Department of Languages, Literatures & Linguistics

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Open Access
The Dance of Conversation: Gender and Language in Metaphors for West Coast Swing Partnership
(Canadian Linguistics Association Annual Conference, 2021-06-07) O'Neill, Brittney
Social partner dance communities have traditionally constrained participation by gender, permitting only men to lead and only women to follow. However, West Coast Swing (WCS), a modern swing dance, is currently in the midst of degendering the roles of leader and follower, and the gendered terms traditionally used to refer to them, such that all dancers may participate in their preferred role regardless of their gender. In some ways, degendering is an extension of WCS’s relatively egalitarian partnership structure. Unlike in many partner dances, in WCS both the leader and the follower can influence movement choices for the couple. One of the most prevalent metaphors for conveying this conception of partnership is that of a conversation. This metaphor is typically understood as liberatory, suggesting an open exchange of ideas between leader and follower (e.g. Callahan, 2005; Cox, 2012), one that is broadly in line with the egalitarian motives of the degendering movement overall. However, in practice the WCS PARTNERSHIP IS CONVERSATION metaphor often reveals criteria for appropriate “talk” that differ significantly by role and, in doing so, continues to draw on gendered social expectations. Using Koller’s (2004) Critical Cognitive Framework, this project investigates the use of the WCS PARTNERSHIP IS CONVERSATION metaphor in an episode of The Naked Truth, a podcast made by and for the WCS community. The 92 minute episode, “Leading and Following” (2019), presents a discussion of WCS partnership dynamics featuring a male-identifying host who publicly endorses degendering and a female-identifying host who appears ambivalent about the issue. During the episode, the WCS PARTNERSHIP IS CONVERSATION metaphor is frequently invoked and often co-constructed by the speakers. In the hosts’ deployments of the metaphor, the only way leaders were found to be at fault was if they “talked” constantly and never gave the follower room to contribute: “[they] should not be dictating…a hundred percent…of the dance”. In contrast, followers’ behaviour was much more heavily policed. They were cautioned against “interrupting” or “ignor[ing the leader’s] intent” as well as being too much of a “straight follower” (i.e. not offering movement ideas to the partnership), while being encouraged to “support the leader”, “pay[] attention and listen[]”, and only “contribute” in response to the leader or when the leader offers an opportunity. This dynamic strongly resembles accounts of actual conversations between middle class, white, North American men and women, in which men have been found to hold the floor for a greater percentage of the time and interrupt more, while women talk less, interrupt less, use more supportive strategies (James & Drakich, 1993; Kendall & Tannen, 1997; Lee & Mccabe, 2020; Zimmerman & West, 1975) and, despite this, are still often perceived as more interruptive (Orcutt & Mennella, 1995). Though not universally representative of conversation dynamics between men and women, the salience of these same patterns in the way the WCS PARTNERSHIP IS CONVERSATION metaphor is mobilized, reveals underlying heteronormative and essentialized gender ideologies and conceptual models of WCS partnership. These ideologies and conceptions may continue to implicitly tie following to femininity and leading to masculinity, despite the extensive work being done to avoid explicitly gendered language. This analysis demonstrates the role of shared metaphor use in the persistence of gendered language and ideologies, even amongst speakers and communities that are committed to gender equality and degendering. It further asks: if WCS partnership dynamics give followers more say than other dances, but are nonetheless described through metaphor use that invokes hegemonic masculine conversational norms, can partner dance ever be truly degendered or is the legacy of gendering so pervasive that the mere act of leading or following is inherently situated within hegemonic gender norms? References: Callahan, J. L. (2005). ‘Speaking a secret language’: West Coast Swing as a community of practice of informal and incidental learners. Research in Dance Education, 6(1–2), 3–23. https://doi.org/10.1080/14617890500372974 Cox, N. (2012). A Skillful Breaking of Expectations: Embodied Knowledge, Communication, and Connection in West Coast Swing Dance. Bryn Mawr. James, D., & Drakich, J. (1993). Understanding gender differences in amount of talk: A critical review of research. In Gender and conversational interaction. (pp. 281–312). Oxford University Press. Kendall, S., & Tannen, D. (1997). Gender and language in the workplace. In R. Wodak (Ed.), Gender and Discourse (pp. 81–105). Sage Publications Ltd. Koller, V. (2004). Metaphor and gender in business media discourse: A critical cognitive study. Palgrave Macmillan. Lee, J. J., & Mccabe, J. M. (2020). Who speaks and who listens: Revisiting the chilly climate in college classrooms. Gender and Society, 35(1), 32–60. https://doi.org/10.1177/0891243220977141 Orcutt, J. D., & Mennella, D. L. (1995). Gender and Perceptions of Interruption as Intrusive Talk: An Experimental Analysis and Reply to Criticism. Symbolic Interaction, 18(1), 59–72. https://doi.org/10.1525/si.1995.18.1.59 Zimmerman, D. H., & West, C. (1975). Sex roles, interruptions and silences in conversation. In B. Thorne & N. Henley (Eds.), Language and Sex: Difference and Dominance (pp. 105–129). Newberry House. https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.125.12zim
