collection of Penn linguists in front of a wood-paneled wall

Penn Linguists at #NWAV53!

A frog power sprinting and making plap plap plap noises

The session chair held up that 2 minutes left sign and I literally heard Running In The 90s start playing in my head #NWAV53

poster session #2 all done 🤍very happy to have had so many people let me yap about memes and the next steps of my CS project :) #nwav53

In her #NWAV53 plenary, King discusses an example of a juror being dismissed from the pool due to forestressing in the word police (so PO-lice), because the prosecutor claimed that the pronunciation showed animus towards law enforcement. And this is exactly why I study prosody!

Dr. King presenting, with a slide that says "Race as a product of a meaning making enterprise"

Dr. Sharese King giving the #nwav53 plenary getting into the good stuff. im nerding out about semiotics sooooo much rn

lesbians have lower f0 than bi & straight women, bi women and straight women don't have a s.d. in f0 in spontaneous speach (sulkin #nwav53)

pronouns mentioned (jack's speaker sample talking about using he/they as indexing being "not" in a particular "subset of nonbinary people") #nwav53

i will say. due to 3 nonbinary talks in a row. i think we gotta theorize nonbinary better in sociolinguistics. nonbinary is not "a" "gender" #nwav53

Welcome to #nwav53 day 2! We are in the Michigan League all day. The Koessler room is on floor #3 and all remaining sessions are on floor #2.

LOVE how so far literally all the talks in the lgbtq session of #nwav53 are about nonbinary speakers. having a great time, eating good, personally

A sign on my hotel shower: “Webers dazzling shower and musical mirror” (the shower was normal, the mirror has speakers that can pair w Bluetooth)

Not to brag but I had a dazzling shower and musical mirror this morning - best day of #NWAV53??

Bag with a music score, treble clef, 4/4 time. The lyrics are 三碗細牛腩麵 saam1 wun2 sai3 ngau4 naam5 min6.

Look for this bag during the poster session, and learn about my new project on heritage Cantonese in Toronto #NWAV53
(special thanks to Jon Chui of canto.hk for sending this lovely bag my way right in time for NWAV!)

Presented quite possibly the first plot of Foghorn Leghorn's vowel system today at #nwav53

poster presentation #1 all done 🤍 massive thank you to all the lovely people that approached my poster and let me ramble on Miami and rootedness for a few minutes. i loved chatting with y’all and hearing about other people’s dialectology research 🤞🏽 stay tuned for poster #2 on memes tmrrrr #nwav53

Poster session #1 is taking place now until 3:45 in Palmer Commons Great Lakes. See you there! #nwav53

I tried checking "bro" too and it is also a pronoun in our data

check this amazing data point w vocative "dude" and pronoun "bro": "I'm in a poly situation and dude, bro fell in love with me and I didn't want to be serious"

#NWAV53

Slide showing how RR did a hyperadaption of prestige forms in 2009 - just as she comes under scrutiny by other members of her party

RR gets *more* formal (more stylistic fronting) in 2009 after the economic crash - the opposite direction from her political party

#NWAV53

Stefánsdóttir, Mechler & Ingason on individual lifespan change - stylistic fronting in a single Icelandic MP (Ragnheiður Ríkharðsdóttir) - tracking her changes in political speeches over DECADES!

#NWAV53

Georgetown linguists are giving 6 talks and 2 posters at #NWAV53 this week! #Linguistics 🧵

Gousset now on interspeaker vs intraspeaker covariation patterns in Tyneside

Asking: does dialect leveling affect different social groups uniformly?

Answer: No! Intragroup coherence still explains a great deal of the data

#NWAV53

Question from the audience: “can dude be used as a pronoun”?

I checked our MI Diaries data and in Michigan the answer is “yes”!

“But regardless, dude has a show about it on vice”

#NWAV53

Plot showing the effect of addressee gender and “rank” (friend, sibling, partner, stranger), comparing 2004 (solid lines) and 2023 (dashed lines)

Kiesling compares self-reported data from 2004 and 2023 - finding:

1) ppl use “dude” more with more close interlocutors
2) whether you’re talking w a man v woman matters less now (both similarly likely to be called “dude”)

#NWAV53

Dude originally an insult derived from “yankee doodle dandy”

Used derogatorily to describe zoot suiters in the 40s

“Dude” originally an insult (from “yankee doodle” in the 1880s), remaining w negative association in the 1940s/50s for zoot suiters

#NWAV53