Category Archives: Sociolinguistics

Omnes in Viam Latinam

Posted on March 22, 2020 by Bridget Crawford

Today I witnessed a fairly common exchange on a particular listserv of which I am a member.  Member A made a contribution that Member B deemed inappropriate for the subject-matter of the list.  Member B passed judgment on Member A’s … Continue reading →

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#Hireath

Posted on June 20, 2019 by Bridget Crawford

I learned a new word today: hireath. From a 2016 student blog at Penn State (here): Hiraeth is a Welsh word that is somewhat difficult to describe in English, for the reason that there is no single English word that … Continue reading →

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The Malleable X: On Queer Origins of “Latinx”

Posted on June 10, 2019 by Bridget Crawford

John Paul Brammer (@jpbrammer) writes (here) in Mother Jones how Digging Into the Messy History of “Latinx” Helped Me Embrace My Complex Identity. Here is an excerpt: A June 2018 survey found that Latino millennials are the least likely bracket … Continue reading →

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Murray on “Editing the Wiktionary for ‘Female'”

Posted on August 22, 2018 by Bridget Crawford

Yxta Maya Murray (Loyola-LA) has posted to SSRN her essay Editing the Wiktionary Entry for “Female,” Berkeley J. Gender, Law & Justice.  It is one essay in a series of pieces about “legal fictions” and the intersections of law, language, … Continue reading →

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Winner of 2017 Penny Pether Law & Language Scholarship Award

Posted on June 11, 2018 by Bridget Crawford

The winner of the 2017 Penny Pether Law & Language Scholarship Award is Dr. Yvette Russell, for her article “Woman’s Voice/Law’s Logos: The Rape Trial and the Limits of Liberal Reform,” Australian Feminist Law Journal, 42.2, 273-296. Congratulations, Professor Russell! … Continue reading →

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On Libertarian Feminism

Posted on February 1, 2015 by Bridget Crawford

Over at libertarianism.org, author Elizabeth Nolan Brown writes about “Carceral Feminism and the Libertarian Alternative.” Here is an excerpt: [A]s ideologies and movements, libertarianism and feminism have a lot to offer one another. Not every libertarian matter is necessarily a … Continue reading →

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For Those Who Cringe at the Word “Seminal” When Used in Academic Discourse

Posted on April 30, 2014 by Bridget Crawford

Jenny Davis (Sociology, James Madison University) writes what she calls a “public service announcement” over at Cyborgology.  “Dont Say Seminal, It’s Sexist,” Professor Davis explains: Yes, “seminal” refers simultaneously to groundbreaking intellectual work and male bodily fluids expelled at the … Continue reading →

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Posted in Academia, Sociolinguistics | 1 Comment

Reclaiming “ladylike”?

Posted on April 15, 2014 by Ann Bartow

That’s the topic of this NYT op-ed. Here is an excerpt: Recently, Senator Claire McCaskill, Democrat of Missouri, trained her sights on a single word — “ladylike.” “Ladylike,” Ms. McCaskill told an audience at Iowa State University last month, means, … Continue reading →

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Does Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia believe society is eroding because women use the ‘F-word’?

Posted on April 7, 2014 by Ann Bartow

That’s what this article effing claims.

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Gender and Curse Words

Posted on May 17, 2013 by Bridget Crawford

From Holy Sh*t: A Brief History of Swearing by Melissa Moher (via Slate here) : With the development of feminism, many swearwords have become more equal-opportunity, not less. Bitch can now be applied to men and women, as can cunt. … Continue reading →

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“A school reveals it has a “Fantasy Slut League””

Posted on October 22, 2012 by Ann Bartow

An excerpt just won’t do this article justice. Read the entire piece here.

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Why Do Some Gay Men Hate Women?

Posted on January 31, 2012 by Bridget Crawford

Writer Ryan O’Connell asks What’s the Deal with Misogynistic Gay Men? over here at Thought Catalog.  And he’s not even talking about the gay men who overtly don’t like women (don’t want to work with them, socialize with them, etc.). … Continue reading →

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If You Want To Insult Law Professors, Call Them Women: “Inside the Law School Scam” Edition

Posted on August 24, 2011 by Ann Bartow

After learning about its existence, I read every post at this blog as it appeared. Legal education is imperfect and could use improvement, no question. And more transparency about law school data and procedures would be very useful; no one … Continue reading →

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Posted in Academia, Sexism in the Media, Sociolinguistics | 2 Comments

David Fagundes, “Talk Derby to Me: Emergent Intellectual Property Norms Governing Roller Derby Pseudonyms”

Posted on May 20, 2011 by Ann Bartow

Here is the abstract: “Some groups use endemic social norms rather than formal law to regulate their intellectual property (IP). This qualitative empirical study extends and critiques existing work on this topic by examining how roller derby skaters guarantee exclusive … Continue reading →

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Word Clouds: Gender and the Vocabulary of Advertisements for Toys

Posted on March 30, 2011 by Ann Bartow

From here, where the author of the linked post did all the work, and explains the data!