Open Access
Talking dance, doing gender: Gendered language use in a podcast made by and for the West Coast Swing dance community
(International Gender and Language Association (IGALA 11), 2021-07-08) O'Neill, Brittney
Traditionally, social partner dance communities have constrained participation by gender, permitting only men to lead and only women to follow. More recently, however, emerging degendering movements have sought to enable all dancers to participate in their preferred role regardless of gender. Like much feminist and queer activism (e.g. Ehrlich & King, 1994; Moulton, Robinson, & Elias, 1978; Zimman, 2017), these degendering movements have also called for language reform, specifically focussing on the use of gender neutral terms in generic reference to dance roles. West Coast Swing (WCS), an increasingly global dance community which originated in the USA, is currently in the midst of such a change, seemingly headed towards complete degendering. WCS, then, presents a unique opportunity to explore the language use of those for, against, and ambivalent towards the degendering movement as it unfolds in public discourse. Using The Naked Truth, a podcast made by and for the WCS community, as a case study, this project analyses the use of gendered versus degendered language in generic reference to dance roles in the context of ongoing social and linguistic activism in the WCS community. “Leading and Following” (February 2019, 92 minutes), the episode used for analysis, features conversations between a male-identifying dancer who publicly endorses degendering, and a female-identifying top-tier professional dancer who, while endorsing freedom to dance in one’s preferred role, publicly resists allowing same gendered couples to compete against mixed gender couples. Despite the two speakers differing in rates of and strategies for degendered language use roughly in accordance with their alignment to the degendering movement, both appear to be aware of and to attempt degendered language use to at least some extent. However, a lack of other-initiated repair and the presence of symmetrical accommodation both to gendered and degendered language suggest that smooth conversational flow was privileged over any activist goals which may have motivated the speakers’ own language choices. Gendered language was particularly common in contexts where generics were linked to specific real-world situations, known individuals, or to an already gendered generic partner. For example, when referring generically to leaders dancing with a specific female-identifying follower, only male reference was used. Similarly, where referring generically to types of conversation experienced with real students, traditionally-gendered reference was more frequent. These patterns suggest that, at least for these two speakers, language change remains relatively superficial. Their mental models of the gender/role dynamic seem to be strongly shaped by exemplars based in existing statistical distributions and by heteronormativity, rather than by their goals for linguistic and social change. Thus, while language reform may play a role in making non-traditional-role dancers feel more welcome in the community, it does not yet appear to be impacting the underlying expectations of these two heavily-involved members of the community. This work provides specific evidence of the need for language reform to be accompanied by continued social and institutional change in order to create meaningful transformations of gendered conceptual categories, even amongst those who explicitly support reform.
Open Access
How the name of your lipstick reflects society’s notion of who you are: A linguistic analysis of cosmetic colour names
(2022-08) Bressler, Clint; Angermeyer, Philipp
The topic for this paper was inspired from frequent visits to cosmetic retail outlets which prompted an inquiry about colour names driven by two primary observations. The first was that the colour names displayed for the products rarely described their ascribed colour. The second was that these colour names were often abstract in nature, indexing an abstract concept rather than anything directly related to the properties of colour. This pattern varied some between brands and products, but the general observations remained the same. The question arises, if most colour names can have no descriptive qualities, then what is their intended purpose? Thus, this paper focuses on the themes and entities that colour names index, why brands choose to index these themes, how these colour naming conventions relate to the linguistic anthropologic discussions of colour terms, and how this affects the scope of linguistic landscapes.
Open Access
Case Assignment: A Comparison between Agreement-based versus Dependent Case Accounts
(2022-08) Cai, Wenyi; Alboiu, Gabriela
This major research paper (MRP) aims to review the literature that has looked into Case theories from a generative grammar perspective from Government and Binding (Chomsky, 1981) onwards. Specifically, it offers a critical examination of the agreement-based Case account (Chomsky, 1981, 1995, 2000, 2001, etc.) and the dependent Case account (Marantz, 1991), and discusses their contribution to our current understanding of syntactic Case valuation on nominal arguments. Various counterevidence is also presented, which raises potential problems for both accounts.
Open Access
The effects of prosody and production planning in external t-sandhi
(2022-08) Borje, Cydklaire; Elfner, Emily
The change in pronunciation of word-final /t/ in English is known as external coronal stop sandhi and is understood to be motivated by several phonological conditions. Though much of the research in this area (e.g., Tanner et al., 2017, Kilbourne-Ceron et al., 2016, Coetzee and Kawahara, 2013) has generally focused on a single t-sandhi alternation within a corpus (e.g., from /t/ to /ɾ/), the results of these studies make it clear that it is always a combination of factors that play a role in each alternation. In this paper, I propose that examining the distribution of various types of t-sandhi clause-internally would provide a more complete look of where speakers preferred to use different forms of /t/ in their natural speech: tightly controlling an area of analysis would make this otherwise wide scope more manageable. This project uses two production experiments to examine the interaction between prosody and other conditioning factors on t-sandhi: established segmental contexts and findings from Production Planning studies were used to control the environment surrounding word-final /t/ and record the distribution of its pronunciation. The results of these studies show that the more marked forms of t-sandhi (in terms of production) favor prosodically defined environments not explored in previous studies: word external, clause-internal flapping exclusively preferred environments where the following word did not carry lexical stress on the first syllable; released-t’s were never produced in environments 2 where the /t/ was preceded by a vowel and followed by a consonant, and also displayed changes in production rates that were sensitive to prosodic correlates. Production planning variables also showed some expected results which show areas of interest for further t-sandhi and production experiments focused on the production planning hypothesis (Tanner et al. 2017, Kilbourne-Ceron et al. 2016).
Open Access
A Minimalist Review of Current Theories on Japanese Passivisation
(2022-08) Langstroth, Zachary; Alboiu, Gabriela
The Japanese passive voice has presented challenges to a universal theory of passivisation as a process where an internal argument, usually the direct object, is promoted to the subject position. A subset of Japanese passives called “indirect” passives appear to increase the valence of their predicate, containing an additional argument, occupying the subject position, when compared to corresponding active sentences. This has led to some controversy in research assuming specific structures for such sentences, with some researchers arguing that the passive morpheme in indirect passives is merely homophonous with a counterpart in more traditional passives, while some argue that Japanese has no true passive voice. Recently, some arguments have been made that the subjects of these indirect passives in fact do have active sources which are obscured by general facts of movement in Japanese, i.e. that post-nominal elements are never left stranded. This text is intended as a critical review of prior research on the Japanese passive under current Minimalist understandings of syntactic theory. To that end, three prominent schools of thought on Japanese passive formation are examined: Non-uniform analyses, which posit two homophonous passive morphemes used in different constructions; Uniform analyses, which claim that Japanese has no true indigenous passive voice; and the recent unified passive analysis put forth by Ishizuka (2012), which posits that instances of increased valence in certain passives are in fact derived in a similar manner to English pseudo-passives, where a non-core argument is promoted to the subject position. These theories will be compared in how well they comply with given data, as well as their tenability under syntactic assumptions made in current Minimalist Program-based theory.
Open Access
English-Mandarin code-switching in a bilingual family
(2022-08) Cui, QingXiao; Angermeyer, Philipp
The study of code-switching has raised and attempted to answer a number of questions related to the nature of language use, the motivations behind different kinds of language use, and the very nature of a “language.” Broadly, two questions have been central: the “how?” and the “why?” When interlocutors alternate between two or more languages or language varieties, what are the formal and structural features of their language use, and what are their motivations for doing so? The present study intends to investigate both of these questions in the context of the code-switching behaviours of one English-Mandarin bilingual family living in Canada. Canada is home to many immigrant languages, one of the most prominent among them being Mandarin (Statistics Canada, 2017; 2022). In addition, Chinese diaspora communities that speak a variety of Chinese and non-Chinese languages exist worldwide, and their code-switching practices are accordingly varied (Li, 2016).
Open Access
The Rhotic Consonant(s) in Contemporary Modern Irish
(2022-08) Cahill, Griffin; Elfner, Emily
The subject of this major research paper (MRP) is the status of rhotic consonant(s) in the phonemic inventory of Modern Irish (Gaeilge, Nua-Ghaeilge). Traditional studies of the phonologies of dialects of Irish have described the rhotic in Irish as consisting of the alveolar tap (/ɾ/) with contrastive palatalized and velarized secondary articulations (/ɾj/ and /ɾɣ/) (Ó Cuív 1944; de Bhaldraithe 1966; Hamilton 1974; Sutton 1993; Ó Baoill 1996; Ó Raghallaigh 2014). The alveolar approximate ([ɹ]) as an allophone of /ɾ/ has also recently been attested in some studies (Ó Sé 2000: 19; Hickey 2014; Kukhto & Nikolaev 2016). However, the emergence of this allophone, and the precise circumstances under which it occurs, have largely been unexplored. This is not to say that previous scholars have ignored the occurrence of /ɹ/ broadly, but potentially that this is a new and ongoing phenomenon. As an example, previous work of the rhotic of Montréal French has shown that changes like this can occur rapidly (Sankoff & Blondeau 2007). Most previous studies of Irish phonetics and phonology have focused on speakers living in a Gaeltacht, the rural traditionally Irish speaking geographic regions primarily located on the Atlantic fringe of the island. However, the expansion of private Irish-medium schooling in the form of Gaelscoileanna since the 1970’s, as well as substantial sustained capital and political investment from successive Irish governments have produced a great number of high-level L2 users, as well as native speakers from non-Gaeltacht backgrounds. A part of the impetus to this research is to include these “new” speakers in the conversations around language change and variation in Irish as well, particularly as the Gaeltachtaí continue to be threatened and as “urban Irish” speakers begin to form a larger and larger portion of the language’s user base. There is also evidence uncovered in scholarly work that Irish phonology and phonetics are changing in other, broader ways, even amongst Gaeltacht speakers (Welby et al. 2017; Müller et al. 2019).
Open Access
Recontextualization of Ruth Bader Ginsburg: Textual Trajectories and Meaning in Social Media Posts about Roe v Wade
(2022-08) Michels, Victoria R.; Ehrlich, Susan L.
In this exploratory study, I investigate how Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s texts about the Roe v. Wade case are recontextualized into news and social media discourse on abortion following the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. Using Critical Discourse Analysis with data collected from Twitter and American news media outlets, I consider the trajectories and meanings of Ginsburg’s texts when they are recontextualized into new discursive contexts. My analysis found that both pro-choice and anti-abortion discourse recontextualize her texts, focusing on different aspects to support one of the two positions on abortion. I conclude that the trajectory of Ginsburg’s texts into pro-choice discourse may contribute to gender empowerment by referencing Ginsburg’s advocacy for individual autonomy and choice for women whereas the trajectory into anti-abortion discourse may perpetuate gender inequality by focusing on state rights and her criticisms of the decision while diminishing her support of choice and autonomy.
Open Access
The Semantic Derogation of Female
(2022-08) Ferley, Andrew; King, Ruth
As Schulz (1975) observed decades ago, terms of reference can reflect a range of underlying ideological assumptions. One of her examples of this phenomenon is the lexical choice between freedom fighter and terrorist (p. 64), with the former reflective of positive appraisals and the latter a far more negative one. Schulz goes on to discuss the phenomenon she labels “the semantic derogation of women” whereby once neutral terms of reference undergo pejoration; part of the discussion compares terms like lady with its male counterpart gentleman, with the former undergoing pejoration in many contexts but not the latter. I first became aware of this phenomenon sometime during 2020, with regard to terms of reference for women when I observed people replying to online posts which described women as females with entirely textless responses consisting solely of pictures of an alien race from the television series Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. These aliens are caricatures of capitalism and misogyny, and they themselves refer to women as females. I interpreted these interactions to mean those who posted these pictures of the fictitious aliens were signalling shared gender ideology with the Star Trek aliens. However, “terminally online” behaviour like this often does not necessarily translate into real-world discursive patterns. I next asked many of the women in my life their reactions to hearing women referred to as female(s). While there was some variation in response, quite a few reported that this was a red flag for them, and men who did this, in their experience, were either dangerous or toxic. I followed up on these observations with an informal sampling of friends and coworkers, and the results were suggestive of female as a lexical variant which had undergone semantic derogation. Later in 2021, I conducted a qualitative analysis of the online communications of a misogynistic online Pickup Artist community which utilized this lexical variant frequently. However, while some findings were suggestive of such an analysis, they were ultimately inconclusive as within that insular community, one manner of referring to women seemed as hostile as any other. The present study continues this examination of what I have come to refer to as the conspicuous female. Specifically, I characterise it as a lexical variant for women which, when it occurs outside of clinical contexts, seems to carry ideological baggage. To this end, I approach the question from a different direction than my earlier project, which was small in scale and purely qualitative in analysis. First, I re-administer an earlier survey on attitudes towards this lexical variant with a larger sample and a wider age range than in my previous research. Secondly, I mine Twitter using keyword searches for a reasonably large corpus of tweets containing the targeted variant, female, and a variant which is less negatively charged, woman. The choice of this second, more innocuous variant, was decided based on results from the attitudinal survey. The Twitter data are analyzed using the tools of critical discourse analysis (van Dijk 2005), for content which indexes prejudicial ideologies as well as quantitative variationist methodology (Bayley 2019).
Open Access
Raising in Modern Standard Arabic
(2022-08) Al-Janabi, Enas; Alboiu, Gabriela
This study investigates a core subject in generative syntax which is Argument movement (A-movement) as is represented by the syntactic process of Raising in Modern Standard Arabic (MSA). Subject-to-subject raising, and subject-to-object raising have been extensively studied in English language and other languages, however, this is not the case for MSA. Although the topic of Raising has been getting more attention in the last few decades, relevant studies in MSA remain sparse. Moreover, there are conflicting views towards the availability of A-movement, and hence Raising, as well as an overall lack of comprehensive research.

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