Language Log

Several readers have sent me links to Lera Boroditsky's recent article in the Wall Street Journal, "Lost in Translation" (7/24/2010).  We've mentioned Prof. Boroditsky's work on LL several times, starting back in 2003, and so long-time readers won't be surprised to learn that I think this is an interesting popularization of solid work.  However, most LL readers will also know that there is probably no single linguistic idea that is more prone to exaggeration and mis-application than the "Sapir-Whorf hypothesis" about the relations between language and thought. And the WSJ editors' subhed for Boroditsky's article gives their readers a push down that road:

New cognitive research suggests that language profoundly influences the way people see the world; a different sense of blame in Japanese and Spanish.

A recent post on Arnold Zwicky's blog features Kevin Fowler's Pound Sign, which brings cartoon cussing to the medium of music for the first time (?):

Just in case there might be little ears around,
I won’t say it, I’ll just spell it out –
I feel like pound-sign, question mark, star, exclamation point,
Don’t give a blank, and a whole lot of other choice words I can’t say –
Today I feel like pound-sign, question mark, star, exclamation point.

A truly strange piece of euphemism came up in a UK newspaper interview with Justin Halpern, the creator of the hit Twitter page Shit My Dad Says:

One day we took the dog for a walk. My dad said: "Look at the dog's asshole — you can tell from the dilation that the dog is about to shit" and the dog went to the bathroom. He was incredibly impressed by his prediction.

The dog went to the bathroom? Not exactly a case of like father like son, linguistically.

For those of us in the unpleasant position of policing student essays for plagiarism, there's a familiar odor wafting off of the unfolding scandal involving Scott McGinnis, a former congressman and current candidate for governor in Colorado ("McInnis’ water writings mirror works published years ago by Justice Hobbs", Denver Post 7/12/2010):

Portions of essays on water submitted for publication by gubernatorial candidate Scott McInnis are identical or nearly identical to work published years earlier by now-State Supreme Court Justice Gregory Hobbs. […]

In a memo accompanying the work when it was turned in to the Hasan Foundation for publication, McInnis wrote that it was all original work and in its final form.

McInnis refused to comment for this story. His campaign’s spokesman, Sean Duffy, acknowledged the similarities between the work of Hobbs and McInnis, and blamed a researcher who worked with McInnis on the articles.

Rolly Fischer, an engineer who worked at the Colorado River Water Conservation District, Duffy said, was the one who handled the portions that used Hobbs’ work without attribution.

“It should’ve been attributed properly and it was not,” Duffy said. “(McInnis) relied on the research and expertise” of Fischer.

Fischer did not immediately return a message for comment. His name appears nowhere on the work McInnis submitted as his own for publication by the Hasan Foundation.

Latest xkcd:

Here at DGA's annual Séminaire on "Traitement de la parole, du langage et des documents multimédias", I've learned a new phrase: Document dematerialization.

The 6/28/2010 issue of the New Yorker includes an engagingly waspish article by Anthony Lane, "Letter From Oslo, 'Only Mr. God Knows Why'".  Along with its witty observations about global language and culture, Lane's piece also includes some surprisingly elementary errors of fact.  The New Yorker has long (and loudly) cherished a reputation for assiduous fact-checking, and so this sort of thing still surprises me, though it happens often enough that it probably shouldn't.

Forwarded to Victor Mair by Jeff DeMarco, two photos of English stream-of-consciousness signage on the window of a jazz bar in Xi'an. Above:

According to Wikipedia, Real Madrid was voted the  "most successful [soccer] club of the 20th century" by FIFA, who ought to know.  The club's current full name is Real Madrid Club de Fútbol, but they weren't real (Spanish for "royal") until 1920, when King Alfonso XIII extended his royal patronage.  Before that, they were simply Madrid Club de Fútbol — and in 1931, when the Spanish monarchy was abolished, the name reverted to the un-real version. The club again became real in 1941, a couple of years after the end of the Spanish Civil War, when the monarchy was restored (although there wasn't an actual king on the throne until 1975).

The point here is that the real part of Real Madrid Club de Fútbol actually means something. It was added and taken away and added again, as a function of historical contingencies involving the Spanish monarchy.

But apparently this is one of those cases where a word's connotation (here "successful soccer team") has taken over from its denotation. In 2005, when a Major League Soccer franchise was established in Salt Lake City, Utah, the owners considered a long list of possible names: "Salt Lake City Highlanders", "Salt Lake Soccer Club",  "Alliance Soccer Club",  "Union SLC". But in the end, they settled on "Real Salt Lake".

Greg Laden has recently posted an entertaining screed, "Minifalsehood: We can't tell what a word is!?!?", 5/31/2010. I don't have time this morning for a a serious discussion, but I can point to some relevant stuff here, here, here, here, here, here, …

On Saturday, I went to another performance of the Chekhov play that I discussed a couple of days ago. And this time, I was struck by something that was neither in the play's text nor in the performers' interpretation, but rather in the audience's reaction.

Last night, I saw an excellent performance of Chekhov's Three Sisters at the Vortex Theater in Albuquerque. I had never seen this play before, and based on descriptions of the plot, I didn't really expect to like it very much, but in fact I thought it was brilliant, in ways that are not captured by a plot summary. It's surprising that this suprised me, since I like Chekhov's short stories very much, and for the same reasons.

Two small linguistic footnotes follow, one intrinsic to the text, and the other related to last night's performance.

SMBC from a few weeks ago: