The Madonna of linguists?
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Meghan Daum's LA Times column on "nonplussed" came out a few days ago — "I'm nonplussed, maybe: Many people use words outside their original meaning, but does that make them wrong?", 8/9/2008. She's refreshingly up front about her own reaction:
I need to say something. And even though I'm going to refrain from typing in all caps, I urge you to pretend I did.
The word "nonplussed" does not mean unfazed, unperturbed or unconcerned. I know just about everyone uses it that way, but I really wish they'd stop.
Meghan is the journalist whose questions I answered last week in "Nonplussed about nonplussed", 8/6/2008. She was nonplussed, in the sense she prefers, by the fact that instead of setting up a phone interview, I asked her for questions by email, and then posted my answers on Language Log (though I left her role anonymous until now). Her email response:
Thanks, Mark. I must say, I've never received a personal answer in a public forum (you are the Madonna of linguists!)
It's too bad that professional CVs don't have a blurbs section, since I'd add "the Madonna of linguists" to mine in a flash. I'd be even more pleased (I hope) if I knew why Madonna is the type specimen for giving a personal answer in a public form.
In her column, alas, Ms. Daum left out the reference to Madonna:
I posed some of these possibilities to Mark Liberman, a linguistics professor at the University of Pennsylvania and the founder of a linguistics blog called Language Log. Liberman must have found the "nonplussed" conundrum particularly compelling, because after agreeing to respond to my questions by e-mail, he instead answered them in the form of a post on his blog.
It's true that the nonplussed questions were good ones, as also indicated by the 44 comments and two follow-up posts ("Change by mistake", 8/9/2008, and "The truth about infer", 8/11/2008). But in fact, Ms. Daum was the beneficiary (or victim?) not of the quality of her questions, but rather of my new policy of conducting (most) interviews in this quasi-public way. (I don't bother when my answer is mainly of the form "I don't know much about this, you need to talk with X, Y, or Z instead".)
There are some drawbacks, I guess. I'm not going to post too-frank appraisals or scurrilous gossip on background, for example — not that I offer much of that by phone, either. And it probably makes journalists uneasy to be partly disintermediated in this way.
But on balance, at least for the kind of interviews that I'm usually involved in, I think it's probably a good thing all around.
Rob Gunningham said,
August 13, 2008 @ 11:23 am
I'm not going to post too-frank appraisals or scurrilous gossip on background
Oh, go on. You know we love that stuff best…
Mark P said,
August 13, 2008 @ 11:34 am
I can think of some good reasons to do interviews like that. For one thing, it eliminates misquoting, and for another, it does not allow the typical (and sometimes necessary) journalistic practice of editing the interviewee's answers, which can . One of the bad things, especially from the journalist's viewpoint, is that it eliminates spontaneity. The best part of an interview can be a long digression.
Mark Liberman said,
August 13, 2008 @ 11:36 am
Mark P: One of the bad things, especially from the journalist's viewpoint, is that it eliminates spontaneity. The best part of an interview can be a long digression.
It's nice of you to imply that all of Language Log is not, in some sense, a long digression.
hjælmer said,
August 13, 2008 @ 11:52 am
Why do you assume that the Madonna reference is to the pop star? Perhaps Ms. Daum meant that, impregnated by afflatus (her questions?), you bore a divine (or semi-divine) answer.
Or maybe not.
Rob Gunningham said,
August 13, 2008 @ 12:18 pm
She meant that Madonna is the Mark Liberman of the entertainment world.
Maria said,
August 13, 2008 @ 12:36 pm
She probably thought that calling you the Denise Richards of linguists would not be a good idea.
Christopher Cieri said,
August 13, 2008 @ 12:36 pm
Mark, if you decide to add a list of blurbs to your professional CV, I'd suggest giving first position to "no Perez Hilton" from The Daily Pennsylvanian, 9/20/07: "New syllabi: books, tests and blogspot? They're no Perez Hilton, but blogging profs are the new trend in academia."
john riemann soong said,
August 13, 2008 @ 12:40 pm
Is that always commutative?
Sili said,
August 13, 2008 @ 12:47 pm
I just think it's nice of her to both give your name and the name of the blog.
And since I don't read the LA Times (though perhaps I should so that I can infer it), I appreciate the public answers.
Don't be shy about the gossip – there's noöne here but us chickens, after all. And I really really wanna know what happened with that Burmese during the War.
John Cowan said,
August 13, 2008 @ 1:16 pm
Second the Burmese.
Jan Freeman said,
August 13, 2008 @ 1:22 pm
Gee, Mark — I would have thought you, and more of the commenters, would have instantly seen the journalistic problem with this: You're scooping the interviewer. No doubt most of her L.A. Times readers, and most of my Boston Globe readers, are not obsessive Language Log readers. Still, if I ask one of you for a comment or quote or other help, I would much prefer you not blog about the topic before my pub date.
I've coordinated this (effectively, I think) with Ben Zimmer in the past — the joint work on singular "diapers" comes to mind. And I think it's a benefit, not a drawback, that a source can say more than I can print; quoting is almost always inadequate to the topic, especially where space is limited, and our audiences do differ in their level of expertise.
I'm sure that in practice your jumping the gun on the blog is a trivial matter — but I've had enough years of journalistic indoctrination that I can't suppress a slight "WTF?" reaction, all the same.
Ryan Denzer-King said,
August 13, 2008 @ 1:45 pm
I highly recommend adding a "blurbs" section to your CV, because then that would give me an excuse to do likewise. Though I've never been called the Madonna of anything….
Dan said,
August 13, 2008 @ 2:13 pm
I think the Madonna thing might be a reference to the dance song "If Madonna Calls":
Although that would actually make you the Junior Vasquez of linguists… maybe Meghan got confused about who did what to whom.
Mark P said,
August 13, 2008 @ 2:47 pm
Jan Freeman, I did see the journalistic problem, but I didn't mention it. Another facet of that problem is that by posting the questions and answers on a blog, the blogger not only scoops the reporter but also takes control of the interview. It upsets the normal balance of power.
Vicki Baker said,
August 13, 2008 @ 2:53 pm
I took the Madonna thing as a reference to her innovations in the underwear as outerwear trend – personal items in the public space.
Thank you for "disintermediate" – I needed a new way way to say "cut out the middleman."
mollymooly said,
August 13, 2008 @ 3:59 pm
I think this is the beginning of a brave new world, where blogging makes public answers to private questions the norm. If a journalist asks an expert a question, then rather than craft a bespoke answer, the expert could often respond "I explain this on page 572 of my last book; read it there". Now they can also respond "I'll explain this in post 572 of my blog; read it there…in a few days."
kip said,
August 13, 2008 @ 4:08 pm
This seems to imply that she was unaware that her questions would be posted publicly. If that was the case, it seems you were a bit disingenuous by requesting the questions come by e-mail without warning that you may post them online, before her article even runs. I know the policy had been posted on this blog before, but you can't assume anyone who contacts you has read that particular post.
Jan Freeman said,
August 13, 2008 @ 4:36 pm
Mollymooly: The journalistic etiquette problem (for me, anyway) is not about privacy, merely timing. If I ask, say, Jesse Sheidlower for a comment (as I just did), it would be considered very bad manners for him to write about my topic in Slate a day or two before my pub date. But if he wanted to write a refutation, an expansion, his own take, whatever, a day after publication — no problem.
As for quoting the expert's book — excellent idea; often the writer has expressed the answer most eloquently and economically there. But any editor thinks you've done a better job if you provide a "live" quote, so you can say the source was speaking directly to you, preferably yesterday. This is kind of a silly prejudice when the topic is at all scholarly, but there it is.
Blog discourse, I think, has become a kind of middle ground because of its topicality. If you're quoting a recent blog, it counts as current, almost as much as a solicited quote. (And I think that's great.) But I don't think an expert will get a lot of repeat queries if he treats a question as meaning "take my idea, please."
Mark Liberman said,
August 13, 2008 @ 4:46 pm
I think that Jan Freeman's point about timing is a good one.
