Arts and Humanities Commons^™

So What's Your Point? Relevancy In Conversation, Frank Bramlett

English Faculty Publications

Every rare once in a while, I find myself caught in a conversation where the person I'm talking to goes off on a tangent. And I don't mean a little aside. I mean a "What the hell are you talking about!?" tangent.

Luckily, for the other 99% of conversations, there are some general guidelines for engagement that help us avoid making mistakes like this one. H. Paul Grice, a language philosopher, is the scholar credited with first writing about these rules in a widespread way. Grice theorized that participants in conversation operate by an overarching approach that we now call …

A Different Kind Of Bilingüismo, Frank Bramlett

English Faculty Publications

In last month's column, I wrote about the presence of Spanish in Omaha, attested by its occasional appearances in the broader English-speaking market. I also mentioned the phenomenon of people speaking two or more languages, called bilingualism. When a person has command of two languages, then that person is considered bilingual.

Considering that one language (like Swahili) might be called a code, and another language (Arabic) is another code, and a third language (like English) is another code, then conceivably a person who lives in Tanzania might carry on a conversation with another speaker from Tanzania in three different languages …

What Part English, What Part Spanish?, Frank Bramlett

English Faculty Publications

Back in July, I was sitting in my office at school, working on a syllabus for a new sophomore- level class on language and society. I was exploring the U.S. Census Bureau website to get a sense of the most current information we have about language communities in the United States. I had the radio on, too, and while I was browsing census data about Nebraska, I heard an advertisement on one of the FM stations. The ad was primarily an English-language ad, but it also had a few Spanish words. It turned out to be a job advertisement for …

What Are Functional Shifts?, Frank Bramlett

English Faculty Publications

In last month's column, I wrote about variety in word formation processes, the phenomenon of having more than one word form lo represent the same concept, illustrated by word pairs like analysis/analyzation, summary/ summarization, and intensity/intenseness. There is, of course, the other side of the coin. We also use single word forms to represent an array of meanings.

What Really Makes A Word, Frank Bramlett

English Faculty Publications

On the 2003 season finale of the HBO drama "Six Feet Under," viewers are left wondering whether Keith and David will be able to stay together as a couple. They were sitting at the kitchen table and eating cake, getting into one of their ritualized tiffs where David feels Keith picks on him. The substance of their conversation, though, turned to the silly when David said 'adjacently." Keith said, "Adjacently is not a word." They soon realized how petty they sounded and sort of laughed it all off.

Often, people can get very worked up about whether something is …

Y'All Better Ask Somebody, Frank Bramlett

English Faculty Publications

One of the ways that linguists think about language is through geographical distribution, commonly known as dialects. It's very easy to think about geography because of the wide range of locales in which English is spoken. Due to conquest and colonization, English is now a world language. There's British English, Australian English, and Nigerian English, among many others. In the continental U.S., most people readily identify a number of regional dialects: “Midwestern," "New England," "Southern." While some people might call them accents, linguists distinguish between dialect and accent. The term accent refers solely to the way words are …

Sentence Forms' And Corporate Responsibility, Frank Bramlett

English Faculty Publications

On Monday 10 March, National Public Radio aired a story by Jack Speer about corporate America’s financial situation. Speer said that since some companies have had cl difficult time with their profit margins, they reduced retiree benefits - in other worth, people who had worked for many years and had retired from the company lost some of their hard-earned benefits to ensure healthy stock performance.

Lately, we have heard several of these stories. A CEO/CFO takes home a record-setting multimillion dollar paycheck because he fired workers for profit, a practice epitomized by ENRON and WorldCom. What caught my attention, though, …

What Are Conversation Systems?, Frank Bramlett

English Faculty Publications

The study of conversation as a serious field of inquiry began in the1970s when sociologists Harvey Sacks, Emmanuel Schegloff and Gail Jefferson first turned our attention to the way people talk to each other. Interestingly, they began looking at talk not for the sake of talk itself but instead as a way to understand social interactions. They collected samples of conversations and analyzed them to help answer questions that sociologists (not necessarily linguists) are interested in answering. For instance, how do people manage their daily lives through talk? How do people establish, maintain, improve and end relationships with each other …

Name Trouble - Part Two, Frank Bramlett

English Faculty Publications

While Shakespeare was busy with names in Romeo and Juliet, Europeans began exploring and settling the New World and immediately ran into the problem of naming. For instance, what should they call those enormous mammals that look sort of like cows but are larger, stronger, and furrier? Buflalo? Bison? Tatanka? And what should they call all the people they kept running into? Tradition holds that Christopher Columbus started it. He was confused because of geography; he thought he had found India, so he called the native people he met by the Spanish word indios, the English …

Name Trouble - Part One, Frank Bramlett

English Faculty Publications

I hereby re-christen thee ..

The slate of Nebraska recently witnessed a controversy surrounding the names of several geophysical features, like rivers or creeks. According to a February 191 2001, Omaha World-Herald article by Todd von Kampen and Nichole Aksamit, the push was to change all the place names that contain the word "squaw" to more appropriate, less offensive names. The movement was strictly voluntary; no law required the changes. However, there was a good deal of resistance, even from some lawmakers. According to the article, Bellevue City Councilman John Stacey said, “I don’t have any problem with the name …

Cartoons And Pronoun Trouble, Frank Bramlett

English Faculty Publications

In a relatively famous linguistic exchange, Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and Elmer Fudd are trying lo determine who is going to be shot. First, the question of whether it's duck season or rabbit season has to be answered. Second, Elmer has to suffer through a barrage of claims and counter-claims in which Bugs and Daffy try to avoid being Elmer's target.

Although I couldn't find a copy of this video, I believe it is Chuck Jones's "Rabbit Seasoning" (1952), and the premise is very similar to 1951's "Rabbit Fire" which I was able to rent on video. At any rate, …