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If Women Posted Videos Every Time a Pat-Down Went too Far…

Posted on November 22, 2010 by Bridget Crawford

WaPo columnist Charles Krauthammer connects objections to new TSA security procedures to the national political mood: John Tyner, cleverly armed with an iPhone to give YouTube immortality to the encounter, took exception to the TSA guard about to give him … Continue reading →

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Posted in Sexual Harassment, Sociolinguistics, Travels | 1 Comment

When the NYT wants to spark debate about cussing, it asks “Why Do Educated People Use Bad Words?” and then queries one woman and five men.

Posted on April 13, 2010 by Ann Bartow

Which makes the NYT ripe for cussing out. Impressive class bias, in addition to the sexism. Lovely quote from Timothy Jay: “This doesn’t mean the average person is swearing more. But we have recorded more women swearing in public than … Continue reading →

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Important Post at The Legal Theory Blog.

Posted on April 1, 2010 by Ann Bartow

It’s quite convincing. Excellent drafting, Professor Solum.

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Gender Construction Right Before Your Eyes

Posted on March 31, 2010 by Ann Bartow

Startling and moving. I have to give the dad props for posting this to YouTube, given how things roll. –Ann Bartow ETA: Video has been made “private.” What it showed was three children, two girls and a boy, in the … Continue reading →

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Posted in Feminism and Culture, Sociolinguistics | 1 Comment

Latoya Peterson originally wanted to title the post: “All The Women Are Still White, All The Blacks Are Still Men, But Some Of Us Are Tired of Being Brave and Want to Kick Someone’s Ass.”

Posted on March 30, 2010 by Ann Bartow

Read it here. Peterson co-authored it with Thea Lim and there is a lot there to think about, that really needs to be thought about. –Ann Bartow

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If SCOTUS Opinions Don’t Use Gender-Neutral Language, Why Should Any Lawyer?

Posted on March 29, 2010 by Bridget Crawford

Leslie Rose (Golden Gate) has posted to SSRN her article, The Supreme Court and Gender-Neutral Language: Setting the Standard or Lagging Behind (forthcoming Duke J. of Gender Law & Policy).  Here is the abstract: Most modern legal writing texts and … Continue reading →

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Posted in Courts and the Judiciary, Legal Profession, Sociolinguistics | 1 Comment

HuffPo post asserts Stephen Colbert treated Sean Hannity “like a prostitute.”

Posted on March 7, 2010 by Ann Bartow

The post is here, along with a video clip. Below is the appalling text: Last night Stephen Colbert sat down with Sean Hannity, who “joined [him] live from stuff [he] could edit together,” and with some crafty splicing, proceeded to … Continue reading →

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Posted in Feminism and Culture, Sexism in the Media, Sociolinguistics | 1 Comment

“As part of the gender almost universally considered to be the most vain, I find it kind of amusing that we take it as a given that men shouldn’t have to come to terms with the penis nature gave them.”

Posted on February 28, 2010 by Ann Bartow

The post title is a quote from this Broadsheet piece (found via) which highlights an Atlantic article entitled “The Challenge of Marketing Small  Condoms,” in which one learns: … According to the medical journal Sexually Transmitted Infections, 45 percent of … Continue reading →

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Is the headline “SC man dies, wife injured in domestic shootings” reasonable for the facts it reports?

Posted on February 22, 2010 by Ann Bartow

Here is the text of the story as it appeared in the online version of my local newspaper: Posted on Mon, Feb. 22, 2010 SC man dies, wife injured in domestic shootings The Associated Press Police say a South Carolina … Continue reading →

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Posted in Sexism in the Media, Sociolinguistics, South Carolina | 1 Comment

A story about having the same conversation about pornography over and over with men.

Posted on January 26, 2010 by Ann Bartow

By Sam Berg, excerpted from here: Published in Rain and Thunder: A Radical Feminist Journal of Discussion and Activism Winter 2010, Issue #45 “Hi: I’m a writer at The Oregonian in Portland, working on a story about the sex culture … Continue reading →

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Lost and Found in Translation: C. Edwin Baker “loved living on the lower level people.”