In general, I wouldn't post an interview in a situation where I thought it would spoil someone's story or column, until after the article came out. In this case, I thought that the overlap between my information and the columnist's take was likely to be small, and the overlap between our audiences even smaller.
Over the past couple of days, I've done an email interview (in several parts) with a freelance writer who is doing an article for the NYT. In this case, I thought that it wouldn't be appropriate to risk "scooping" or otherwise spoiling the piece, and so if I do end up posting my responses, I'll only do so after the article comes out.
Mark Liberman said,
August 13, 2008 @ 5:48 pm
Somewhat relevant to this discussion: Brad DeLong's post yesterday, "Fear Not That the Walls Have Ears; Fear That They Have Tongues". He prescribes a four-part soution (mainly for email, but it applies to interviews as well):
He comments: "In such a world as this one in which we live in, email and other means of communication that automatically create a record that can be used to push back against distortions is a blessing."
I'd add that for busy people, the ability to combine an interview with a blog post is a win all around.
kaitlin said,
August 13, 2008 @ 6:57 pm
I am curious to see how this will change the way an interview is communicated. Keep 'em comin'. Allow me to be intrigued.
Ann said,
August 13, 2008 @ 8:10 pm
Not knowing who Meghan Daum is or what Mark Liberman looks like, I at first thought that photo must be some sort of Photoshopping experiment in combining the features of Madonna and Mark.
Faldone said,
August 13, 2008 @ 8:48 pm
The word "nonplussed" does not mean unfazed, unperturbed or unconcerned. I know just about everyone uses it that way, but I really wish they'd stop.
If a word doesn't mean what just about everyone who uses it uses it to mean what does it mean?
baylink said,
August 13, 2008 @ 11:54 pm
And that's the argument /for/ prescriptivism' right there, Faldone.
It means what the dictionary says it means.
Expansion tomorrow when I'm not thumbing my blackberry.
jackofhearts29 said,
August 14, 2008 @ 10:57 am
I am completely plussed by this answer.
Josh Millard said,
August 14, 2008 @ 11:25 am
But if he wanted to write a refutation, an expansion, his own take, whatever, a day after publication — no problem.
I'm looking at this as an often-annoyed news reader without any journalistic background, so my take is both unsymapathetic and unwashed, but it strikes me that this is an awfully constrictive "allowance" to expert sources on stories, especially when those sources aren't operating themselves in a journalistic capacity.
I can understand the politeness in wanting someone not to break a story ahead of the interviewer—running out into the street shouting "FOO IS WRITING ABOUT BAR HEY COME READ MY TAKE ON IT" seems like a lousy move, sure—but commenting on the subject itself without trying to spoil the article? Where is the harm there? A reader might check out the blog of the source and find out that they do, indeed, have thoughts on the subject?
The implication is that a journalist has the right to lock up a given source's (a) ability to talk about things, in their own venue, that interest them, and (b) document clearly how they questions they were asked in an interview were put, and how they in fact answered them. One is obnoxious as a presumption ("Hey, smart person. Do some work for me by thinking about subject x, but then don't you dare write down any thoughts about subject x…") and the other seems like just the sort of historical cheat that makes so much of the bad journalism soundbitery we see every day possible.
Arnold Zwicky said,
August 14, 2008 @ 12:01 pm
Mark P: "Another facet of that problem is that by posting the questions and answers on a blog, the blogger … takes control of the interview. It upsets the normal balance of power."
Apparently the position here is that the journalist/interviewer *should* be in the position of power, with the interviewee serving merely as a source of material for the interviewer to use. I think that anything that subverts this relationship is a good thing, especially in cases (like this one) where the interviewee is being asked to do fresh research. (Academics are used to being expected to do all sorts of work for free, but it's galling when this work is devalued *because* we're willing to do it for free. Maybe if people who are being paid for their work expect us to do fresh research for them, we should negotiate a fee.)
Mark Liberman said,
August 14, 2008 @ 12:18 pm
I apologized to Meghan Daum for posting the email interview before her column appeared, and she was graciously un-nonplussed in response. She also explained the Madonna reference:
Here's how the Wikipedia article on Truth or Dare desribes it:
During a throat examination in Madonna's hotel room, with the cameras still rolling, Warren chastises her for the documentary, telling her that the atmosphere is driving everyone insane, even if no one verbalizes it. Madonna ignores Warren, and when Madonna declines to have the rest of her examination done off camera, Warren starts to laugh, saying, "She doesn't want to live off camera, much less talk… What point is there of existing [off-camera]?"
Mark P said,
August 14, 2008 @ 3:21 pm
Arnold Zwicky – I generally agree with you on this. The media come into all relationships with a sense of privilege and power. In their view, they serve as mediators of truth for the public, telling them not what has happened or what was said, but what they think the public should know about what happened and what was said. And then they tell the public what the public should think about those things. This is probably more true of national or larger media outlets and almost certainly less true of smaller outlets, which more often serve as a mouthpiece for the local business community. I think that is one reason the mainstream media have had such a problem coming to terms with blogs.
And, for what it's worth, I worked as a reporter/editor for a medium-sized daily for several years in the 70s. There I occasionally got to see network reporters behind the scenes. It was not confidence-inspiring.
Jan Freeman said,
August 14, 2008 @ 7:37 pm
Josh Millard: Like any occupation, journalism has a set of conventions, some useful, some less so. I didn't mean to assert some overarching privilege for reporters, only to note that we would lose points with our bosses if they noticed our articles had been summarized in detail by a source before publication. (And of course, if the source writes it up without mentioning you, you look like a plagiarist.) I'm just saying, we should all be clear about the rules under which we are communicating. And FYI, the science and medical journals all impose embargoes for several days after publication — to allow time for discussion and accurate comment — and when I was a science editor, we always honored those (though they are occasionally violated).
Arnold & Mark: As a humble acolyte of LL I know I am not worthy, etc. — but as an underpaid freelancer of a certain age, I'm not sure whether to laugh or cry at finding myself of symbol of the mainstream media's "privilege and power." Get a grip. You talk to the media because you think your work is important, and that you can help in some small way to educate and inform the public, even through the imperfect vessel of a lowly journalist. I too wish there were more of a market for skepticism and critical thought out there, but if reporters were smart, they'd have tenure, right?
Arnold Zwicky said,
August 14, 2008 @ 10:55 pm
Jan Freeman: "Arnold & Mark: As a humble acolyte of LL I know I am not worthy, etc. — but as an underpaid freelancer of a certain age, I'm not sure whether to laugh or cry at finding myself of symbol of the mainstream media's "privilege and power." Get a grip. You talk to the media because you think your work is important, and that you can help in some small way to educate and inform the public, even through the imperfect vessel of a lowly journalist."
I won't speak for Mark, but my pointed comment was specifically about being asked to supply responses to questions about matters I had not in fact done research on before. A very large number of the queries I get (there are now over 4000 in my inbox) are not about topics I've worked on, but are fresh questions that I can't answer without doing new research. Most of these are from ordinary puzzled people, but some are from journalists, often writing with announced (sometimes urgent) deadlines. I answer very few of these journalist queries, mostly restricting myself to a small number of correspondents (under ten: Jan is among them) whose judgment I trust. (I've had bad experiences with others, and I've felt exploited by some.)
Answering questions that are about work I've already done is one thing. Being treated as the Ask-A-Linguist service is another, especially when I'm being asked to be the research assistant for a journalist. (Yes, I know, free-lance journalists have no staff, but then I don't either.)
And to remind readers: I was responding to a comment that presumed that the "normal balance of power" was for the journalist/interviewer to be in control. That I resent.
Rob Gunningham said,
August 15, 2008 @ 5:27 am
Arnold Zwicky: That I resent.
You're hardly alone, every thinking person who isn't a part of it resents the absurd power of journalists and their media.
Geoff Nathan said,
August 16, 2008 @ 9:52 pm
Warning: potential threadjack…
Mark L quotes:
He comments: "In such a world as this one in which we live in, email and other means of communication that automatically create a record that can be used to push back against distortions is a blessing."
And I note that completely uncommented-on is a lovely double preposition–extensively documented elsewhere, but it strikes me as rather rare 'in print', even this kind of print.