Posted on January 1, 2010 by Ann Bartow

I’ve been so sad about Ed Baker’s death that my usual goofball humor emotional survival technique has been mostly muted. But today I found a web page in which Ed is remembered by someone at the school in Beijing where … Continue reading →

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Interview with Jessica Valenti

Posted on December 30, 2009 by Ann Bartow

Here. Feministing has a fairly wide range of authors and posts. Because Jessica Valenti is one of the contemporary faces of feminism to a certain cohort of people, watching the linked interview is interesting and informative. –Ann Bartow

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“Evidence about the preferred orders of English binomial expressions for gendered categories of humans”

Posted on December 28, 2009 by Ann Bartow

That’s a phrase taken from this interesting post entitled “Sexual Orders” by Mark Liberman at Language Log.

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On Virginity and Hymens

Posted on December 13, 2009 by Ann Bartow

From this website: Time for more accurate terminology: Hymen renamed”vaginal corona” The mythical status of the hymen has caused far too much harm for far too long. Last spring, RFSU published an information booklet in Swedish intended to dispel some … Continue reading →

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Posted in Feminism and Law, Feminism and Medicine, Feminism and Politics, Feminists in Academia, If you're a woman, Sociolinguistics | 2 Comments

Bad Sex In Fiction Award nominees all male.

Posted on December 1, 2009 by Ann Bartow

From here: Franco-American author Jonathan Littell has won the Bad Sex In Fiction Award for a book that had previously scooped France’s top literary award. “The Kindly Ones”, a World War II saga originally published in French under the title … Continue reading →

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Posted in Feminism and Culture, Sociolinguistics | 3 Comments

Pulitzer Prize Winning Stereotypes

Posted on November 5, 2009 by Ann Bartow

This is a “political” cartoon by David Horsey that appeared November 2nd in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer in response to Boeing’s recent decision to open a manufacturing plant near Charleston. All the workers are white men. And a confederate flag is … Continue reading →

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“At this moment, there are more females serving on the United States Supreme Court than there are writing for Late Show with David Letterman, The Jay Leno Show, and The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien combined. Out of the 50 or so comedy writers working on these programs, exactly zero are women.”

Posted on October 29, 2009 by Ann Bartow

Via TGW:   In this Vanity Fair article, Nell Scovell talks about the sexual politics and “hostile work environment” that she experienced while writing for David Letterman. –Ann Bartow

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Posted in Feminism and Culture, Sociolinguistics, The Underrepresentation of Women | 2 Comments

Dan Brown’s “Lost Symbol” is awful. Her eyes were as big as saucers when it hit her like an uncoming train.

Posted on October 23, 2009 by Ann Bartow

I’ll leave more detailed reviews for others, but here is something I found particularly stupid, at page 31. Protagonist Robert Langdon is lecturing to one of his freshman “intro” Harvard classes: …”In this age when different cultures are killing each … Continue reading →

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Posted in Academia, Feminism and the Arts, Hackery, Sociolinguistics, The Underrepresentation of Women | 5 Comments

“By watering down the content of what used to be Women’s Studies, students are no longer inspired by feminism and by the prospect of feminist activism and research.”

Posted on October 5, 2009 by Ann Bartow

That is a sentence from this essay, excerpted below: … There have been two competing forces in the theorising of Women’s Studies since its inception. On the one hand there are those who wish to ‘transform the curriculum’ and incorporate … Continue reading →

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Nicole Hurt, “Komen Goes Feminist: Breast Cancer Activism, Advertising Design, and Third-Wave Feminism”

Posted on October 4, 2009 by Ann Bartow

This is an academic paper written in 2008 by a U. of Georgia student which critiques the 2007 “Punch It” Komen Foundation campaign: The shirt says:”When we get our hands on breast cancer, we’re going to punch it, strangle it, … Continue reading →

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Diagram of the 19th Amendment

Posted on October 1, 2009 by Ann Bartow

From here, via.

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Posted in Bloggenpheffer, Sociolinguistics | 3 Comments

“The Wisconsin Tourism Federation has changed its name, after being made aware that its acronym WTF had become crude internet slang.”

Posted on September 30, 2009 by Ann Bartow

Per The Guardian: … It seems that the federation was unaware of – or unconcerned by – the modern meaning of WTF until its acronym featured on a blog that compiles unfortunate corporate logos earlier this year. Commenters wondered whether … Continue reading →

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Posted in Bloggenpheffer, Sociolinguistics | 1 Comment

“The word”rape”has been disappeared from the English language”

Posted on September 29, 2009 by Ann Bartow

That’s the title of this interesting post at Historiann. Below are the first two paragraphs: At least in the coverage of Roman Polanski’s arrest it has!   I keep hearing about how he was arrested in Switzerland this weekend on … Continue reading →

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Posted in Acts of Violence, Coerced Sex, Feminism and Law, Sociolinguistics | 1 Comment

“Happiness Gap” Truthiness Check

Posted on September 22, 2009 by Ann Bartow

In a previous post I posed the question: Why is less educational achievement and diminished career success making men happier? Over at Language Log the “happiness paradox” data is debunked: If we sum up all the GSS responses across years, … Continue reading →

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Men’s Boogers Present Special Challenges

Posted on September 14, 2009 by Ann Bartow

Via Lisa at Sociological Images who notes that the idea of marketing Kleenex for Men has apparently been resuscitated from 1964. Can you say “backlash”? –Ann Bartow

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Posted in Feminism and Culture, Sociolinguistics, Yep, sarcasm. | 2 Comments

Inciting harassment can be costly.

Posted on September 11, 2009 by Ann Bartow

Check out this settlement: Mid-Trial Settlement for Derogatory Comments by Shock Jocks- $1,000,000.00 Settlement: $1,000,000.00 after three days of trial Caption: Athena Anddrinkopoulis v. Defendant (No Response) Judge: Hon. John Egan, JSC Date of Settlement: 12/6/07 Plaintiff’s Attorney: Daniel Centi, … Continue reading →

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Glenn Beck Jokes About Poisoning Nancy Pelosi

Posted on August 10, 2009 by Ann Bartow

Via.

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Women are supposed to be sexually available to men, that’s our assigned role; if we are hot, we are supposed to put out since we are signaling we want sex, and if we are not hot, we are supposed to be so grateful for male attention we do anything the attending dood wants. Otherwise, death to us…

Posted on August 9, 2009 by Ann Bartow

Some links and post excerpts about the Sodini murders: Anna N. at Jezebel: Sodini was clearly disturbed, but his bilious diary displays an extreme version of a type of grievance misogyny that is all too common. His conviction that all … Continue reading →

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Posted in Acts of Violence, Feminism and Culture, Sexism in the Media, Sociolinguistics | 1 Comment

Somebody needs a brain makeover.

Posted on August 7, 2009 by Ann Bartow

There is a post at the Chron blog entitled “Blonded by Science” that states: A dismal 7 percent of adult Americans are science literate, but James Trefil has a secret weapon that could send that number cartwheeling into the double … Continue reading →

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Posted in Academia, Feminism and Science, Sociolinguistics | 2 Comments

Maybe Lucia Whalen should also get a beer?

Posted on July 29, 2009 by Ann Bartow

Caller in Gates Case Says She Didn’t Mention Race By KATIE ZEZIMA CAMBRIDGE, Mass. : Lucia Whalen, whose 911 call led to the arrest of the Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. at his home, made her first public comments … Continue reading →

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Posted in Feminism and Law, Race and Racism, Sociolinguistics | 1 Comment

“I Was A Teenage Feminist”

Posted on July 29, 2009 by Ann Bartow

More here! Via.

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Urine-competent if you are female?

Posted on July 26, 2009 by Ann Bartow

Click thumbnail below for larger version: Click thumbnail below for larger version: The photographs are the female and male instructions for collecting urine samples for medical testing, featured in the bathrooms of a medical lab. Note the contrast in how … Continue reading →

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In which Lindsey Graham calls Sonya Sotomayor a bitch, South Carolina style

Posted on July 15, 2009 by Ann Bartow

When I listen to this clip it sounds like Sen. Graham, who is a graduate of the University of South Carolina School of Law, is pulling what I call the “Dark Mysterious Forces” maneuver. Of course he’s not saying she … Continue reading →

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Posted in Feminism and Politics, Sociolinguistics, South Carolina | 4 Comments

Sort yourself out!

Posted on July 14, 2009 by Ann Bartow

Via Marge Twain.

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“”Make Her Say (Poke Her Face)”: Un-conscious Hip Hop, Oral Rape and the Silencing of Women”

Posted on July 13, 2009 by Ann Bartow

That’s the title of this essay at Celie’s Revenge about a very misogynist song. Here is an excerpt from the introduction: As a female listener, one willing to allow herself to really hear this song’s words and take them to … Continue reading →

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